Why I Wasn’t At The Demonstrations
If DHS Gestapo come, I want it to be at least worth my while
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
10/6/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/nohabeas.htm
There were demonstrations today planned to protest against the Putsch junta
across the country. I hope they were well-attended and accomplished their aim of
expressing discontent with the junta for all the crimes it has committed and the
incompetence with which it has managed its affairs. The demonstrations also
targeted Democrats who have been war hawks and supported some of Putsch’s other
disastrous policies, which is a good thing. If you haven’t heard, don’t be
surprised. The ‘liberal media’ isn’t talking about it.
I was planning on attending the local one, scheduled to begin at 3pm today. It’s
not like I’ve never demonstrated before; I was at the peace rallies before and
after the start of the Iraq invasion, and even addressed the gatherings as a
speaker. Years before, I was in the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and even
some riots. In fact, the closest I ever came to a serious brush with the law
occurred during one of those riots, in which a bank was burned to the ground and
several police cars destroyed, with hundreds arrested. The cops nabbed me, but
let me go when I convinced them I was just a poor innocent bystander who came
out of a movie theater and was amazed to find a riot going on. It was even
half-true. I did, in fact, just leave a movie theater, and I really was
surprised to find a riot going on. Of course, what I didn’t mention to the cops
was that the movie was “The Strawberry Statement”, a powerful and disturbing
look at US policy in Vietnam, and, filled with righteous outrage, I had every
intention of joining the riot. Years later, I got into a conversation with a guy
who turned out to be one of the cops who let me go. He was retired, and we had a
lot of fun drawing maps on napkins and describing who did what to whom on that
noisy and chaotic night. Vietnam was ended, Nixon was gone, we were no longer
adversaries.
Nixon and John Mitchell and Spiro Agnew were all pretty awful, and we knew back
then about Cointelpro and all the other spying and stuff they did with
infiltrating anti-war groups and other radical groups like the Audubon Society
and Grannies for Nuclear Peace. A lot of people were very angry in those days,
and it was a scary time.
Now is worse. Putsch and his cohorts are far closer to being out and out
dictators than Nixon may have thought in his most drunken schemes, and the GOP
have done a good job of nullifying Congress and the Courts, the institutions
that kept Nixon in check and finally destroyed his vile administration. Now
Congress is a rubber stamp for dictators, and the courts are little better than
the show trial courts of Stalinist Russia.
Now we have a regime in Washington that is contemptuous of the law, contemptuous
of the rights of those living in America, and eager to find scapegoats in order
to mask its myriad failings. And with nothing to stop them except an election
that we can only hope isn’t too rigged to overcome the tide of public revulsion
against the GOP.
And now, of course, the administration is in full attack on habeas corpus and
due process. As it stands now, anyone who is not a citizen can be rounded up,
imprisoned without charges for an indefinite period, and should charges ever be
filed, the government can do so in secret, and while the accused is at least
allowed to know the nature of the charges filed against him, he doesn’t have the
benefits of discovery, the ability to know all the particulars of the
prosecution’s case and the ability to amass evidence that would throw that case
into doubt. This makes a not guilty plea essentially meaningless. And of course,
upon being found guilty by the military tribunal (and your friends and relatives
still won’t know what became of you) you can be shipped to one of hundreds of
detention facilities, and treated under the provisions of the Geneva convention
as interpreted by the President of the United States.
Which is why I’m not going to be at today’s demonstration. I’m a Canadian by
birth, raised in England and Canada. I came to the United States as a minor in
the mid sixties. That’s right – over 40 years ago. How time flies.
People ask me why I’ve never become an American citizen, and certainly I’ve
given it serious thought from time to time. I even began the process on two
occasions. I suppose that what it boils down to is that I don’t see citizenship
as anything particularly important. Certainly, it’s a part of who I am, a part
of my identity, which explains the resistance to changing it. But as far as
proving loyalty or patriotism through citizenship, I consider that idiotic. I
don’t believe rote prayer makes a person pious, I don’t believe flag-waving
makes a person a better member of the community, and I don’t believe a person’s
loyalties and beliefs are shaped by paperwork. I’m in America because I love
America, and for me, that is sufficient. One of the greatest freedoms in America
is the right to say “no.”
I said “no.”
Forty years, and in all that time I’ve never been charged with, let alone
convicted of, any crime. I average a moving violation about once every 15 years
or so, and had one accident – in 1968. I wasn’t ruled at fault, even. But I can
go to jail for life for being at a demonstration, a peaceful demonstration.
That’s what the new law means to me, and that’s why I skipped today’s
demonstrations.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not afraid of these bastards, and I’ll continue to write
my pieces and oppose them by all means. Facing a life of torture and abuse for
something not even as bad as walking out of a movie theatre into a riot strikes
me as a poor use of my time. As an arrestee at a demonstration, I can be
disappeared relatively easily. As a writer with a small but involved audience,
my vanishing won’t be as tactically easy to pull off. I’m well aware of the
irony that lies in the fact that I’m much more likely to be attacked for
engaging in an activity that is far less effective than one of my essays is, but
I don’t count on fascistic bureaucrats sharing that same sense of the absurd.
Generally speaking, they do not.
So I’ll keep on writing my essays, and I’ll keep on living my life as I see fit.
There are risks, of course, and it’s possible that things could get so bad that
I end up fleeing the country for the sake of my freedom. But until then, I’ll
stay and fight for a place that I love.
And let’s hope we can get America back.