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Originally Posted by chabib
most people don't. do you ever go to protests or get involved with public acts of dissent just at the edge of legality? i'd suspect not or you'd have more personal experience with government repression.
unrelated to that, last weekend, my girlfriend and i were leaving a movie theater and 2 cops had two children detained. one was around 10. the other was about 13. one was hispanic and the other black. these cops were aggressively and illegally questioning them to the point at which the kids were in tears. in the middle of a huge crowd of people, i stopped and screamed at the cops. "what the fuck do you think you assholes are doing!?! you can't question those kids without their parents present. and you kids. what the fuck? don't tell those goddamn cops anything. you don't have to say shit without yr parents or a lawyer--EVER. that badge doesn't mean shit. fucking cops. you should be ashamed. you know damn well better than that." the white cop with the shaved head (same one we saw tackling a small black woman who had been shoplifting but not resisting arrest about a month earlier) turned red--completely red--his whole head. the black female cop shrugged like a "vegan" caught hiding under the bed with a big mac.
after i made a scene, others expressed their disdain for the NYPD.
oh, then there's the time the secret service tried to have an art project i had mounted removed. that was interesting.
oh, what about the guy from the department of justice who tried to have me arrested for riding my bike? or the dozen undercover cops on unmarked motorscooters who, without dispersal orders, warning or revealing their badges forcefully and aggressively attacked a group of cyclists with their scooters by t-boning, tackling and colliding with he wheels of the bikes at around 25 mph?
how about the undercover cops who show up to meetings at indymedia and times-up!?
it's all state sponsored terror. it's all someone trying to use authority to instill fear in someone else.
random searches on the subways? random searches of vans and trucks on 7th avenue during the week? cops with assault rifles outside of hotels, museums or in train stations? you think that deters terrorists? no. terrorists are way more imaginative than the authorities. the only thing that command presence is intended to do is to act as a sort of public theater intended to instill fear in citizens.
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Well CHABIB, no gov't is perfect. Really. If you think the US Gov't & law enforcement are bad, you probably haven't lived in other countries very long.
As for the kids, do you know why they were questioning the kids? Have you ever been to France? I've seen first hand cops in France take kids by the neck(yes, as young as 10 years old) and smack them upside the face. Sure, they were pick-pocketers, but nonetheless...kids. You will find corrupt and abusive cops in all countries, not just the US.
Best thing to do: stay out of trouble and don't let yourself be vulnerable to getting in trouble.
Screaming at cops when you don't have a clue wtf's happening is just plain stupid and you're probably lucky they didn't harrass you. And then you'd wonder why they harrass you? Um, okay. How do you know the kids weren't doing something violent to someone? It's not like "13yr old kids could be rapists or anything", right? That was my first question: why were the cops questioning the kids?
As for art, well you're going to have to accept the fact that not everyone's going to like your art and if it's politically motivated or controversial by nature, then expect the repercussions of it and don't complain. That just goes with the territory, my friend.
I don't think the US Gov't is "terrorizing" me.
Maybe some of you are more easily brain-washed into being "terrorized"? I dunno. I can't answer for everyone here.
I see flaws in all Gov'ts, not just the US. But I guess when you're the most powerful country in the world, you'll always have the microscope on you, waiting for people to criticize you for whatever.
I'm just not that kind of person. I tend to judge EVERYTHING equally, all gov'ts, all police. Complaining about the US police & Gov't is just being discriminatory and unfair to those being "left out" of the complaint.
Also, the US is quite a completely different country to really judge fairly considering it's economic & geographic background. There isn't a country that has as much power in the economy with as many people, so comparing the US is always going to be an unfair advantage. Who/what do you compare the US to...Europe? Japan? China? You can't compare the US to another country, it's just much too hard and really not fair.
I don't know, but I'm sure that police brutality happens in every country & not just the US. As far as the Gov't, I think it might be a little unfair to compare our Gov't with others and how other gov'ts would approach the situation(especially 9/11). How Luxemburg approaches terrorism in their society would be probably different, certainly not as difficult.