This kind of treatment of media while appalling is historic. It’s been around for ever especially among Black-owned media which I’ve worked for.

Not that I’m not upset at what’s going on, because I am b/c it’s more of a long pattern of the same but what I’m sensing here is outrage based somewhat on surprise and no one should really be that surprised. Not even MSM is immune if you witness the LAPD breaking the limbs of even FOX reporters during a MayDay event at MacArthur Park in 2007.

Really. Really. Ashamed.

(I’m also scared and pissed off, but not entirely certain what to do about it.)

Laurie in Mpls.

Except they didn’t just start. They’ve been doing this to community newspapers for years.

I know our government has been suppressing movements and journalism forever (Yes, they probably killed the journalists reporting on CIA/cocaine stuff, yes, they killed the Black Panthers, etc. etc. forever). Hell, I’m pretty sure someone was tapping my phone at SAFER (an anti-violence nonprofit, of all things) because my office was next to the National Lawyer’s Guild office. I take solace in the fact that our conversations about college sexual assault must have been monumentally boring for them.

I’m just saying I think it’s important to pay attention when things start getting bad for even mild and moderate dissidents, and for journalists of any kind (they arrested someone from the AP and NY Post, fer chrissakes). Those are signs of a society closing down. There really is a difference between a government that imprisons or kills people it considers a major threat and a government that sweeps up anyone who even looks at them funny. The difference being, there are ways to resist the killing and imprisonment of activists in a society where some dissent is tolerated. But when no dissent is tolerated, the only option you really have is to try to get out if you can, and get killed if you can’t.

I just think it’s really important not to minimize these abuses of power just because there is a history of abuses of power.

So I understand that William is pissing people off, but it would be great if we could get back on topic. Carry on.

Suppose that the 2-million march in London against the Iraq war (January 2003 – official estimates made it only 1 million strong) had been willing to take violent action. They could have stormed the Houses of Parliament and taken control. But you need an awful lot of people for any action like that to have any lasting effect. Too few, and the military option is going to be overwhelming. As it happens, I’m fairly sure that there aren’t anything like a million soldiers in the British Army, but they do have tanks and aircraft and suchlike things, so even with a million-strong popular revolt, it wouldn’t be a foregone conclusion, except that one can hope that the soldiers would baulk at the idea of such a wholesale massacre.

However, the idea of shooting someone for trying to arrest a journalist, isn’t going to work. Because they’ll just arrest everyone else, too. And then pass laws against peaceful assembly, because the “horror” of the incident will be sufficient political capital to make it happen (it might look like the law that restricts protest in Parliament Square in London, requiring that you gain permission seven days in advance). With a few carefully-worded caveats, I am sure they could manage a work-around to get it past any constitutional qualms with such a law, but the effect would be the same. And then you’ve still got the problem of the Establishment having helicopters, tanks, air-to-ground missiles, .50 cal machine guns etc. that are going to trump most of the weapons you’ve got, if you want to protest violently against the newly imposed restrictions.

On the other hand, violent protest in the end was what brought the apartheid regime to the table in South Africa (for example). The ANC reluctantly moved from a stance of non-violent protest to setting up a paramilitary wing that graduated from sabotage to guerilla warfare, and eventually to terrorism, before there was willingness to talk about accepting the human rights of the black South Africans. But I think if you want to talk about, and advocate, violent protest, you need to be aware of what exactly you’re talking about, what you want to achieve, and the likely costs to other people (in the movement, and innocent bystanders).