...I'm really anxious watching frustrated folks drawn to the streets and placing themselves in front of the thugs just sent in to teach them a lesson about coming to the aid of their neighbors.
I don't like seeing folks picked of one by one like the protestors I saw today singled out and encircled in a classic mob action by ICE agents and beaten to the ground before hauling them off.
As I anguished watching them, not a bit of me desiring them to do that, I'm mindful of the dynamic that existed between Bayard Rustin's entreaties to direct action and MLK-style passive resistance, and not actually believing one approach would have succeeded without the other.
That's not to say that I advocate direct action against armed, armored government thugs, I don't.
But I do believe society (and the pols) pay more attention when the people engage in an actual uprising; both the civil rights era's and this one mostly organic and born out of genuine concern for their neighbors, communities, and their own liberty to come outside, as I saw last night in response to the explosions, smoke, and biological warfare being deployed in front of their own homes and being threatened further with their lives for complaining.
It's an inevitability in response to such tyrannical conduct, so much so that though it's hard to witness, it can feel cathartic to the desire most of us feel to reach out and touch these cretins who think they are the boss of us.
I saw a lot of young folks who are going to go through a load of changes as they fathom the degree of their individual power to effect the things they want. That's a lot of energy that can be channeled into real political power, but it should be understood that much of that energy is coming from folks responding viscerally instead of strategically, and that's just a consequence of who we are as humans, to the fate of all of us, including the fascists in our government.
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