James Wagner

I’ve found the phrase which describes my present political posture. “Accidental anarchist.” It’s an interesting development for a democrat.
In “The Big Chill,” a piece which appears only in the print edition of the current The Nation, Alisa Solomon examines the erosion of our right of dissent. In the article Gerald Horne, a professor at the University of North Carolina, tries to explain the demoralization of American youth in this environment where any opposition seems downright futile. He says we have been all been left accidental anarchists, with “no electoral vehicle through which to express dissent.” This is the consequence of the reconfiguration of our judiciary by decades of Reagan-Bush, the failure of the opposition party to rise to the occasion and [my addition] the disaster of a compliant mainstream press.
Solomon comes close to despair herself. While recalling the chants heard in the February and March demonstrations, “This is what democracy looks like,” she warns:

But that can’t be all that democracy looks like. It takes powerful civic institutions to provide checks and balances, meaningful enfranchisement and vigorous open debate to make democracy function.
. . . .
Historically, civil libeties have sprung back to full force when hot or cold wars have ended, thanks in large part to the perseverance, or the resuscitation, of the press, the courts and the opposition party. But in an open-ended “war on terrorism,” the day when danger passes may never come. Even if it does, the democratic muscle of the courts, the press and the opposition party – already failing so miserably to flex themselves – may be too atrophied to do the heavy lifting needed to restore our fundamental rights and freedoms.

So, is anarchy to be our last refuge now that the U.S. has discarded democracy?

It’s a war on colored folk.

A 57-year-old Harlem woman preparing to leave for her longtime city government job died of a heart attack yesterday morning after police officers broke down her door and threw a concussion grenade into her apartment [at 6 am], the police commissioner said. They were acting on what appeared to be bad information about guns and drugs in the apartment.

Commissioner Ray Kelly apologized to the woman’s family, and the NYTimes article says, “Neighbors and several elected officials questioned the department’s tactics.”
But this obscene tragedy is not about police tactics, and it’s not about strategy. It’s about the so-called “war” itself. It’s about an ill-conceived moral crusade which became a racist boondoggle. There is no war on drugs. There is only repression of the powerless.
Had Alberta Spruill the sense to be white and to live in a more prosperous neighborhood, she’d be alive today, regardless of whether her neighbors bought or sold drugs not manufactured by our major corporations. People on my own block operate in markets both legal and illegal, but the constabulary doesn’t throw grenades at them.

Some worry about the nation’s movement toward a police state, while overlooking the police city we already have.
Emmaia Gelman, like many of us, has had first hand experience with New York City police assaults on dissent, but she’s doing something about it.

Last week I went to jail. Just for a day – it was a little message from the New York Police Department: Dissenter, beware. I had been demonstrating at the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement (formerly known as the INS) alongside activists from immigrant and minority groups.
We were protesting the government’s new special registration requirement for Muslim immigrants, a big-brother mechanism not seen since the government decided that Japanese-Americans were “dangerous persons” in 1942. Under this new policy, some registrants who’ve checked into the bureau have been unable to check out – they’ve been caught up in what is called “administrative detention,” where they have no date for release or trial.
So last Monday, 42 of us sat down to block the doors through which so many have disappeared. Civil disobedience: a small, time-honored gesture of objection. We sat on the ground with arms linked. Police threw us onto our stomachs, planted boots in our backs and wrenched our limbs in directions they’re not supposed to go. Our wrists were cinched with plastic cuffs until our arms were blue.
At the precinct we gave fingerprints and identification to our arresting officers, and were marched out singly for intelligence-gathering interviews. Cops had written up summonses for about a third of us when the process suddenly ground to a halt. No more tickets were issued, so we spent the next 31 hours in jail, waiting to be arraigned on minor charges, such as disorderly conduct, which rarely send people to prison even if convicted. Could that be legal?
No. Last year the city paid me and 13 other New Yorkers $469,000 in damages for a similar violation of our rights.

Yet the city seems to accept these and other court damages, for which over $5 million is budgeted this year alone, as just the cost of doing the business of a police city-state.

These are the practices of a police force actively chilling dissent, deliberately raising the cost of protest from hours to days.
Activists had hoped that Mayor Michael Bloomberg would not perpetuate the expensive failed policies of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, especially if the city faces such an enormous budget crunch. Giuliani’s trademark dissent-squelching practices are under scrutiny in federal court – again. The NYPD is litigating another set of “punishment of dissent” lawsuits, this time facing off against me and nearly 400 other protesters illegally detained between 1999 and 2001. Once again we find ourselves in court to make the cops respect civil rights.
There’s no sign that the NYPD plans to pull back from the national trend of assaults on dissent. Worse, it seems to be gambling that the current lawsuit will yield a new legal precedent allowing the NYPD simply to preempt the First Amendment. The city already faces a raft of new lawsuits arising from anti-war demonstrations and protests against the targeting of Muslims, Arabs and immigrants. The NYPD is already charged with false arrest of protesters and bystanders, excessive detention, violence against demonstrators and curtailing protest rights. The Bush administration isn’t finished making war on selected enemies for political ends, or forking out billions in war contracts to its corporate friends. And the Republican Convention is just around the corner.
So there’s a lot of dissent yet to be repressed. And the price of protest keeps rising. How long before we just can’t afford to speak out?
If the city goes to trial and successfully spins protesters as a “threat to homeland security,” it can get 400 litigants off its back and at the same time muzzle the right to speak out. Unchastened by the millions of dollars paid so far to protesters abused on Giuliani’s watch (more than $1 million for the Matthew Shepard and Diallo protests alone), the Bloomberg administration seems willing to do the same. The city’s lawsuit payout budget has been increasing annually. For 2003, they’ve budgeted $5.2 million. Of course, not all of it is for paying off protesters, but certainly a more constitutional policy regarding the right to free speech would save the city money. Then maybe it could be funding libraries and schools instead of jails.

Reagan came from Hollywood (in fact, he never left it), Bush Senior picked a Hollywood face for a vice-president, Clinton had beds filled with Hollywood chums, but Junior Bush has converted the White House into a movie trailer production company.
See the front page article in the NYTimes today, “Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights,” and don’t miss the handy slideshow.

George W. Bush’s “Top Gun” landing on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln will be remembered as one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in American history. But it was only the latest example of how the Bush administration, going far beyond the foundations in stagecraft set by the Reagan White House, is using the powers of television and technology to promote a presidency like never before.

Or, for a serious look at the consequences of theatrical artifice in government, read Krugman’s column, “Paths Of Glory.”

The central dogma of American politics right now is that George W. Bush, whatever his other failings, has been an effective leader in the fight against terrorism. But the more you know about the state of the world, the less you believe that dogma. The Iraq war, in particular, did nothing to make America safer — in fact, it did the terrorists a favor.
. . . .
The administration’s antiterror campaign makes me think of the way television studios really look. The fancy set usually sits in the middle of a shabby room, full of cardboard and duct tape. Networks take great care with what viewers see on their TV screens; they spend as little as possible on anything off camera.

If anyone asks for proof of the administration’s cynicism and incompetence, look into the story of the looting of Iraqi nuclear waste dumps we didn’t bother to secure. Bloggy describes the facts and the links.
See Bloggy again for the story behind the story of “saving Private Lynch,” the most outrageous White House stunt to date.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument
for the attainment of the government’s ambitious and mercenary aims,
and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed,
and a slavish submission to those who hold power.
That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed.
Patriotism is slavery.
– Leo Tolstoi, Christianity and Patriotism (1894)

[thanks to David Budbill]