I don’t know if the timing is fitting or ironic that I begin this Peace Blog in the midst of the occupation of the Republican National Convention in my backyard of downtown Saint Paul. As I write these words helicopters are flying over head and I hear sirens nonstop. The streets are filling with National Guard troops and riot-clad police. The club and machine gun totting police outnumber the residents of my city.
I could fill this blog with reportage of the MANY incidents in which the police have arrested and brutalized innocent people. I even witnessed tear gas and flash bombs set off by police to move a befuddled and confused crowd of people who did nothing illegal. Others have been doing a great job documenting how Saint Paul has been turned into a brutal police state and I recommend looking at this reporting at http://www.minnesotaindependent.com/.
I instead focus this first blog on the image here – a peace pole sitting before rows of rusted fence that the RNC erected. To me nothing symbolizes the America that Bush/Cheney have created in their image than this – the lonely call that peace prevail on the earth surrounded by barricades of wire. The America our government wants is one of fences, an America that keeps people out, an America that deploys the show of force rather than the tools of diplomacy.
In the course of this week I have watched police fill my streets, harass anyone they deem a potential criminal (and they use an arithmetic of their own making), and use tear gas as their main method of crowd control. Sure, there were break away demonstrators who sought to create havoc. Some broke a Macy's window and others threatened even worse, thus stealing the message of peace that so many others expressed. But of the thousands of protesters who marched for peace, these splinter groups only represented a handful of what had been a generally well meaning, peace centered presence of people of good will.
One of the most chilling stories I heard was of a 17-year-old pacifist who because he set a backpack on the ground to look for a lighter for someone who asked for a light was wrestled to the ground by five officers, and according to his mother, were “repeatedly kicking, beating, dragging and hitting him.” The boy was left bloody and his back covered with the imprints of police boots. The full story can be found at Minnesota Independent.
The many images of long phalanxes of club wielding police and stories of them overreacting and hurting innocent people beg the question, if we do not want a police state (ostensibly the free wheeling police and the curtailment of our once protected rights are all for the purpose of “keeping us safe from terrorists”), then what kind of country is it that we yearn for and what would it look like? I see this peace blog as an ongoing meditation that will seek an answer to that question. And so I begin with a radical vision.
A.J. Muste in “Getting Rid of War” makes an argument for unilateral disarmament, saying that “the enemy is not the other nation, but war.” A unilaterally disarmed America is a bold image. It is an idea that says we will take shelter in the conviction that a national commitment to peace will protect us and not arms.
Muste anticipates what questions will arise with this idea, namely, What will stop any country from running over us? One answer he gives is that, “It is our contention that, whatever the provocation or the danger, there is no justification in heaven or on earth for our arms indiscriminately wiping out any other people, men, women, the aged and the babies. If we have no words harsh enough for those who would do such a thing to us, what are we if we do it to others?”
Muste proposes a United States which dares to “risk sanity” and establish a “true, racially integrated democracy here at home.” Such a country would be an example to others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “War” echoes a similar answer to the fate of a nation that chooses not to declare war or carry arms - a “nation of lovers” whose motivation is that of “flaming love”: “Whenever we see the doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may be assured it will not be one that invites injury; but one, on the contrary, which has a friend in the bottom of the heart of every man, even of the violent and the base; one against which no weapon can prosper; one which is looked upon as the asylum of the human race and has the tears and the blessings of mankind.”
What country do you want? To quote Emerson one more time, Shall it be war, or shall it be peace?
3 comments:
what about all the violent protesters???? i think you are only telling one half of the story. I went down and saw people were out of control. Regardless of political affiliation, the RNC is a piece of history, and we should be able to bring our children there to experience a moment in history, just as we would if the DNC was there. But the violence is out of control. peaceful demonstrators should not have Malatov cocktails and barricade exits. I hope your readers realize there is always two sides to every story.
http://reidbolig.blogspot.com/
I agree with "anonymous." this blog also has some geat pics and info about the all those peaceful protesters.
Yes, anonymous, there are often two (sometimes multiple) sides to every story. But unfortunately, too often, it is only one side that gets told in the corporate media. Thanks, Michael, for writing about what you saw -- a side that won't make it into the StarTribune or on the anemic TV "news."
Post a Comment