Nonviolence is fine as long as it works
Malcolm X
"The fifth stage is open insurrection. ...a brief synopsis of the cycle of insurgency from an article written in August of 2014:
1. Pamphlets:
Prior to the digital age, pamphlets were the main method of spreading dissent around the world. The pamphlets examined and questioned the authority of the contemporary governments and control systems. In the modern world, pamphlets have been replaced by blogs, memes, social media, and to a smaller degree, adversarial journalists.
Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society
Isaac Asimov
2. Reactive Protests:
Once the seed of dissent is planted, people take to the streets to voice their opposition to the government. These protests occur after the control systems of the era attempt to diffuse an offending incident.
3. Preemptive Rioting:
Preemptive rioting follows a period of reactive protests that go unanswered by the government. The people begin taking to the streets and destroying private and public property as soon as an offending incident takes place, rather than waiting and hoping for the government to police itself.
Are there times when compromise isn’t appropriate?
Should you do what you need to whether you like it or not
sooner than later?
4. Military or Law Enforcement backlash and crackdowns:
These riots and small incidents of resistance trigger a government reaction. The control systems of the country tighten their grip on the people and further curtail civil liberties and infringe on people’s rights. The government crackdown fuels the resistance movement as more people tire of government intrusion.
Would the founding fathers have considered the right to bear arms
a protection for the citizenry against the government
or vice versa?
5. Widespread rebellion and insurrection:
At some point during the crackdown, an incident occurs that tosses a match into the powder keg of dissent. At this point, open rebellion occurs.
I don't care if I follow your rules, if you can cheat, so can I
I won't let you beat me unfairly, I'll beat you unfairly first
Ender Wiggin
Fictional Military Strategist
We are now in the Fourth Stage and the media that you falsely believe represents the views of the American people are calling for a harder crackdown.
...written before NYPD officers were ambushed while sitting in their car:
“Without serious reform in what’s left of the justice system, the future is not one of officers walking free after killing an unarmed person; it will be one of officers becoming the target of sporadic violence.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny
when the government fears the people, there is liberty
Thomas Jefferson
...being a cop in the United States is safer than being a trash collector. That will change, and officers will become targets of opportunity for those that previously sought reform through peaceful means.
“Those in departments that have excused the actions of their officers and made significant peaceful reform impossible, have now set the stage for their officers to be shot while sitting at traffic lights.
Only 61% of murders are solved in the United States. Imagine how hard it will be to solve an officer’s murder that is completely random and lacks a direct connection to the shooter. Without a clear motive, there is no place to even start investigating.”
All who surrender will be spared
whoever does not surrender but opposes with struggle and dissension
shall be annihilated
Genghis Khan
Certainly, departments all over the country will be issuing memos explaining the new security procedures to counter the threat of targeted killings. Some officers may have already received one.
Allow me to guess its contents. The memo suggests riding in pairs, only answering a call once back up has arrived, sitting at separate tables when you eat in a restaurant, and performing all actions as a team to provide greater security.
...These tactics will all fail. The attackers will simply upgrade from firearms to pipe bombs. An even worse scenario is that officers do succeed in making themselves too difficult to attack. The insurgents will stop targeting cops and begin targeting their families while the officers are at work. This is what has happened in every insurgency in history.
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency
the second is war
Ernest Hemingway
...the only option law enforcement has is the same option it offered to the American people, which prompted this cycle: comply or die.
Certain police departments may believe they are isolated from the violence because of their geographic location. They aren’t. Because of social media, events that historically would have only prompted violence within the immediate vicinity can prompt violence on the other side of the nation.
We are so close to an open insurrection in this country that it boggles the mind. If police proceed with a law enforcement crackdown, events could spiral out of control and open insurrection could happen tomorrow.
We can ignore reality
but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality
Ayn Rand
Some in the media are calling for the arrests of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, Cop Block, and other organizations. This is possibly the worst move law enforcement could make. This gives the cause martyrs. To continue the Irish comparison, after the Easter Rising the British government arrested, interned, and even executed some of the rebellion’s leaders. The names of those men are still recited in songs today, 100 years later. It fanned the flames of rebellion and as Éamon de Valera is said to have remarked while waiting for the British government to decide between executing or imprisoning him, “every one of us they shoot brings ten more to the cause.”
Have the educated underemployed instigated most rebellions?
Today, with social media, the effects of martyr-based propaganda are even stronger...
Idle hands are the devil's workshop
Unknown
Is this guy really saying to give in to violence? Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. There was an opportunity for a negotiated peace after Ferguson.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security
deserve neither liberty nor security
Benjamin Franklin
How should Americans respond
if the economic and political leadership of both major political parties
in the greatest nation in the history of the world
rigged the economy for themselves and their benefactors?
Those in political office do not care about police officers’ lives. The last time the United States came this close to an open insurrection we had a President that understood insurgency.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable
John F Kennedy
...The threat of open insurrection was during the Civil Rights movement. The reader may still be under the false narrative that the Civil Rights movement was a nonviolent movement. While Dr. Martin Luther King played an important role in the building the movement that would finally achieve victory, he was most important in the first stage of the cycle. In the end, it was not “I have a dream” that forced the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it was “I have a gun.” The reader can take a detailed timeline of the Civil Rights movement and compare it to the stages listed above.
Does nonviolent civil disobedience only work in a country with a free press?
Can a nonviolent movement
survive against an information censoring violent opponent?
Robert Kennedy said “The Negro Reverend Walker…he said that the Negroes, when dark comes tonight, they’re going to start going after the policemen – headhunting – trying to shoot to kill policemen. He says it’s completely out of hand….you could trigger off a good deal of violence around the country now, with Negroes saying they’ve been abused for all these years and they’re going to follow the ideas of the Black Muslims now…
The enjoyment of power is fatal to the subtleties of life Ruling classes degenerate by reason
of their lazy indulgence in obvious gratifications
Alfred North Whitehead
President Kennedy replied “First we have to have law and order, so the Negro’s not running all over the city… If the [local Birmingham desegregation] agreement blows up, the other remedy we have under that condition is to send legislation [The Civil Rights Act] up to congress this week as our response…As a means of providing relief we have to have legislation.”
What do you do if you’re placed in the middle of the desert with someone just like you
with one equidistant bottle of water, and the all powerful entity that put you there
says whomever drinks the bottle of water lives and who doesn’t dies
and if the water is split or poured out both die?
John and Robert avoided an open insurrection by recognizing the signs of insurgency and providing relief. There is no person in political office at the national level that has this foresight today.
Have the powerful created symbols for the powerless to destroy
to turn tyranny into nationalism?
Have the powerless created symbols for the powerful to destroy
to create dissent by turning apathy into perceived oppression?
The changes will have to be made at the local and state levels. The reader may be wondering why this historical tidbit was left out of their high school history book. It really isn’t in the government’s interest to tell citizens that the fastest way to achieve reform is to begin shooting government employees.
...funerals are inevitable without immediate and drastic reform.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization
Ralph Waldo Emerson
...While many may be cheering the idea of open insurrection, most do not understand the casualties and hardships associated with an insurgency...
http://theantimedia.org/police-start-getting-shot/
I don't have a clue of what weapons will be used in World War III
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones
Albert Einstein
Is the definition of civilized changing again?
A good hanging tends to focus the mind
Roy Bean
Justice of the Peace & Saloonkeeper
Is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
In times of economic volatility as some rich become poor
are some of the wealthy forced to fight to preserve the status quo
providing some underneath a opportunity to prosper?
Is it worth giving unlimited power to a few
to create perceived safety for many?
Is stability a legitimate reason to stifle justified dissent?
