In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed ordered the police to arrest more than 50 protesters early Wednesday and remove their tents from a downtown park after deciding that the situation had become unsafe, despite originally issuing executive orders to let them camp there overnight.WHY CAN'T THESE CIVILLY DISOBEDIENT PROTESTERS BE MORE OBEDIENT?
And like many of his mayoral colleagues nationwide, Mr. Reed openly expressed frustration with the protesters’ methods.
“The attitude I have seen here is not consistent with any civil rights protests I have seen in Atlanta,” Mr. Reed said in an interview, “and certainly not consistent with the most respected forms of civil disobedience.”
-The Times
The situation has become unsafe. But for whom?
17 comments:
who gonna let the dogs out?
What's so civil about disobedience anyway?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9VhD4SccSE
...certainly not consistent with the most respected forms of civil disobedience...
Respected forms of civil disobedience are, of course, those that happened in the past or in another country.
..."another country" ...
Yes - Marlowe said it all ... "But that was in another country, and besides, the movement is dead" ...
It's important to understand Mayor Reed correctly. He means that the movement has not sought the Victim Industry seal of approval, nor colored its message in a manner consistent with the vetted priorities of Social Justice.
"The situation has become unsafe. But for whom? "
Why, for the good mayor's tenure, of course.
for the good mayor's tenure, of course.
This is what democracy looks like.
let's also not forget--let's not forget, Dude--that keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, for uh, domestic, you know, within the city--that isn't legal either.
Well played, Coldheart.
This morning, shortly after midnight, there were some rumors on Twitter that the NYPD was going to be using some kind of chemical weapons team against the protesters. I stupidly got out of bed and went down there, and it turned out to be nothing.
But! I did have an interesting conversation with a police officer who was standing a little off to the side.
"Excuse me, officer? I live and work down here. There have been helicopters outside my window pretty much 24 hours a day for the past month. Sometimes there are hundreds of cops out here. Now, every cop I've seen personally has been acting professionally. But isn't this a crazy thing to be doing, just in general?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well... Hundreds of cops to prevent hippies from talking to each other. No cops to arrest people on Wall Street."
"Huh? We arrested them on Wall Street a few weeks ago."
"Oh! No, I meant no cops to arrest the banking guys, the assholes who got hundreds of billions of dollars through fraud. A lot of these hippies wouldn't be here if you'd arrested those dudes."
The cop acknowledged this with a laugh. And then said, "Yeah, but can you imagine what it would be like if we weren't here?"
I scratched my head and tried to picture the park without dozens of cops, some in riot gear, surrounding it. "Um. I guess it would look a lot the same? Maybe a few hundred people in the cold, at night, under tarps, talking to each other, maybe smoking weed..."
"Oh, they're definitely smoking marijuana! All the time. We just aren't enforcing it in small quantities. And other drugs too. But think, if we weren't here they'd be spilling out of here all over town."
"Really? I mean, Zuccotti Park is maybe 30 yards by 50 yards, and there are barely enough people to fill a third of it. There's like five cops for every hippie here. It's crazy."
"I admit they've been peaceful. Very peaceful. But we're here to keep the peace."
There you have it. This here is a motherfuckin' Peace-Off. So far, the Giants are beating the Raiders.
It was the absence of negro spirituals that did it.
Oink
@James N.
I bet you he could quote Nicholson's courtroom monologue in A Few Good Men line for line if you asked him too.
@Justin
The cop was a she, actually. She came across as apolitical, and was pretty clearly going down a checklist of things to say to justify the police presence.
She did at least tacitly admit that the bankers had committed serious, if not indictable, crimes. And bit by bit, she conceded that the hippies were peaceful, powerless, and almost totally inoffensive.
But the bottom line was that the NYPD was enforcing shit because there's shit to be enforced.
I'm glad I don't have to do that job. I wish she didn't feel she had to either.
I got bills to pay
I got mouths to feed
Capt'n Obvious
France is bacon.
TIL, IOZ is on reddit.
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