There can be no doubt that the American justice system's role in the investigation, prosecution, and punishment of crime is seriously flawed. This is obvious from the fact that we have more people incarcerated or under administrative restraint (probation or parole) than any other nation on Earth, as well as the nearly certain judicial murder of people like Troy Davis by the State of Georgia. These facts, combined with the lack of prosecutions for the damage done to America's economic system by members of Goldman-Sachs, AIG, Bear-Sterns, and other large Wall Street establishments, demonstrates this fact by the sheer preponderance of available evidence alone.
As I have written elsewhere (Crime and Punishment, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) the United States has suffered from a two tier system of justice, both in its civil and criminal courts, from its inception. "The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men," was an ideal hoped for by Chief Justice John Marshall (Marbury v. Madison, 1803), but never attained. The reality for our nation has always been closer to the quote of Thomas Jefferson from his Notes on the State of Virginia (Query 18; 1781), "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
The time is coming when the inequities in our system of political, economic, and social justice must be answered for, by those who have used them to their advantage against the majority of the American people for so many years.
"Ran into the Devil, babe,
He loaned me twenty bills;
I spent the night in Utah
in a cave up in the hills."
(CHORUS)
"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,
Grateful Dead, 1970
The Occupy Movement is the first whisper of the coming non-violent revolution against the social, economic, and political inequities and iniquities in our country against the bottom 99 percent of the population economically. As long as this revolution continues to be based on a strategy of non-violence and fairness, it will eventually succeed. This does not mean there will be no casualties: the head injury to former Marine Scott Olson in Oakland all too clearly demonstrates that simple fact.
However, we must consider the certainty that the Occupy Movement's tactics will need to evolve. I remember reading somewhere that the reason the military fiasco that was the basis for the movie Blackhawk Down occurred was the U.S. Army went to the well one too many times with identical plans to grab a Somali warlord. That particular time the Somali insurgents were ready for them, and some of America's best soldiers paid a terrible price.
Gandhi constantly changed his tactics in India, Martin Luther King, Jr., did the same in Jim Crow America. The Occupy Movement must change and evolve its tactics, especially as the oligarchs and their proxies change and evolve theirs. The one constant must be non-violence.
The oligarchs and their surrogates are changing their tactics. The application of "pepper spray" at near lethal levels at the University of California-Davis was, in my opinion, an attempt to find a universally applicable tactic that would make the Occupy Movement give up and go home, without the oligarchs resorting to (obvious) lethal force. The oligarchs know that if they use lethal force (Remember Kent State!), it will not only galvanize more Americans into participating with, but insure that public opinion will swing further in favor of, the Occupy Movement. Even the oligarchs must eventually recognize in their Grinch-like hearts the reality inherent in President Kennedy's March 13, 1962 declaration at the White House, which still holds true today: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
"Ran down to the levee,
but the Devil caught me there,
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
