Reply #48: Well, One_Life, you're pretty naive about the cops then. They don't

[Peace Patriot]

join civil protest groups to keep anybody safe. They join to make trouble, and to marshall brutal forces in the right locations, for maximum head-bashing, and to target leaders for the roughest treatment. Their purpose is to foil civil protest, not to protect it. I have never seen ANY peace or human rights protesters, in ANY situation, destroy private property or cause anyone injury. I have seen agents provocateur do it. They were never people anybody knew. In Seattle, it was young, masked "anarchists," and a few other provocateurs, very late in the day, after about eight hours of brutal police repression against ENTIRELY peaceful, seated protesters (blocking intersections to prevent WTO members from the attending the meeting). And even then, the real protesters tried to stop these provocateurs, and put their bodies between these young hoodlums and store windows. Also, there were NO injuries--zero, zilch--that were not inflicted by the police. And the police-inflicted injuries were terrible--including beating up a Seattle City Councilman!

The war profiteering corporate news monopolies featured the hoodlums' actions, late in the day, and completely failed to report that the Darth Vader-costumed police had been beating people up all day--massive tear gassing, pepper spray hosing (big hoses, aimed right at peoples' head), rubber bullets, the lot. COMPLETELY PEACEFUL people. The only way the cops could bust this extremely well-organized, peaceful, MASSIVE civil protest was going ape-shit all day, and then trying to attribute their brutality to very late-in-the-day actions of a few young troublemakers.

I never felt safer in my life than in that crowd of 50,000 people. Truly. It was the most peaceful, inspiring protest I've ever been in. The participants were WONDERFUL people--teachers, union members, small business people, many older people, reps from numerous human rights, environmental and religious groups. It was also the most slandered protest ever. Total lies by the corporate news. And, of course, they never covered the extensive public hearings in Seattle where the truth was laid out. (The police chief was forced to resign!)

In San Francisco, in one of the first anti-Vietnam war protests, in 1967, I remember that the agreement was that the march would use HALF of Market Street, and traffic could pass through the other half. About 30,000 people (big for that era). And about halfway through the march, a few people broke from the crowd, and began yelling, "Let's take over the whole street!" Wiser, more experienced protesters just smiled, and told the rest of us, "Agents provocateur."

It's common knowledge that these are police-paid agents, trying to create opportunities for repression. I understand your point about SOME groups--the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, which was actually murdering people in the South in the '60s, Nazi/white supremacist groups that initiate members by having them beat up the homeless or gays, anti-abortion groups that kill doctors and bomb women's clinics. There may be justification for infiltrating these groups. What peace or human rights group ever threatened anyone, did harm to anyone, or fostered hatred and violence? Peace and human rights groups are self-policing. This should be obvious to everyone by now, including the cops. In Seattle, for instance, you had every major NGO in the country involved (groups like Greenpeace) and several unions (for instance, the Steelworkers). Can anyone think that the experienced people in groups like these would advocate breaking windows, or tolerate anyone who advocated it? Everybody knew everybody. It was organized by non-profits and other groups with memberships. The only wildcards in situations like this are random people showing up at the march or protest in progress. And if they are troublemakers, they are EASILY weeded out by peaceful means--on what they say or do. In every big march or protest I have been in, there have been LOTS OF monitors for this very purpose. And I have never been in a protest march or event where any destructive behavior was tolerated. Friendliness, a cooperative spirit, calmness, and joyful, loving community, have always been the mode, even in civil disobedience situations.

So what is this NEED for the police to infiltrate and spy on peace and human rights activities? Spying on Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney would be more useful to humanity, and the maintenance of civil order. Has there ever been anything more uncivil in this country than Katrina? Has there ever been anything more uncivil and unlawful done by our government than Guantanamo Bay? Has there ever been more gratuitous, and unnecessary, and unjustified destruction of property and wholesale slaughter than the invasion of Iraq?

Who needs to be spied upon? Who needs to be infiltrated? Try to keep some perspective on these things. Peace and human rights groups do not tolerate violent action or violent talk. But who DOES tolerate it--and foster it?

Ordinary people have tremendous moral power when they gather together in large numbers, in a peaceful spirit, to petition their government, or protest incivility by corporate predators. The police, acting for, and under orders from, the people who are being petitioned or protested--people who have already violated civil order in some major way (by injustice or war)--actively seek to nullify that rightful citizen moral power by causing disruption, and inventing excuses to beat it down, and slander it. That is what police infiltration of peaceful groups is all about. And if the police forces in this country can't tell the difference between peaceful activity and dangerous, ill-intentioned activity, by now, there is something very wrong in these police organizations. And those of us who have been unjustly battered by them, and slandered by them, know very well that there is something very wrong, indeed.

I was a legal monitor in Seattle during the civil disobedience part of the protest, where about 10,000 people closed off all the intersections leading to the WTO meeing by sitting down in the intersections. And when the police lines formed, with a large contingent of blackclad Darth Vaders, and large pepper spray machines rolled up, prepared to assault a group of several hundred, entirely peaceful, seated people in an intersection, I went up to one of these helmeted (no badge) armored cops and asked him, politely, "What are you going to do to these people?" His answer: "We're not going to kill them." Had killing been discussed? It was on his mind, apparently. We're not going to kill them. What they did, instead, was to aim hoses of pepper spray at their heads. It is the most difficult thing I have ever had to watch. And the protesters just sat there and took it. I remember one young man standing up and yelling something at them--a rare breach of the civil disobedience pact. But an understandable one. He was beaten and carried off. The whole area was tear-gassed. Some of the protesters were poked or hit, and all were dragged off into police buses, where they were kept for hours with no medical aid, water or food. And they all had to be released without charge, of course, because they had done nothing. NOTHING!

No, I take that back. They had done something. They had done one of the greatest, most effective protests I have ever seen or heard of. The global corporate predator organization, the WTO, has never been the same. Several years later, at Cancun, the exploited third world countries, led by Brazil, revolted. Global corporate exploiters who are destroying the planet, and who prowl the globe looking for slave labor, and seeking to control and exploit all natural resources, including water, now have one less vehicle for magnifying their power. South America has rejected this model (call "neo-liberalism") out of hand. And the bad guys began looking for a better way to control the American people. (Corporate-controlled electronic voting.) (Yup, I think we have Seattle to thank for Diebold and ES&S.)

The police, unfortunately--because they, too, are working class people, and are exploited--are not on our side. They have become the enforcers of fascist rule. And it is not their intention to keep people safe, when it comes to large-scale citizen pressure on our corporate-controlled government. They have rather the opposite intention, to prevent us from influencing our government toward peace and justice, and to punish us for trying.