Sunday, June 21, 2009

What Would Happen Here If We Were Demonstrating Like the Iranians?



The Seattle Police Department's response to WTO protesters blockading Seattle streets during the 1999 WTO demonstrations.


While I'm against police brutality, crackdowns on media and dissent, and alll sorts of other repression that's taking place in Iran, and the US is obviously a much freer society than Iran, I'd like to try a thought experiment.

What would happen if hundreds of thousands of people decided to occupy the financial and political capitals of the United States -- say, Wall Street, Times Square, and Washington, D.C. -- and then decided not to move?

As someone who's taken part in many demonstrations, I should point out that our permits are usually for a few hours and it costs a lot of money to get them. There is no way we'd be allowed to occupy a major population point for a whole day, let alone weeks.

People who unlawfully gather in this country generally do get arrested, and any level of force -- whether it be tear gas, rubber bullets, water hoses, or tasers -- are used to dispatch of them. If we ever had the level of civil unrest that was happening in Iran here, I'm sure the government would crack down just as hard.

A large part of this has nothing to do with the fact that this is Iran's government, but the fact that it's a government. Governments naturally try to protect themselves from civil disruption, and especially being told what to do via street demonstrations or civil disobedience. Across the world, they react this way. It says something about the nature of even (relatively) democratic governments like ours in relation to civil protest.

1 comments:

Bryant J. Knight said...

"Governments naturally try to protect themselves from civil disruption [...]. Across the world, they react this way. It says something about the nature of even (relatively) democratic governments like ours in relation to civil protest."

Exactly. They respond much the same way that slavemasters would respond to a slave rebellion. They exist to protect their own power, not to help people; that's just something they do on the side to maintain an air of legitimacy.