Nonviolent Protesting
 

I'd like to share with the forum something that happened at my alma mater last night.

But before I get to it, I need to share this video, which you might have seen or heard of by now considering how fast I've watched it spread throughout the internet. If you haven't, be warned: the first minute is a bit disturbing.







I really don't care about where you stand on the Occupy movement, on university protests regarding tuition, etc. To me, the issue here is how casually the police officer pepper sprayed those students after stepping out from their circle. I don't think there was any reason to do so, and he certainly was not in any real danger that necessitated its use. Even my tea party-conservative friend who's completely against OWS thinks this is an excessive use of force.

Now, fast forward to last night after much rage has been spilled out...the chancellor of the university was going to hold a press conference to discuss the pepper spraying incident, and word of it got out to protestors. So naturally they gathered outside the building where it was at, trying to enter at various times and attempting to make their voices heard. But when it was finally time for the chancellor to leave, they lined up along the pathway to her car to let her peacefully depart - in complete silence.







Again, this is really what I wanted to share. I don't think I've seen a more incredible example of truly nonviolent protest.

If you want to read more on this whole incident, it shouldn't be too hard to find an article about it. It was at the very top of Google News yesterday.

The minute of that first video..:'( It reminded me of what I heard happened in Seattle with that 84 yr old woman being pepper sprayed. :( My heart goes out to that brave lady, and the other non violent protesters who have been pepper sprayed, tear gassed or assaulted in any way.

Violence of any type is wrong in my honest opinion, no matter how people try to justify it. The excessive use of pepper spray and tear gas in some of the Occupy protests really worries me. The police almost everywhere have been using all kinds of force to remove or challenge protesters. For the sceptics out there that's not an assumption, it's a fact.

Those punks were blocking pedestrian traffic and were asked to leave. They didn't so they got maced.
What did they think was gonna happen?

There's something called reasonable force even where people are being a danger to others (which can happen when they aren't performing any violent acts). That was not it though.

I know. I was so revolted when I first saw it and I can't bring myself to watch it again or from any other angle. Virtually my entire Facebook newsfeed yesterday and Friday evening consisted of outrage from my friends at what had happened.

Exactly. The officer using the pepper spray might even have been breaking state law just by doing that:

:shock: How eerie. But yes, extremely nonviolent :P

This is an interesting point you brought up Empty Glass. :)

I don't know if it's as easy to charge a policeman/woman as easy as what it is to charge a civilian. I suppose we can keep our hopes up in the meantime.

Yeah, I really don't know either. :\ The officer in question has been placed on administrative leave, but it will be very, very interesting to see what becomes of him as far as the law goes.

In any case, his name is now known all over and he's already achieving meme status across the interwebs.

That's comforting to know. I hope those who were sprayed receive some sort of compensation, or at least an apology.

I've seen more information on the policeman who did it on Anonymous though I won't post the link here.

It's admirable when people think they can make a difference with nonviolent methods, but the truth is that those who look at the wrong end of the gun always loose.

We are fragile physical beings that can easily be subdued with minimal amount of force. The same unfortunate fact holds true in the mental department, as we are social mass animals, seeking the acceptance from rest of the pack, whatever the cost.

That isn't necessarily true. Look at Gandi and Nelson Mandela, as well as anyone else who has refused to give in. You can stay with the pack or you can stand on your own two feet and stand up for what you believe in. People can have the inner nature to be able to realise that compromising your own beliefs for acceptance is diminishing their own self worth. There are those who do but then there are many others that don't.

Tear gas isn't pepper spray.
Just saying.

There are a few exceptions to the rule, but for every one, there are dozens who try and fail - look at Burma or Tibet some time.

Burma and Tibet..I hope the people there can be free one day. :(

Wow... sad video. I wonder if this stuff will come to my University or city.

I would say too that non violent protesting can definitely work. A lot of MLKs stuff worked, not all, but some did. But sometimes it doesn't work, and when it doesn't it's hard to watch. I remember I used to day dream about people on this forum living together in a tribe in the last forest on earth, and people coming in and holding us at gun point, but we would not leave, we told them they had to shoot us while they looked us in the eye. Those were good day dreams. Sometimes I feel that if you don't protest peacefully, then you don't accomplish anything, because you're no different than the people using force to stop your protest.

It very well may. It recently came to my old university. I now have three very short self taken videos of protests on my phone. That seems to have only garnered local coverage however.

By the way, let me say this.

Seeing a protest coming your way is ****in frightening. Even a peaceful one. Watching them coming towards where you are is scary as hell. But finding out what happened to them on the 11 o'clock news after you left is indeed sad.

Dude, that's creepy.

By that logic, killing someone in self-defence is equally bad to killing someone randomly on the street. It's not always just about what you do, but also why you do it.

What those students at UC Davis did made me very proud. I'm referring to the silent stare treatment. That was incredibly powerful, much more so than any amount of shouting or sign waving. I've been waiting years for students to demonstrate that they can protest like they used to, and it has finally happened. That's the kind of action that gets change. It worked for Gandhi, it worked in Selma. Way to go, people.

No action at all? :xD: IMO it makes it easier for people to walk all over you, or directly past you ;)

In all seriousness, that was a little too passive and peaceful for my liking.

Though if any of the protesters react, they would get even worse treatment. I think the fact that they were just sitting there and had pepper spray put in their faces helped to create such a media and moral backlash in the last few days.

Sorry Moco, but I'm with Sempu on this one. Had everyone been yelling, screaming, trying to get in Linda Katehi's face, etc. it would have been way too easy for the media (well, Fox News at least) to put down this protest as yet another case of deranged hippies needing to be silenced with pepper spray sorry, FOOD PRODUCT and just leave it there. And everyone was actually being very active in maintaining their silence and making sure that the only audible noise was Katehi's footsteps - a microcosm of the fact that anything that's done by administrators at UC Davis today now echoes over the world, for better or for worse. I'm really glad this protest happened the way it did. I've never put myself out in public protests much but I wish I had been there for this one. A friend of mine was, and I'm damn proud for him.

i have to agree.
Nonviolence works as long as you either are the vast majority or the opponent still has some form of consciousness left (or fears some kind of damage by nonviolent protests, eg.g. a damage to his public standing or a PR nightmare).
The borders between nonviolence and violence are not that clear though. For some, blocking roads or construction work is already some sort of violence while for others only actions that hurt people (and not objects) is violence.

If the opressors want to, they can always shoot. But I think there are situations in which this works. Consider however that the british empire was already in retreat when Ghandi managed to help them leaving India. Also, Ghandi was not alone. There were quite militant acitivists following the same goal. It was sort of a good gop/bad cop game - the british chose to rather deal with Ghandi than with Savarkar or other people at that time that commided acts like blowing up bridges. So in a way the freedom struggle consisted of two arms - a peacful one and one doing direct action. And I think that one could not have worked well without the other. Good cop, bad cop...
Same is true by the way with Malcolm X and Martin L King....

Exactly - that argument that physical force (I dislike calling it violence) is always unacceptable makes no sense. In self defense and in the struggle for freedom I think it is acceptable. After all, if you see someone assaulting a woman in a dark alley and you have the means, you would try to stop him even if that means to hit him with a club? Or at least, if you have the means you would defend yourself if someone attacks you in that alley? Certainly it is not the weapon of choice and smashing windows is not really constructive, but to dismiss any effective means of reaching freedom and self-defense as inappropriate just because the opponent uses them seems to me like throwing away tools just because someone else uses them as well.
Again - if it is ineffective - I think violence should be strictly avoided. To just attack some policemen will not help, but if they attack first, I think self-defense is not inacceptable.

Uh, I didn't say yelling and screaming was any better. I don't know about the circumstances surrounding this, so maybe that's why it seemed a little too quiet. I really had no idea what was going on because there was no message of any kind involved, and I don't believe you should have to be briefed on what a protest is about before seeing it to know what it is.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv...28zno1_500.jpg

I don't agree with all of this Occupy stuff, but what the officer did certainly looks like excessive force. Then again, we must look at all this in context. We may not be seeing the whole picture.

creepy? :(

But, killing someone in self-defense is a little different than protesting. By sometimes, I mean things like if you want to protest for peace, you can't be violent, because you are defeating your own purpose. Because if you want to protest for something like peace, you have to be prepared to suffer abuse, because if you fight you're just doing what the abusers are doing.

Self defense is a little different, like the mugging. If I see a women being mugged, and I attack the assaulter to stop him, I'm not really protesting anything, I'm just helping the women. I would use force to help her, but if I subdued the assaulter, I would rather try to figure out why he does what he does, and help him, instead of sending him to prison.

Also, There are times where I think the Malcom X approach of "be peaceful, but if they lay a hand on you, they've broken any peace treaty" works well too. It depends on what you are protesting.

All that aside, I think the silent treatment for the chancellor was well done, and I think the students who sat there and took the pepper spray was more effective than if the students had physically assaulted the police officer after being sprayed

Sorry, that was Spike, not me. I'm going to have to stop with these MLP quotes, but it's just way too much fun. Then again, I didn't even have quote marks on that one, so I guess it was partly me too. I admire your courage to face guns for the sake of trees, but I do not possess such guts, because I'm a coward and I leg it the first chance I get.

A fellow intellectual who thinks it is possible to overcome the evils that lurk within us by rationality... I hope you have heavy fists, quick feet and a bullet proof jacket to help you with that. I possess none of those, so I can't afford to play the hero regardless of how brutal the situation. Now if I had a memory erasing stun gun, then I probably could step in to most such scenarios and save the day, but as it stands, I'm just a run of the mill coward.

For the rest of the post, aurora already covered that, so I don't think that needs to be repeated.

That is my general opinion around such things, but in this case, I have to disagree.
While the police were within their right to move the protesters on, there was no violence from them and no imminent risk to ether themselves or others. Those are the criteria for when reasonable force is justified - if someone is coming at police with a knife or waving a gun around, they'd be lucky not to get shot. If they're going around smashing shop windows or trying to punch police, they might get pepper sprayed. If they are standing somewhere and refusing to leave when asked, then pepper spray is excessive.

An interesting AlterNet piece from today.

Robocops vs Occupy Wall St: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Tactics | | AlterNet

I ask myself, what is the aim of the protesters?
What are they expecting to happen?
We`ve seen so much protesters and it didn´t change anything.
I think the only way to change something is to change ourselves, to change our sight and to bring out those feelings many of us felt while and after watching avatar.
I mean the feeling of love and connection to each other.
The whole system of economy, industry is like a machine which has gone mad. And the people have become part of it, slaves to it. And I think those things will colapse by themselves, like you see from the financial crisis.
And everyone should know whats important for himself, i mean what do we need and what do we like?

I didn't say that the police didn't use excessive force; I'm pretty sure they did. I'm just saying that in many cases we need to look more at the situation in hand. Context is everything, and half-truths can be as bad as lies. I think the police acted inappropriately here.

That is so wrong...

It is a victim-mentality that I think is all too prevalent in so many protesting. The glorification of becoming a victim. The honorable martyr suffering stuff. Does that really work? Maybe it works with people who have a shred of a heart left and can be appealed to. It certainly wont work on those persons that dont have it, can not afford to show it or simply are just "legal persons" that dont have a heart to begin with. It also wont work with abusers, who are actually having plenty of experience on how to deal with victims and how to ignore anything related to that (like creating illusions of the responsability of the abuse to be searched by the victim, e.g. "she did dreass like a slut so I had to..." - or here "they did not want to move off the sidewalk, so we had to pepperspray them")

Protest is quite often self-defense or defense of others, dont you think. Or maybe not protesting but direct actions. If I chain myself to a tree to prevent a pipeline carrying toxic stuff actoss the wild land I live with, isnt that self-defense then? And if someone from the ALF goes out and liberates some mistreated animals in fur farms, that is in their eyes certainly similar to help someone who is being beaten, just that their compassion goes beyond humans. And in a peaceful protest - people actually usually defend their right to equality, liberty and freedom and if they are beaten or evicted by the police they come into the situation of possibly fasing a person with a stick who wants to beat them - can you seriously tell them that they should be just standing there and take the beating until they end up in hospital with brain damage?

No problem with that - we can always argue about what to do later with those who misbehaved. I am also not for punishment, but in the situation - when the assault or abuse happens, there are situations where I'd seriously question the effectiveness and appropriateness of radical nonviolence.

Indeed. I think this is a very good and fitting concept. Don't throw the first stone, but also dont let yourself be stoned to death...

This is very well said. Indeed I think protesting has only limited effect. Peaceful or not. However changing ourselfs does little more since unless everyone does so, it also is only limited. Now that is a little bit of a dilemma - if protesting does not help and some people who somehow got enlightened change themselves but that is not enough - what can be done then? How to save this beloved planet and how to free the people?

You misunderstood me. You still expect everyone to do as you wish. So I can`t change the world, the people, but i can do things which i think people can be happy about without becoming a victim or slave. I mean for example give a hug to the closest family, ask my colleauges how they are, say someone "you look great today", and surely have a look around to preserve nature, but just for myself. You know maybe those small actions won`t affect people, maybe they will, maybe it won`t change anything, but that doesn`t care. Its all about your feeling about it and the signal you send, and maybe you get it back. We always have the choice. And so it goes on, if we say i start seperate the garbage, buying only glass bottles and so on..
I think these are the small things which count and not the Politics BLABLA abou Kyoto or other **** programmes.

I agree that politics as it is done now wont really help. But I think to start hugging people more often will not bring the rescue that is needed. If we had some decades time left, I'd say go for it - start hugging and do little things, separate your trash and maybe it will go somewhere. But as it is, the world is dying and while I am all in for more hugs and separating trash and all those little things, I think it will not be enough unless really a lot of people do this. Some people have been doing such things for many years now but it always had only limited effect. So certainly we separated trash and bought reusable bottles decades ago, we went to organic food stores when those were just a few and picked up trash in the forest 30 years ago - we told people to love nature, to love each other and all the other hippie stuff. But right now I have to say I am a pretty much pissed off hippie in that I see that the ignorance of so many people stands in the way of a continued existence of this world as it is. We (tree huggers, hippies, ecologists,...) have tried for decades to be nice, to explain how good it could all be and how greed and selfishness is not helping and that people should be positive to each other - and I still think so, but I am more and more afraid of failure. See, every day 200 species of living things on this planet go extinct forever. There are man made dead zones in the oceans larger than whole countries. The permafrost begins to thaw, deserts spread, water is becoming scarce and the fish are vacuumed out of the oceans while animals in farms are mistreated. More and more of these things come in. Yes I do hug my friends and I continue to divide my trash in 8 differnt trashcans for recycling and turn on the hot water heater only twice a week and buy reusable bottles and organic food and energy saving light bulbs and all the load of it. But this is not enough, to just took at oneself is not enough I think - of course in the end everyone will have to change to save the planet, but I dont think this will happen by people mysteriously awakening. For some it will, but I think others have to be awoken and those who prefer to stay deeply asleep may have to be shaken or at least stopped in their sleepwalking madness....

RE nonviolent protesting: Here are some images from what happened last weekend in Germany. People chained themselves to railways, put their vehicles on the road, placed trees on the rails and tried to remove cobbles from underneath them in another act of civil disopbedience and putting their bodies in line of another transport of deadly nuclear waste to an unsafe storage compound. Of course the police was as always not exactly peaceful and started beating away, confiscated press equipment and peppersprayed journalists. This is what people should start to get - the violence against people in these actions is in most cases happening on the side of the police while the protesters rather resort to property destruction (like throwing paintbombs at police cars).

http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersac...ntentgross.jpg
Atom-Transport: Letzte Etappe für den Castor - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Politik
Atom-Transport: Letzte Etappe für den Castor - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Politik
Atom-Transport: Letzte Etappe für den Castor - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Politik

Wasn't Germany supposed to stop using nuclear power altogether in 2012 or something? Doesn't really create the aura of the kind of confidence if they don't even know how to properly store nuclear waste. Germans were supposed to be good at this practical stuff, but I guess the twisted hand of financial politics is there to demand sacrifices for such an act of disobedience, who knows.

Anyhow, don't you know that property costs money, but people are free? I mean if you beat someone to a bloody mess with a nightstick, you don't have to pay them money to go get some repairs as you would have to if you did the same for their car. Like there are so many of us, and none of us do as we are told as any good car would, and you wonder why the police get upset when you ruin their reliable cars. There is inherent value in a car, and we all agree on that one, but there is no value in human life.

What does that say about us?

Yeah - this culture values production and dead things over life :(

Yes, Germany is supposed to stop using nuclear power by 2022 (not 2012). But there is no place to put the waste. Nowhere in the world there is a place as of yet. In Germany it is especially nasty because there have been some political stunts involved in this place. It was chosen purely for political reasons. Geologists suggested a handful locations, this place was not on the list. It was added in handwriting under the list by some politician before it was given for decision. It used to be close to the border to eastern Germany - nice move because if something goes wrong the junk will go to the east to the "enemy". Then Germany was reunited and now it is dead in the middle of it - in an unstable salt mine similar to that which was used as a test site for nuclear storage and which is collapsing nowadays while they try to get the waste out again because it is unsafe. No one wants this again. So people still protest against putting the waste in such a place that was not thoroughly tested with a positive result

Keep the unrelated rants out of this thread or it will be considered as having run its course.

Not quite, because that still leaves one detail out of the picture, as you can't yet produce things without life.

This culture values things that are useful, and people who don't do as they are told, or in cases like these, oppose the things others(usually those who make the rules) want to do, then people become opposite to useful in their eyes.

Life has value as long as it is productive, because you can't quite yet make things without labour, but I think this small little inconvenience should be taken care of, as machines are much better at doing things. They don't tire out, do not require money, days off or anything else that blights the usual fragile organic worker.

Or as I like to call it, this culture likes to turn people into machines who perform menial repetitive tasks ad infinitum. And while all of this is utterly insane, it's the only way to keep the broken system going, so unfortunately we are kind of stuck with it until we develop something better.

Isn't that a bit too much?

Like I talked about this with Eltu, the purpose of a forum is to talk, and if we only talk things strictly related to the topic, then this place would be far less interesting. People would just post less, because they wouldn't want to upset the neat order of things, and to me, that doesn't make sense.

We all talk about the things we know about and think are appropriate, and I don't see anything inappropriate or unrelated, though maybe that's because I have completely lost it due to allowing myself to have feelings again. In such case, I apologize for my lack of objectivity, but for now, I think that's not the case.

IMO it'll be a very long time until human workers are completely replaced. Though we may have advanced enough to actually reach this pretty soon, the world economy certainly wouldn't allow for it in the near future.

That's because the economy and automation are in a direct collision course with one another.

You need to pay people money to get things done, but you also need people to have money to buy those things, and if you don't have people earning money by doing things, then you can't be selling stuff because nobody can afford it.

The way our economy works is just plain fail.

I often wonder when technological advances of that type will start to happen :hmm: or if they ever will.

Technology will never go there in our society that works only when people work and consume all the time, because that's the only way to keep this ball rolling. The only other alternative is to find another ball, but that's not something I have any say in.