The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

The previous Gadfly column highlighted how well the various civilian and military agencies are cooperating in their law enforcement. They are connecting the dots both real and imaginary. The poor dissidents who protest against war, against investment bank bonuses, against Big Coal, Oil, and Gas, even against the suppression of protest are at great disadvantage when confronted with law enforcement officials armed with the latest non-lethal weapons. [Please see the Gadfly column “Law ’N Order”.]

America has a rich history of taking to the streets, the quays, the gates of the White House to protest the status quo. For some 250 years Americans have come out against the British tax on tea, the institution of slavery, the denial of women’s suffrage, various US wars (Spanish-American, Mexican, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan …), the Ponzi schemes of Wall Street, rapacious coal companies that remove the tops of mountains, and many other dastardly deeds that may have been legal in their time.  Those who would continue this tradition of criticizing all who deserve it and advocating in public for something better may be losing hope.

Not to worry. Dissidents are independent thinkers, creative individuals. They reason in unstructured ways and make connections that light up the brain in a full spectrum of surprise. For all you peace and justice people, the Gadfly Revelry & Research Gang offers the following ideas that they invented themselves or stole from others. Funny, how creative, progressive folks are happy to share their ideas with like minded people.

First, We The People can use our electronic genius to outwit the police/military. At rallies and demonstrations, we can keep tabs on flatfoot concentrations — they’re always in groups — and evade them. Activists can communicate with text messaging or old fashioned cell phones. Be sure to have digital cameras at the ready to record the use of police dogs, mounted police, sound cannons (LRADs), and instances of police brutality. The news networks love pictures, almost as they love violence. Keep track of it all on more than one computer and on flash drives. The law ’n order people have been known to seize computers — it’s good to have adequate backup.

The dissidents, rather than a strategy of avoiding the helmeted, shield wielding officers armed with less-than-lethal weapons, might try confronting them with flowers as weapons of merciless democracy (WMDs). Beating swords into ploughshares? In 2010, plant flowers in gun barrels.

The women of the USA may take a page from the journal of the women of Nigeria. The African femmes fatale first demonstrated against colonial rule in 1929. They disrobed out in front of the British Colonial Office, embarrassing the white officials. It was serious political burlesque. More recently, the Nigerian women used the same tactics in the Niger Delta and forced ChevronTexaco to dedicate some of their profits to schools, clinics and infrastructure. It is questionable whether such tactics would work in Washington DC where Members of Congress may view such a spectacle as business as usual.

Formal street theater with giant puppets can up the ante for larger than life issues such as whether health care is a right or a privilege. Smaller scale, the troupe “Billionaires for Wealth Care” dresses up in tuxedos and top hats to make fun of the capitalist system of privatized health care. They carry parodic signs such as “Let them eat Advil,” “Whatever happened to an apple a day?” and “Surgeon General’s warning: health care for all may cause severe loss of profits.”

The Ruckus Society trains in rock climbing and ropes & knots. Also in First Amendment rights. Then, they scale buildings and bridges to hang banners and signs to broadcast their messages. It is an exercise in freedom of the press, as American as apple pie.

What about organizing a Whistleblower Wing to protest: war, coal fired plants, gas drilling on public lands, uranium mining on Indian lands … We would all wear whistles and blow them in unison and cacophony to rivet the attention of the White House, the Congress, and other public servants re: any number of injustices. It is a variant of how the fishermen of Culebra drove the US Navy out of their Island and stopped the use of their beaches for bombing practice. They anchored their boats just offshore the Naval Base and blew conch shell horns 24 hours a day. The Navy finally gave up, but still have not cleaned up the shallow waters where some of the Navy shells still rest. A mask and snorkel is all you need to see them.

In California, Julia Butterfly Hill took to the top of a millennium old Redwood tree and lived there for more than two years to keep loggers from clear cutting the entire grove of ancient redwoods. The Pacific Lumber Company finally gave up and settled with her.

These are desperate times. The Congress, without declaring war, accedes as the White House invades foreign nations, practices torture, and maintains over 700 military bases in other countries around the world. Not schools, not clinics, nor apple pie kitchens — military bases. On the domestic side, the NSA (National Security Agency, once so secretive it was called No Such Agency) listens in on our phone calls and reads our e-mails while the FBI checks out library records, all without court oversight. These times call for innovative democracy to protest how the government spends our taxes.