Give it time. I’ve seen at least two brand new accounts spouting nonsense.
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Why not both?
If you want to convince me that racism influences police decisions to use force, you’re wasting your ink because I already agree with you.
If you want to convince me that racism is the sole determining factor, and that things like weapons, tactics, and media coverage have no influence, you’re also wasting your ink because that is a cartoon view of the world.
As supporting evidence, I’ll remind you (and @RogerStrong)that some Ferguson protesters did have and use guns against the police, and police responded by backing down, not by going Kent State. In fact, more protesters were killed by the authorities in this Oregon standoff than in the entire Ferguson uprising.
Does that mean that police aren’t racist? Of course not. Obviously the authorities want to suppress Ferguson protesters way more than they want to suppress the Bundy Militia. It just means that other factors (like gun-having) can also play a role in making the authorities stand down.
Has tis been posted before?
Affidavit of Karen Armstrong
This produced the arrest warrants for Bundy et al. They left quite an electronic trail.
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Are you disappointed? You sound disappointed.
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I’ll try to be here to disappoint you if you need me.
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You have a naive and uninformed understanding of how we came to have the (scant) freedom and prosperity we have today. All important social movements in the history of the US - anti-slavery, labor, women’s rights, civil rights, indigenous liberation, etc - were only able to advance because when necessary they resorted to armed conflict with the powerful.
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass
I’d love to hear some more criticism of the Bundy Militia based on their actual demands (dumb) and political stances (insane), rather than this lazy fallback of just calling them terrorists and farting out platitudes about civility like it’s the highest virtue in society.
This will not be a constructive discussion. Why would I ever want to discuss anything with someone willing to physically coerce others if they can’t persuade them? Good luck, try to stay out of prison.
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That’s a mighty strong claim. While I recall some violence within some of these movements from all those social science courses I took in college, I don’t recall that violence was the key to making breakthroughs in their causes. Sometimes, armed conflicts hurt these movements. Do you have a good number of citations to support your assertion?
Anti-slavery is an exception because of the Civil War, but no other social movement has led to real war and that was fought by soldiers of two warring nations rather than social activists or striking laborers.
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I won’t recapitulate the whole debate in this thread (I’ve done it before, it takes a while 
) But if you’re interested you could start here:
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Ah, Ward Churchill fan. That explains some things. Was this book the one where he was saying that the people working in the WTC were asking for it on 9/11 since they were “little Eichmans,” or was that in one of his other sober, well thought out reflections on why political violence is totally rad?
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“A statement does not become more true just because the speaker was famous” – Wanderfound
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Context is important.
Douglass was speaking during a civil war, at a time when there was an active debate about whether his community should participate in that war. Douglass was an advocate of that participation (for good reason), and was exerting his considerable rhetorical prowess to the fullest in order to advocate for his position.
Although both effective and admirable, this rhetoric should not be mistaken for a reasoned discussion of the potential utility of non-violent approaches to bringing about social change.
- “The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both.” Douglass himself concedes that not all struggle is necessarily physical.
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I’m not going to argue with a book I haven’t read, but in my recollection, most of the violence that occurred during the movements you mentioned was committed against the activists.
Pinkertons and cops shot or beat strikers who sometimes shot back. Good ol’ boy Bull Connor and his cops used dogs and firehoses on activists. The only times I recall violence working in favor of activists was when either the brutality of their opponents made them gain favor with previously neutral parties or the government actually stepped in to protect the activists from the violence.
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Oh, tell us how it is with your wisdom.
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Gandhi got the British out of India, and Martin Luther King got the the Civil Rights act of 1964 passed without ever brandishing a gun (and in a relatively short time.) Compare that with the PLO who haven’t achieved much in over 40 years of violence, or the IRA who achieved more political change with the 1981 Hunger Strike than it did with guns and bombs. “Agitation” doesn’t have to mean violence. A true victory means getting sympathy from outsiders and changing public opinion of the issue.
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Someone on Twitter pointed out that if you can afford to send lube and dildos to the occupiers, you can afford to send help to clean up the refuge.
There isn’t a donation link (yet?) but here is a “how to get involved” page:
http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Malheur/what_we_do/get_involved.html
Grudging props to Ammon Bundy for telling the remaining occupiers to go home.
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I’m sure the Oregon taxpayers wouldn’t mind a little help in footing the $500k bill for damages.
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##on the use of force against premeditated armed insurrection Malheur
on the use of force against Michael Brown
Excuse me while I drink your milkshake.
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Yes.
Yes we would.
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