The Only Thing Left to Pandora, Was Hope

Listening to this 15 year old from London, I felt the tattered shreds of my own hope begin to mend.

Comments

[Lisa Simeone]

WOW.

BRAVO!!

He gives one hope, indeed.

Along the same lines, did you see that they've detained (house arrest) a 16-year-old boy in the Netherlands for being one of the people involved in the "hacktivism" by Anonymous against the enemies of Julian Assange? First reports are still sketchy; here's one from the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/10wiki.html?pagewanted=all

[Eric Wilde]

That arrest reminds me somewhat of the invasion of Afghanistan. If there is any belief that arresting a few, less 'sophisticated' attackers will have any significant effect then people are sorely misguided.

I'm not sure what to think about the Anonymous attacks yet. I do, however, vigorously support the work that WikiLeaks does.

[Lisa Simeone]

I'm all in favor of them. They're practicing civil disobedience. They're not killing anything, they're not destroying anything, they're merely inconveniencing people. And thereby sending a message. More power to them.

[minstrel hussain boy]

thoreau, in my very favorite of his writings, "civil disobedience," outlined the way to do it, and did it himself while resisting the draft during the civil war.

you find the law that is unjust, and therefore unacceptable, and publicly disobey it. this forces the powers that be to act in an unfair and unjust way and exposes them for being the bastards they are.

socrates, ghandi, dr. martin luther king, caesar chavez, all used that process to significant effect.

when the people of our nation saw people getting arrested, beaten, lynched and jailed for such "crimes" as trying to order lunch in a restaurant, registering to vote, using the bathroom, or sitting down on a bus the fate of jim crow was irrecovecably sealed.

[Lisa Simeone]

mhb,

Exactly.

[Lisa Simeone]

P.S. Which isn't to say that Jim Crow doesn't still exist. In fact, there's a new book out called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It's by Michelle Alexander.

[big bad wolf]

me, to parse, again. i wonder is active interference against non-governmental actors civil disobedience?

like eric, i am not certain how i feel about the cyberattacks. they are in many ways simply an inconvenience, a virtual rock through a store window. still, i wouldn't call a rock through a store window, however, justified in the particular circumstances, civil disobedience

[Lisa Simeone]

bbw,

Well, I'd say the govt is involved here because Lieberman himself got in touch with Amazon and "suggested" to them they should cut off access to Wikileaks. And when he did so, he explicitly warned other companies that they should back off, too. So in this chain, the U.S. govt is a link.

[big bad wolf]

lisa, even granting that chain, it is still not disobedience; it is active interference. again, that may be justified, but i think it does a disservice to those who sat in bus seats and cafeterias, who went to jail for declining to register for the draft, who took blows, not gave them, to say that cyberattacks are civil disobedience.

[Lisa Simeone]

Do you mean that they have to get arrested to prove they're engaging in civil disobedience? Okay, that kid in the Netherlands has been. More are probably on the way. I don't know how many of Anonymous are willing to be arrested because I don't know any of them. But maybe many of them are.

[big bad wolf]

no, i mean that non-aggressiveness is the hallmark of civil disobedience.

[Lisa Simeone]

Again, they're not damaging anything. Mastercard still works. Amazon still works. Visa still works. Paypal still works. No windows have been broken, real or metaphorical.

[minstrel hussain boy]

but, let us not ever forget that the impact of dr. king was greater because of the alternative presented by h. rap brown, stokely carmicheal, the panthers, and malcom X.

most of the time, you need both.

[Lisa Simeone]

mhb,

Nail on head again. Protest takes many forms. There's not just one way to do it. And all the forms, together, create change.

[big bad wolf]

broken windows, don't put the store out of business; they interrupt its business. throwing a rock through the window is active and it interrupts; the cyberattack is active and it interrupts. again, i think the activeness distinguishes it from civil disobedience and i think, given the immensely positive connotations that civil disobedience carries, that the term should be used carefully. we don't like it when they smush everything together and say it is for security or the children (well, we usually fall for that); i don't think we should smush things together and cloak acting against mastercard in the robes of ghandi or nonviolent civil rights protestors. if the cyberattacks are justifiable, they need to be justifiable on their terms, not on terms that don't apply.

mhb, true, but i have not suggested that we don't need different forms, just that we should not call one form by the other's name.

[Lisa Simeone]

bbw,

I admit I'm licked when trying to argue with a lawyer. I can't do it. I don't know how to do it. I can only describe how I see things. And I see black people sitting at a whites-only lunch counter as "interrupting its business," as you put it. They took up seats that were supposedly for white patrons only, thus preventing those white patrons from sitting down, for which they got arrested. They interrupted the business, but their interruption didn't last long because they got arrested. This all strikes me as analogous to what the 'hacktivists' are doing. I still don't see any rocks through windows.

[minstrel hussain boy]

then something like the watts or detroit riots were trantrums and property damage?

what about the fabled boston tea party? sam adams called it civil disobedience, john adams called it vandalism, john hancock was making money off both sides and kept his mouth and purse shut.

i agree that civil disobedience usually carries the label of non-violent protest. but, hanging up on labels can waste a hell of a lot of discussion time.

if one is actively, and agressively disobeying laws (or government muscle flexing like holy joe coercing amazon into doing his dirty work against wikileaks) then you are in a state of resistence to the state of affairs, often the state itself.

during the rodney king riots i hosted the families of some friends of mine from watts so that they could have some physical safety. their perspective on the situation was that the only difference between the night rodney king was so savagely beaten by the police and every other night that they have ever known was that in that case, somebody had a camera. to the thinking of the folks who lived in l.a. at the time, it was just another night of business as usual.

the whole thing was summed up perfectly by minister farrakhan at the "peace" rally at the AME church. the minister had insisted on being allowed to speak and a lot of people were worried that his language might inflame the situation further.

minister farrakhan took the pulpit and glared at the assembly for an uncomfortable length of time. then he said "i understand your anger, but not your surprise."

[Lisa Simeone]

Well, here's something that's thrown a whole new wrench into the works:

An already fraught relationship between India and Pakistan got a bit more taut after a lapse of journalistic responsibility led several leading Pakistani papers to publish fabricated WikiLeaks cables that more resembled anti-Indian propaganda than diplomatic correspondence.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/pakistan_papers_publish_faux_wikileaks_20101210/

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

I would argue that Watts and Detroit were paroxysms of incredibly self-destructive violence that gave a community a momentary catharsis and then crippled them for, well pretty much for fucking ever. In DC it took over thirty years to undue the damage done by the riots on U Street NW, and the damage done to H Street NE -- and these were the heart of black commerce in this city -- has taken over 42 years and is still not accomplished. Detroit is more or less finished. I'm less familiar with Watts, but I don't get the sense that it thrived for the people who once resided there.

We romanticize rioting of that kind at the peril of others.

[minstrel hussain boy]

i'm not meaning to romanticize it at all, and i agree that most of the change occured elsewhere.

when they saw watts and detroit blow up in their faces steps were taken elsewhere to help forstall the eruption of rage that was crossing the nation.

watts has never really recovered either, of course, it was pretty fucked before it blew. a lot of the black commerce moved to compton and the shaw.

the watts towers (which are impressive, and beautiful) were built with rubble from those riots. there's still a lot of problems there. watts is still very poor, and that's the biggest problem. the police are still viewed as more of an occupying entity then a force for good in the community.

there are some longterm residents who do OK. my friend madame zenobia could make a lot more money off her incredible BBQ if she would have a location that wasn't in sight of the towers, but, watts is her home and she won't leave. neither will her kids. (i would patronize her place if it was on the corner of flaming & hell the food's that good)

i'm not saying they were a good, or romantic thing, i'm saying they were part of the process in a time of change. they might have also been critical to that process.

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

I think you raise a fair question -- would change have occurred but for the shock and fear that accompanied the riots and the rise of more militant strains of civil rights activism.

My gut reaction is this -- that in the end the riots had apernicious impact on the black community, especially economically. They helped destroy the small entrepeneurial businesses in the black community and fostered the white flight of the Sixties and Seventies, which had an extremely negative effect on America's cities -- resulting in all kinds of bad policies from the neglect of mass transit to the precipitous decline of urban school systems to the growth of suburban sprawl. Additionally, the riots and lawless behavior associated with organizations like the Black Panthers, helped give white backlashers a sense of justification in their actions -- the promotion of fear and hatred that ensued continues to haunt us to this day.

Having said that, I suspect that I would have been sorely tempted to pick up a gun.

[big bad wolf]

lisa, if you don't argue with a lawyer, you make him sad. all jokes aside, i don't see an equivalence between sit-ins and hacktavists. the former came to protest a law that denied them basic human rights and access to equal status under the law. they did so by disobeying the law, but submitting to the enforcement of it to make the point that the law when enforced revealed its inhumanity. the latter come to throw wrenches into the lives of people who neither make nor enforce the law. they come to interrupt the business of the people they cyberattack and to cause the businesses loss and they expect to hit and run and escape. this is very much like throwing a rock through the window. it bares little resemblance, imo, to sit-ins. for that reasons, i would not call it civil disobedience.

i wouldn't call it a tantrum either. it lies somewhere in the large space in between. that is why it is important, if one is certain it is a good thing, to articulate a justification for it that will persuade people who, correctly imo, will not see it as fitting in the civil disobedience paradigm. it requires something more than a righteous invocation. i don't want to hang up on labels, but i do think it is important if we are to make a persuasive rhetorical and perhaps moral case that we distinguish means and justify particular ones.

or so i think.

[minstrel hussain boy]

the original misson of the panthers was self-defense in the black community. i agree that they lost their way bigtime. but in oakland, and portero hill in san francisco where they began they were a natural outgrowth from the conditions that existed there.

the initial reaction of the police force to young black men who were simply standing on their rights as americans (which was a radical concept in the sixties still) is one of the things that helped to push them over the edge from self-defense to agressive revolution. they were quickly infiltrated by the FBI and other police agencies, agents-provocateurs were used lavishly, informants were paid handsomely (often for making shit up).

the same harsh and brutal tactics were used against AIM, which was modeled on the beginnings of the panthers.

both were squashed quickly and thoroughly. leonard peltier is going to die, slowly and painfully in prison from a combination of systematic abuse and bog simple neglect of serious medical issues (many of them caused by his being in prison, like the untreated tetanus).

on the rosebud and pineridge rezzes they were not only trying to protest the treatment by the government and society, they were protesting the tribal government that was as corrupt and vile as any bananna republic dictators we have ever installed or propped up. the prize in the badlands was coal to strip mine and oil shales to grab.

[big bad wolf]

the repeal of gall-stegald and the passage of the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act were the two most frustrating policy moves of the clinton administration to me. but clinton's refusal to pardon peltier, or at least commute his sentence, as he left office may have been the single most disappointing thing. that he left peltier to rot, as if two decades had not been far too long drove me nuts. that he pardoned march rich and some mugs that his brother-in-law put up added to the anger. but apparently one can never annoy the fbi.

anyone who hasn't seen it should check out the movie "incident at oglala," which i think is avabilalbe through netflix. peter mathiessen's book "in the spirit of crazy horse" covers the story at length and is well-worth checking out.

still not sure that hacktivists are political as opposed to just nuisance causers.

[big bad wolf]

how funny the way feelings come out. imenat to type glass-stegald, but apparently my visceral feelings made it to my fingertips