1-Fascism
2-Moving
3-Capitalism
Been a few days, I know. But I’ve been moving. I’m living out of the bed of my truck until I can move into my new place. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
All I want is a place to be stationary. A garden, a little house made of old shipping containers, a soft chair to read in. That’s all I ask.
I am frustrated and frightened. But most of all I am disheartened.
I protested in Denver for the last two days along with thousands of other people. Free speech was met with $50 million (of your tax dollars) on security for the Democratic National Convention, half of the money going to the latest equipment and the other half going to police pay. SWAT teams snaked through the streets day and night, with helicopters droning constantly overhead. I kept thinking to myself, “Is this what it felt like to walk the streets of Santiago or Buenos Aires in the 70s, Guatemala City in the 80s? How do you stand up to this?”
DNC security was expecting upwards of 50,000 protesters, but only about 5,000 were there the days that I was there. Others were likely scared off by the media hype of the expected police crackdown; who wants to be taken to “Gitmo on the Platte?”
But some of us did show up to express our dissatisfaction with Barack Obama’s stances on war, healthcare, and trade. Obama, as one of chants put it, amounts to not much more than “another face on a brutal empire.” Rhetorical change are not enough: only specific, radical changes (withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, an about face in American-Israeli relations, a repeal of NAFTA, a crackdown on corporate influence in Washington etc., none of which are supported by Obama) can bring about lasting peace and justice.
A few friends and I participated in two anti-war marches on Sunday. The first march, organized by Recreate68 had a permit, and so, while there was a heavy police presence along the route, there were few complications. During the another permitted march/dance party, “Funk the War,” a few hundred of us broke off form the authorized route and began to snake through downtown Denver. Teams of police officers in riot gear followed alongside the march but, surprisingly, did not try to stop it. There were a couple of face offs toward the end of the march, but there was no violence on either side and, as far as I could tell, the police only arrested one person.
If only things would have continued that way. There was an anti-capitalist march planned for Monday evening, and I was excited to participate. But, about an hour before the march was to begin, several hundred officers began surrounding the park where protesters were gathering, seemingly determined not to let the protest happen. After about an hour of waiting and murmuring, the crowd finally surged into the street and began marching. But we hadn’t gotten more than a block when police in full riot gear and gas masks sealed off the street and forced us back with their oversized batons. We ran back in the other direction, but the police had blocked off the other side of the block as well; we were trapped. Without any warning or opportunity to leave without resisting, the police charged into the crowd and divided us into three or four smaller groups. A couple of small groups sat in the street and locked arms. The rest of us crowded onto the sidewalk. Penned in we shouted, “Tell me what a police state looks like…This is what a police state looks like.”
We waited for about an hour on the sidewalk, recoiling from time to time from pepper spray or pepper bullets shot from air guns. Some of us tried talking to the officers to find out what would happen to us, but without much response. We hadn’t destroyed property nor commited any acts of violence; we were only guilty of obstructing traffic. Finally, those of us on the sidewalk were allowed to leave, but the others, about 91 in all, were arrested.
The Rocky Mountain News reported that “Barbara Spagnuolo, wife of Re-create 68 co-founder Glenn Spagnuolo, said her husband and fellow co-founder Mark Cohen negotiated the release of some 300 protesters detained for nearly an hour on 15th Street, but that between 35 and 40 protesters were being arrested and taken for processing at specially created courts for the Democratic National Convention. ‘They negotiated the release of everyone that was on the sidewalk’ at the time police closed in on the running group affiliated with anarchist group Unconventional Denver, Spagnuolo said, ‘but the people in the street, they are still there.’” Strange language suggesting the police saw us as hostages.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1417423198/bctid1753232390
Video footage from USA Today
Why had the police reacted so differently on the second day? We had obstructed traffic the day before but were still allowed to demonstrate. I think the reason can be found in the answer to the questions we shouted at the police line: “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”
The day before we had been protesting a symptom, now we were protesting the root problem: capitalism itself. The people can decry injustices and inequalities, and state and corporate officials will chime in and voice their support. But that support dries up moment the people point out the systemic nature of injustice and inequality.
“Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” At least 25 million dollars were funneled into the burgeoning Homeland Security industry (Denver city refuses to disclose the names of the companies and contractors) to provide Denver area police with brand new riot gear, vehicles, and “non-lethal” weapons. Another $25 million went to pay and other security costs.
50 million dollars? Doesn’t that seem a little excessive for a one week convention and only about 5,000 protesters? This seems like a clear case of the what Naomi Klein describes as the “Shock Doctrine:” the strategic creation of states of chaos in order to create opportunity for the “security” and “resconstruction” industries. Think of the billions in no-bid, cost-plus contracts payed to Halliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel, etc. in Iraq and (yes, the same companies) in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. So really, it doesn’t matter if the Denver police were actually expecting 50,000 protesters or not; the hype and hysteria justified a huge transfer of tax-payer funds into the hands of (heretofore undisclosed) security equipment providers.
“Who do you serve?” “Who do you protect?” Police had “intelligence” (which could actually be found on thousands of publicly distributed fliers) that several protesters were planning to go from the march to disrupt some of the Democratic Party fundraisers sponsored by major corporations, among them telecoms like AT&T (principal sponsor of the DNC and recently granted immunity for illegal spying by the Obama backed FISA bill) and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. Protesters can lose their voices shouting vague pleas for “Peace” or “No more war;” I suspect their presence is even welcomed by the people that stand to profit from security contracts. But they will be silenced at soon as they confront the economic model that underlies the circulation of profit and power between government and big business. This week, the Denver Police serve and protect the Democrats who serve and protect the corporations that fund their convention and their campaigns.
Finally, was it a coincidence the police sealed us in just below the headquarters of The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News? Might they have been trying to make an example out of us with their clubs and pepper spray? Could their intended message be, “Go ahead and ask for peace, just don’t try to actually bring it about; don’t touch capital?”
Sorry if this post is too journalistic. There are so many things I want to feel out and think through, but I’ll do that over the next few days.
I’m going to Denver this weekend to protest at the Democratic National Convention. I’m going to protest War. I’m going to protest the Iraq war. I’m going to protest capitalism in general and US trade policy in particular. I’m going to protest the corporatism of the Democratic party. I’m going to protest that party’s candidate, “Panderer in Chief” Barack Obama. I wish I could go to St. Paul too.
If anyone wants to come with a few friends and me, you’re invited! We’re leaving Saturday morning. Leave a comment if you’re interested and I’ll email you back.
For another perspective on why you might want to protest at the DNC, read this sincere expression by my friend Spencer:
WHY PROTEST AT THE DNC?
By Spencer Kingman
I am not going to lecture anyone on how or if they should use their vote in November. I do believe that our democracy is pretty narrow, and that whoever becomes president will pursue policies like every other president in my lifetime. Waging war and funnelling wealth from the poor to the rich. At the same time, the fight for peace and justice must take place on a social terrain that in some ways is shaped by leaders, and there are real differences between Obama, Mccain, Ron Paul, Nader, Mckinney, etc. No matter how this whole thing plays out, the pressures that big strong social movements (for peace, people’s power, egalitarianism, civil rights, even revolution) can bring to bear on our system are desparately needed. It’s right to protest and rebel against this nightmare of war and inequality the world is in. It is good to band together with our friends and neighbors to do this. The ruling class is relying on elections to let some pressure out of the system, cool things off, but if we don’t let that happen then they will have one less trick up their sleeve.
Of course, just like the spectacle of an election can be a poor substitute for democracy, the spectacle of a protest can be a poor substitute for a social movement. It doesn’t have to be that way. In my experience, these things can be transformative, individually and for society. So consider going. Perhaps we can get the Democrats to be a true party of the people, or at least live up to their rhetoric. Perhaps we can create something new. If we build movements that can’t be ignored, political candidates and “real change” will follow.
OK, drove back to Utah from California today. No time to write.
But check out this review by Slavoj Zizek on Simon Critchley’s book (the one that he talks about in the lecture I posted the day before yesterday). Read all of the letters that are linked at the bottom too, and Zizek’s reply to the letters.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html
I’ve been visiting my family in California for the last few days. Today I went with my mom and sisters Leila and Lauren to their aerobic-latin-dance class at the local elementary school auditorium. I must have burned a thousand calories from bum shaking alone! Needless to say, I’m a little tired. The rhythm got me Gloria.
For today, watch Ashley Sander’s amazing speech from the Nader for President rally in Salt Lake a couple of weeks ago.
Today in Church in California there was much ranting and rallying about Proposition 8 (which would overturn the California Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage in the name of personal privacy). The Sunday school teacher, with an American flag hanging behind her, encouraged us to encourage others to vote in favor of Prop 8, saying that she tells all of her friends, “Nothing else really matters this November. We just have to protect marriage.”
What frightens me most about this “moral” approach to politics, aside from causing the sadness and alienation of a great many gay LDS, is that it will allow American corporate-governmental structures to continue to perpetrate injustices and perpetuate inequalities at home and abroad precisely because the people that could have made a difference will continue to sit back and feel spiritually satisfied and morally vindicated for having used their one vote for the “one issue” that supposedly matters. Not only is this approach thoughtless, I would say it is nihilistic; the subordination of all issues to one special issue is really a de facto disavowal of the former.
I listened to a letcutre by two of my favorite thinkers today, Simon Critchely and Alain Badiou that gave me some hope. In it they lay the philosophical groundwork for a very different type of political thinking, one that could lead to a much truer form of democracy than the one we’ve been willing to go along with till now. Please listen at the link below and tell me what you think:
http://www.slought.org/content/11385/
Said I.F. Stone
Which is something I’ve understood for quite some time, but, after watching “War Made Easy,” I can barely breath. “War Made Easy” is a documentary in which media critic Normon Solomon explains how the U.S. government and the mainstream media have used bombs made of rhetoric to manipulate public opinion and garner support for war, from Vietnam to Iraq.
Here is the trailer:
I’m pretty tired and not thinking very clearly, but I still want to write a few things down, especially since I didn’t post yesterday.
The idea that my own government would lie to me in order to justify its illegitamate actions is not new to me. Nor is the idea that the media would shirk their responsibility to be independent and objective whenever the least bit of political pressure is applied. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t really watched much TV over the last few years and hadn’t realized, until watching the footage on the film, how completely hollow and insidiously biased most “jounalism” has become.
A weakness of the film, as a good review on Amazon points out (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A37LWWZBFW2VRH/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview), is that it fails to fully address the reasons that the media is so willing to abandon actual analysis and instead act as an unreflexive mouthpiece for the official American (imperial) agenda. First and foremost among those reasons is the drive for profit. The movie gestures at this when it points out that, once a war begins, it becomes the product that the news media sells. But the structures of profit are even more overarching: when major media outlets are owned by the same corporations that profit from the military industrial complex, it makes perfect sense that they would abandon investigation and integrity and instead align themselves as closely as possible with the will of the latter. In such a system, dissent–or objectivity–is unprofitable.
But I’ll talk more about those forces when I continue the money post from the day before yesterday.
What I want to talk about, and something I think the movie does a good job reminding us of, are the dangers of turning our responsibility to think over to media institutions that long ago stopped thinking. The rhetorical tactics that government and media use on the public, which are more like biological warfare than traditional warfare, infect us and works on us from within. Pundits infect us with the germs of rhetoric by continually telling us that the intentions of US leaders are pure, framing conflicts as struggles between good and evil, using the thoroughly demonizing (yet empty) terms of “The War on Terror,” invoking pride through the competitive logic of winning/losing. These germs burrow into our brains and restructure our mental framework until we have all but lost our ability to think but on the terms prescribed to us. This process is all the more effective when delivered by way of TV. Our ability to think critically and analytically atrophies through the completetly passive experience of watching television, and we are left with no intellectual immunity to gaurd us against full takeover by official rhetoric.
But even if we are able to retain some of our critical capabilities, our thoughts and discussions are still too often determined by the terms passed down to us through structures of state and corporate power. Even if, for example, we recognize the wrongness of the Iraq war, we may be unwilling to support an immediate withdrawal of American troops out of fear of complete “destabilization.” We fail to remember that the terms stability/instability are part of the rhetoric of the invaders, who would have us believe they are the only force capable of stabilizing Iraq, even though they (essentially the millitary-industrial complex) intentionally destabilized it in the first place, and even though they continue to depend on indefinite instability (if not in Iraq, at least somewhere) for their continued profits. Why must we keep thinking in terms of the binary logic that tells us that the only two possibilities are ‘withdraw and destabilize’ or ’stay and stabilize.’ There are, in fact, countless other possibilities including immediate pullout of US troops (which a majority of Iraqis favor) and their replacement by an international peacekeeping mission.
One of the key dangers, then, of the type of rhetoric purveyed by most politicians and pundits is that it simplifies vastly complex situations and complicates fairly straightforward solutions.
Another, related, but even more insidious problem is that this type of rhetoric deprives of us our ability to think and act in accordance with our conscience, with what we feel to be true. But, it’s getting late and I’m getting too tired to write. I’ll talk more about this subject over the next few days. For now I’ll let you watch these two videos (both exerpted from “War Made Easy”) of people speaking according to their consciences, outside the sphere of official rhetoric: one of Senator Wayne Morse and one of Martin Luther King Jr.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 2 Tim 6:10
Why is money the root of all evil? The love of money motivates error, mistake, sin. It causes us to “…err from the faith…,” faith in God, in the atonement. Money divides our allegiances; we must either turn toward it or God (“ye cannot serve God and Mammon”). The problem with money is not so much that we often use it to buy luxurious things (though, of course, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few is contingent upon the poverty and suffering of the many), but the fact that it inspires bad faith. Unlike faith in God, money does not require us to endure uncertainty, ask ourselves hard questions, depend on others, or exercise hope in things beyond our control.
Paul does not say that the love of things is the root of all evil, but the love of money; the love of money is of a different sort than the love of things. Money is the means of acquiring things, not a material object in and of itself. We all realize, at least subconsciously, that money is not, at root, paper bills or metal coins. Most of us make essentially non-material monetary transactions every day with credit card purchases, online shopping, phone banking, online trading, etc. What matters is not the nature of the monetary symbol—it could be bills, coins, feathers, or, the dominate form of money today, electronic data. What matters is that the symbol work, that it have the power to get us the goods or services that we want. And as long as all parties involved in a transaction recognize the legitimacy and power of the symbol, then it will work, it will get us what we want. And it always works because it is always respected.
Money is essentially “effective demand” (I’m taking my lead here from Philip Goodchild, a really interesting English thinker who writes about religion and capitalism). Everyone has demands, but only individuals with money are guaranteed the power to realize them. This is why it is more fundamental than material wealth itself and why we are so ready to give it our allegiance. What we want more than what we want is the means of getting what we want. Money enables us not only to acquire particular goods and services, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it frees us from the demands of others: our social responsibilities, our dependence on the precarious fluctuations of a natural world. We don’t have to depend on our neighbors when we are sick or naked if we can just buy health care or more clothes; we don’t have to pray for rain when, even during a drought, we can go buy food at the supermarket. Money allows us to subordinate the demands of all other people and places to our own demands; it allows us to cut ourselves off from the real world of social and material exchanges, from the ecology of the physical world, which, I think, is God’s domain. In this sense, money is quite literally artificial, and the financial security that it assures sets us off from the world. On the other hand non-monetary material economics keeps us tied to the earth, to communities, other people, and God; we are required to remain interdependent. One reason money draws us away from God is that it allows us to declare our independence from him. Faith in money almost invariably yields material results, whereas faith in God is more ethereal and its results more difficult to substantiate. When faced with an economic problem most people will opt for the more assured results of money.
To be continued…
P.S. Come to Discussion Night at my house tonight (340 E 200 N) at 8:30.
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The money post will be up in a bit. I thought that in the meantime I would share some recordings I made this morning of some birds up near Rock Canyon in Provo.
I decided to try to make a homemade parabolic microphone and record birdsongs for a final biology project. The mic is made up of a Radio Shack lapel mic, a paint roller handle, and a Halloween candy bowl adorned with black cats and flying witches, connected to my roommate Zack’s digital voice recorder. Picture me lurking through the neighborhoods of the Provo bench pointing this thing at trees in people’s front yards!
It’s not exactly a precision instrument, but I did manage to make some decent recordings of some common but beautiful birds. Here are a couple of examples (the pictures are from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website):
Cooper’s Hawk:
Black-capped Chickadee:
black-capped-chicadee1-12aug08
black-capped-chicadee6-12aug08
And check out this image of one of the “fee-bee” sounds from the second chickadee recording. I isolated it myself on a program I downloaded from the Cornell website!
So, you can keep your parakeets and parrots; I’m in love with common birds! I started to tune into their calls and songs while I was on the Utah Study Abroad a couple of months ago. House Finches, Chickadees, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Robyns, Red-tailed Hawks. Before then, for the most part, I never even noticed the natural sounds that reverberated around me constantly, or, if I did, I heard them as a jumble of senseless noises. But, as I weened my ears off of the man-made sounds I was addicted to, I began to decipher intricate exchanges of meaning between bird and bird, cicada and cicada, cricket and cricket, as well as the complex and ever changing rhythyms that coalesce when all the sounds of a place are heard together.
Start paying attention. You’ll realize that natural sounds are not nonsense.
