Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Totalitarianism in our midst

Jason Flanagan and Debra Kahn at the University of Maryland were arrested apparantly for “failing to obey” commands given by the police at the IMF/WorldBank protests in DC last week. Oddly, they claim they never got any such commands, and were simply arrested. They write about it in The Diamondback campus newspaper.

While they are a tiny bit whiney about food (24 hours is hardly time to starve, especially given the size of most Americans), I believe the overall behavior of the police was totalitarian in the least, and the comments by the police chief that they would like to arrest them before rather than after any crime was commited speaks of a scary notion of “freedom” in this country any more.

Freedom of speech does not exist at the convenience of the government. Freedom of speech may not be quarantined into an area that is far away from those targeted. So long as it is a public area, then speech may be given, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. The streets of Washington, DC are the most public in this country, and to argue that protestors—-because they oppose large and powerful trans-governmental organizations—-should be moved somewhere more convenient sets a frightening tone for the Republic.

There are those who would say because some protestors (perhaps .01% of the total) were behaving in truly illegal fashion, that it was acceptable to arrest the rest, and they would be severely mistaken. To hold a loose-knit group responsible for the actions of a single person is a further extension of the lack of responsibility people feel. Those who commit the crime are responsible, and should be arrested. Those who simply happen to be in the same place at the same time, but are not inciting others to commit crimes, are innocent of any involvement. To indict, or even imply, that they are involved, is to commit a logical fallicy that unfortunately is prevalent in our legal system in this day and age. If someone breaks the law, arrest them, but to arrest others with no real cause, or even worse, with some trumped up cause, such as “parading without a permit” (when this is clearly a Free Speech issue, not a “parade”) is offensive to democracy and shows the true feelings of those in power.

The government plays on the inconvenience of illegal arrest, knowing that most people will not fight it, but rather will pay whatever fine is imposed ($50 in this case) and go on with their lives. This allows the government to slowly build up fear in the people so that they will avoid the situation, and eventually the popular belief will be that what is being done must be legal because they keep doing it.