I’m working on some health care issues to share with you, but today I want to point out a few things about the images that flooded the media over the weekend as seated kids were chemical sprayed by a policeman in Davis, CA.
First, police violence against non-violent demonstrators is not that uncommon in the USA. It’s been frequent enough in our history, and I saw the same police tactic in Seattle a dozen years ago when seated demonstrators were sprayed at very close range in the face. I saw one Seattle cop bend down and force open the eyelid of a young woman so he could spray teargas right into her eye.
Second, it’s worth noting police violence, which I think is almost always on some level a reflection of policy, happens in places that by most measures would fit the US definition of liberal: Oakland, Davis, Seattle, LA. Any temptation to frame the problem of police misconduct as emanating from the authoritarian tendencies of conservatives isn’t supported by what we see happening over time. Police viciousness against non-violent people addressing their government emanates from government policy – that’s who runs police departments, even on campuses.
Third, how police treated people in Davis is entirely without justification. But the huge storm of media attention may be connected to those victims of police cruelty being white and not poor. Police brutality occurs more routinely in poor communities in the US and in places like Tahrir Square. When I was election observing in Chile 20 years ago, I was gassed more in a couple of days in the center of that country’s capital than I was in all the US demonstrations I attended in the 60’s and 70’s.
Fourth, our candy-coated domestic media consumption leaves us clueless about the political significance of these images for the rest of the world. Many of us missed the heavy impact of Abu Graib and Guantanamo on other people’s willingness to accept our lofty rhetoric about democracy and human rights, much less undertake our concrete UN and International Court proposals.
Even though I have only the most minimal broadcast TV reception from “basic cable,” I’m able to see some odd channels in the high triple-digit numbered neighborhoods of my channel lineup. I’ve been watching how a channel called RT is covering the Davis events.
RT is a huge Russian TV network, with 22 satellites and millions of viewers around the world and in the US. They broadcast in Russian, Arabic, English and Spanish. You ought to see how Davis looks through their eyes. And this is not an “image” issue or a PR problem. It’s fundamental politics, played out worldwide.
What should we do? I think we once again need to attend to the standards maintained for people paid to enforce the law. When citizens endow a group of government employees with the ability to use violence forbidden to most people, control is always an urgent problem.
I also think we’re at a point – not for the first time – of examining what we’ll allow as speech and political involvement in our country. We faced this all during the Civil Rights movement, at Kent State, and from many individual groups ranging from Act Up to Earth First. One protection for peaceful demonstrators is their non-violence. Another is their knowledge that fellow citizens will not permit harm to befall those who express divergence from what the government and its agents prefer.
But most of all, we’re seeing that many levels of government in our country are unwilling to permit appropriate challenges to their authority. What makes the stark and very uncomfortable portrayal of our nation on Russian TV difficult to watch is not that those mean Rooskies are mis-stating or exaggerating the facts – but that they’re not.