filkertom | SOME OF THESE PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING DUMB

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SOME OF THESE PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING DUMB

Responding to questions about massive arrests of peaceful protesters overnight, Boston mayor Thomas Menino said this:

Civil disobedience doesn’t work for Boston; it doesn’t work for anyone.

In Boston. He said this in Boston.

So much WUT I DON'T EVEN.

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*sigh* Oh, Mumbles...

I think he took the same American History class that Sarah Palin did.

While I doubt he thought it through this much, the (original) Tea Party wasn't Civil Disobedience.

If you're doing anything to avoid arrest, what you're doing is not in any way civil disobedience.

He may want to check out the civil rights marches in Dixieland about 50 years ago.

The mayor may well be right.
Peaceful civil disobedience may not work in Boston.
The town has a much longer and more effective history of rioting.
This history goes back to the colonial days, and is featured in the 'Boston Massacre'.
But these days most people try the nicer civil disobedience route first.
It has been too long since Boston had a good non-sports related riot.

A friend of mine said that when peaceful protest is met with violent action, the only logical response is to double down and keep going, because you're halfway to winning. Of course that's easy to say when I'm across the country and my body isn't on the line, but I like the sentiment.

What gets me is this: the first city to do a thorough, blanket, knock-heads crackdown on the Occupiers is America's second most liberal major city (after San Francisco).

Granted, the mayor's trying like hell to turn parkland into penthouses, and he gives blatantly illegal preferential treatment to his buddies, but STILL.

Either Boston's reputation is ill-deserved (and I admit this may be the case), or one hell of a lot of voters have dropped the ball continuing to elect Mayor-for-Life Mumbles.

"Civil disobedience doesn’t work for Boston; it doesn’t work for anyone."

...

If you convince the public that *civil* disobedience won't work, you better be ready for the ride that will come next.

The lawyers are going to have a field day with the "looting" of the camps. Even during mass arrests you don't get to do that with personal property of the arrestees.

And yeah, civil disobedience is a royal pain in the butt. But the only *legitimate* way of dealing with it is to follow the laws *scrupulously* when you arrest the protestors.

Instead, he flouts the laws just as badly and thus does *exactly* what civil disobedience aims for. Namely, making the public decide that the government really *is* out of line.

So many of The Powers That Be seem to be terrified of The People.

(BTW I'm still in Madison, WI, where one of our favorite chants last spring was "The people... united... will never be defeated!")

Edited 2011-10-11 23:58 (UTC)

So the Boston aristocracy has finally managed to forget its illustrious Revolutionary history, now that it suits them.
This comes 30 years too late for my mother, who was perpetually shamed by them for the fact that her family reached those shores in the early 1900's instead of the early 1600's.

Pardon me while I step aside and spit.

Wait...isn't Boston the town where Yankee's and the Irish immigrants got into a fight during a funeral procession? Are you sure you made the right choice there mr man?

Yup, your country really is up sh*t creek without a paddle. I dunno what you'd call your government now, but it isn't a democracy and it isn't American... not when those definitions include your Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

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