wow The thread has gone a bit all over the place in some of the replies but it's all good. lol
Voting is just one example of apathy,I find that the younger generation has this sense of entitlement,it's me me me me.My buddies kid asked him to help him out in buying his 1st house.His dad said we'll talk,as soon as he said that,the kid goes out & buys a brand new speed boat?It just seems like nobody gives a shit any more.Look at those idiots that pepper sprayed & knifed that guy at the bus stop,Why? cus he asked them to pick up there garbage. Everything just seems to be getting really polarized.
I think it would help if the police didn't 'police' themselves. We seem to forget that not that long ago cops ruled with an iron fist, if you lipped them off you'd get the crap kicked outta you. There's just more cameras out there to catch them in the act now.
Yes, I think the cameras everywhere have radically changed things for the better.
I'm not sure what the anecdote about your friend's son has to do with this. No offense but clearly your friend has no one else to blame but himself if his son behaved that way, is clearly very spoiled and obviously shouldn't be given any assistance to buy a house. Come on now. "Society" isn't responsible for that, your friend is the kids father and the one supposed to have taught him better. No if's or but's about that. I'd even take it further and say it's his own failure more than it is his son's!
I don't quite understand how the other anecdote about kids at the bus stop is really relevant...?
One thing that is for sure it's that growing inequality, wider gap in wealth distribution leads to more anger and frustration by those who are left with less and less options and hope for improving their situation. It snowballs to those held in permanent poverty little chance to escape it because they're stuck with inferior quality education, health and other services. That guarantees more violence, anger and delinquency - you can't escape that when entire generations are limited to very few options and disappearing hope they can even succeed in escaping it.
....recall that Jefferson himself, watching the Constitution being created, and thinking of Shay's Rebellion, spoke of the need for revolutions every twenty years. And Rousseau, at the very moment representative government was beginning to take hold, pointed to the inability of anyone to truly represent anyone else's interests. And Robert Michels, the Swiss sociologist, 150 years after Rousseau, showed us how an "iron law of oligarchy" operates within any government or any party to separate top from bottom and to make power-holders insensitive to the needs of the mass. No matter how democratic elections are, they represent only fleeting and widely separated moments of popular participation. In that long span between elections, people are passive and captive.
Thus, we face a dilemma: wars and revolutions today cannot be limited and are therefore very perilous. Yet parliamentary reform is inadequate. We need some intermediate device, powerful but restrained and explosive but controlled, to pressure and even to shock the decision-makers into making the kinds of changes in institutions which fit our world. Walter Millis, in an essay written for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, has argued persuasively that the price we may have to pay for a world without war is a kind of intermittent guerrilla warfare, constantly bringing society into rough accord with popular demands. It turns out (and we have the experience of all bourgeois, socialist and national revolutions to support this) that no form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being, all those values which virtually the entire world has come to believe in.
Those of us reared in the tradition of liberal, gradualist reform, and cherishing tranquillity, may have to learn to sacrifice a little of these in order not to lose all of them. Such a course may not be easy, but it is not a bad substitute for the world as we have known it up to now, a world of simplistic and terrible solutions, where we oscillated constantly between two alternatives: the devastation of war or the injustice of peace.
- Non-Violent Direct Action by Howard Zinn
(from the book Howard Zinn on History)
Was this particular incident even a "peaceful protest" or interfering with a police officer in the performance of his duties ? A tent "city" had been set up on the Quad. It was ordered removed, it wasn't, the cops went in to remove it and arrested those involved. This bunch that got pepper sprayed were attempting to prevent the police from taking away people already in custody...............
Also, there are 32,000 students on this campus, doesn't seem like there are a significant percentage involved in this incident. I'd bet a lot of students were negatively affected by this demonstration. Should the minority have the unfettered right to do that, after all look at the crap in downtown Vancouver. Just sayin'.
Are you serious? If that's not a peaceful protest, what exactly would one look like in your opinion?
Well, let's look at it this way: During civil rights protests and other acts of civil disobedience, do you think, overall, that a "significant percentage" of people were involved? (My guess is no) Do you think "a lot" of people were "negatively affected" (which I assume means inconvenience? If so, my guess would be yes).
So... In your opinion, should what seems to have been the minority have had the "unfettered right" to mildly inconvenience others to obtain what they were protesting for? (also taking into consideration that the minority present for the protests gained rights not only for themselves, but of course also for the majority of individuals that were not present for the protests). So are you implying that individuals or groups rights to protest or voice dissent should only exist when it doesn't indirectly inconvenience others?
Nice show of solidarity. lol
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
– Frederick Douglass
Papa Chongo said:
So well said, this stopped being a protest weeks ago and became a dangerous violation of the law, which has resulted in injures and death. Our police forces need our support, they are tasked with some of the most difficult things you can imagine. Weed out the bad ones for sure, but when an officer makes a decision for the many, and has to go against the few leave him/her to do their job, it is never going to be an easy outcome!
If you are inciting a riot then you deserve whatever happens to you, you are a blight on the face of humanity!
wow sorry but that's pretty extreme. First, to be clear, the Hockey riots are completely irrelevant to this thread. We're not talking about drunk kids rioting about a stupid hockey game. Second, making an absolute statement such as your last sentence is either failing to consider situations where drastic actions may be the only way to protect fundamental rights or it's admitting that under no circumstances, regardless of the severity of injustice or oppression should any individual or group actively resist or/and fight back authority or government and should just passively accept what is being done to them.
I think what Hank was saying - and what I am definitely saying - is that we may not think the situation warrants it
now but as it deteriorates (which it
will) and these less drastic means of protest consistently fail to produce any change or improvement but only more poverty, inequality and abuse of power, for people who become more and more disenfranchised and hopeless, other means of protest will become
unavoidable. Meaning: it's great to be able to afford such a critical response
now but the problem isn't going away and eventually people with little left to lose aren't going to merely set up inconvenient tent cities. Standing there denouncing the tactics doesn't mean anything. If it was you, are you saying you would accept it without a peep all while you watch your kids go hungry? Because you respect the law and government that keeps you that way too much to object to it oppressing you? I doubt it. And if yes, sorry but you'd be a failure to your family and a blight on humanity then. Not if you fought back an unfair system that deliberately stuffed its pockets while leaving you to watch your kids starving without being able to do a thing about it.
Sorry but there
are things worth "rioting" or disobeying the law for and the government/authority/elite isn't ever going to give away any of its power voluntarily. It's
always going to be trying to gain more of it, to get away with taking it bit by bit, starting with the people least able to fight back. The longer it goes unchallenged, the more power it gains for itself as it takes it from those at the bottom of the ladder - knowing very few will care (as we see now). But as it keeps going up the ladder, always in search of more power - more people become affected. And so on.. Not being affected now may make you all feel safe as you disapprove of others trying to fight back but the tune would (will?) change when its your butt on the line.
Claiming that the movement results in death is absurd. The one death to occur is a result of a drug overdose and has nothing to do with protests. It could however be argued that this death and thousands of others can be blamed on the system which the protesters are opposing and which the privileged and the elite benefit from protecting and maintaining intact, unchallenged and unquestioned. That system is responsible for a hell of a lot more death, suffering and injustice. That you have a stake in it and as much to gain by its existence than to lose by its dismantlement explains your perspective and why you would be critical of any threat or suggestion of need for change.
The ideal citizen of a tyrannical state is the man or woman who bows in silent obedience in exchange for the status of a well-cared for herd animal. Thinking people become the tyrant's greatest enemies.
- Claire Wolfe
(from the book "101 things to do til the revolution")
I'm sorry to say but many comments on this thread, from mostly caucasian, probably middle aged, male and most certainly privileged. Quite possibly those most critical didn't start out privileged and are now, so mistakenly assume anyone wanting to change just needs to work (so anyone unable to change their situation can only blame themselves for not having worked hard enough). Unfortunately, that may have been true a few decades ago but it is no longer true. Some may be lucky but for the vast majority of people who happen to be born to parents at the bottom of the ladder, the cards are stacked against them from day 1. That creates a generation of growing hopelessness and frustration.
That's the dangerous result of a
widening wealth gap and growing inequality.
You're entitled to your own way of seeing it but as long as we're clear and honest of where in the system you stand to gain and where you stand to lose - and keep some transparency about motivations. Your belief that some are entitled to the privilege they enjoy, despite the possibility that it may come at the expense of others, are bound to make you defensive and critical when the effects are brought in the open and people feeling them are starting to fight back.
You can ridicule, discredit or criticize all day about the shortcomings of this movement but the problems aren't going anywhere and people will only get more determined, more fed up and larger in numbers. They'll also know they have less and less to lose and become more desperate....and as Hank noted, they'll be more determined as they get hungry and watch their kids go hungry.
I'm not all that surprised at some of the comments on this thread because I realized a while ago in the G20 threads how unsympathetic and unconcerned most people seem to be about the conflict and struggles of others - they're too comfortable safely enjoying their privileges. But I still think it's a real shame and disappointment and I do think some may get a shock one day.
That, my friends, is apathy in action.
Power itself is not derived through violence, though in governmental form it is usually violent in nature. Governmental power is often maintained through oppression and the tacit compliance of the majority of the governed. Any significant withdrawal of that compliance will restrict or dissolve governmental control. Apathy in the face of injustice is a form of violence. Struggle and conflict are often necessary to correct injustice.
(History of Mass Nonviolent Action)
