This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute.
“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state, and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.”—Justice William O. Douglas, dissenting, Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104 (1972)
Forget everything you’ve ever been taught about free speech in America.
It’s all a lie.
There can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.
What is this language of force?
Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.
This is not the language of freedom.
This is not even the language of law and order.
This is the language of force.
Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo.
This police overkill isn’t just happening in troubled hot spots such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Md., where police brutality gave rise to civil unrest, which was met with a militarized show of force that caused the whole stew of discontent to bubble over into violence.
A decade earlier, the NYPD engaged in mass arrests of peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers and journalists who had gathered for the 2004 Republican National Convention. The protesters were subjected to blanket fingerprinting and detained for more than 24 hours at a “filthy, toxic pier that had been a bus depot.” That particular exercise in police intimidation tactics cost New York City taxpayers nearly $18 million for what would become the largest protest settlement in history.
Demonstrators, journalists and legal observers who had gathered in North Dakota to peacefully protest the Dakota Access Pipeline reported being pepper-sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip-searched by police.
In the college town of Charlottesville, Va., protesters who took to the streets to peacefully express their disapproval of a planned KKK rally were held at bay by implacable lines of gun-wielding riot police. Only after a motley crew of Klansmen had been safely escorted to and from the rally by black-garbed police did the assembled army of city, county and state police declare the public gathering unlawful and proceed to unleash canisters of tear gas on the few remaining protesters to force them to disperse.
More recently, this militarized exercise in intimidation—complete with an armored vehicle and an army of police drones—reared its ugly head in the small town of Dahlonega, Ga., where 600 state and local militarized police clad in full riot gear vastly outnumbered the 50 protesters and 150 counterprotesters who had gathered to voice their approval/disapproval of the Trump administration’s policies.
To be clear, this is the treatment being meted out to protesters across the political spectrum.
The police state does not discriminate.
As a USA Today article notes, “Federally arming police with weapons of war silences protesters across all justice movements… People demanding justice, demanding accountability or demanding basic human rights without resorting to violence, should not be greeted with machine guns and tanks. Peaceful protest is democracy in action. It is a forum for those who feel disempowered or disenfranchised. Protesters should not have to face intimidation by weapons of war.”
A militarized police response to protesters poses a danger to all those involved, protesters and police alike. In fact, militarization makes police more likely to turn to violence to solve problems.
As a study by researchers at Stanford University makes clear, “When law enforcement receives more military materials — weapons, vehicles, and tools — it becomes … more likely to jump into high-risk situations. Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.”
Even the color of a police officer’s uniform adds to the tension. As the Department of Justice reports, “Some research has suggested that the uniform color can influence the wearer—with black producing aggressive tendencies, tendencies that may produce unnecessary conflict between police and the very people they serve.”
You want to turn a peaceful protest into a riot?
Bring in the militarized police with their guns and black uniforms and warzone tactics and “comply or die” mindset. Ratchet up the tension across the board. Take what should be a healthy exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turn it into a lesson in authoritarianism.
Mind you, those who respond with violence are playing into the government’s hands perfectly.
The government wants a reason to crack down and lockdown and bring in its biggest guns.
They want us divided. They want us to turn on one another.
They want us powerless in the face of their artillery and armed forces.
They want us silent, servile and compliant.
They certainly do not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully.
And they definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.
You know how one mayor characterized the tear-gassing of protesters by riot police? He called it an “unfortunate event.”
Unfortunate, indeed.
You know what else is unfortunate?
It’s unfortunate that these overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation, and fear.
It’s unfortunate that “we the people” have become the proverbial nails to be hammered into submission by the government and its vast armies.
And it’s particularly unfortunate that government officials—especially police—seem to believe that anyone who wears a government uniform (soldier, police officer, prison guard) must be obeyed without question.
In other words, “we the people” are the servants in the government’s eyes rather than the masters.
The government’s rationale goes like this:
Do exactly what I say, and we’ll get along fine. Do not question me or talk back in any way. You do not have the right to object to anything I may say or ask you to do, or ask for clarification if my demands are unclear or contradictory. You must obey me under all circumstances without hesitation, no matter how arbitrary, unreasonable, discriminatory, or blatantly racist my commands may be. Anything other than immediate perfect servile compliance will be labeled as resisting arrest, and expose you to the possibility of a violent reaction from me. That reaction could cause you severe injury or even death. And I will suffer no consequences. It’s your choice: Comply, or die.
Indeed, as Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department advises:
If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me.
This is not the rhetoric of a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people.
This is not the attitude of someone who understands, let alone respects, free speech.
And this is certainly not what I would call “community policing,” which is supposed to emphasize the importance of the relationship between the police and the community they serve.
Indeed, this is martial law masquerading as law and order.
Any police officer who tells you that he needs tanks, SWAT teams and pepper spray to do his job shouldn’t be a police officer in a constitutional republic.
All that stuff in the First Amendment (about freedom of speech, religion, press, peaceful assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances) sounds great in theory. However, it amounts to little more than a hill of beans if you have to exercise those freedoms while facing down an army of police equipped with deadly weapons, surveillance devices, and a slew of laws that empower them to arrest and charge citizens with bogus “contempt of cop” charges (otherwise known as asserting your constitutional rights).
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are other, far better models to follow.
For instance, back in 2011, the St. Louis police opted to employ a passive response to Occupy St. Louis activists. First, police gave the protesters nearly 36 hours’ notice to clear the area, as opposed to the 20 to 60 minutes’ notice other cities gave. Then, as journalist Brad Hicks reports, when the police finally showed up:
They didn’t show up in riot gear and helmets, they showed up in shirt sleeves with their faces showing. They not only didn’t show up with SWAT gear, they showed up with no unusual weapons at all, and what weapons they had all securely holstered. They politely woke everybody up. They politely helped everybody who was willing to remove their property from the park to do so. They then asked, out of the 75 to 100 people down there, how many people were volunteering for being-arrested duty? Given 33 hours to think about it, and 10 hours to sweat it over, only 27 volunteered. As the police already knew, those people’s legal advisers had advised them not to even passively resist, so those 27 people lined up to be peacefully arrested, and were escorted away by a handful of cops. The rest were advised to please continue to protest, over there on the sidewalk … and what happened next was the most absolutely brilliant piece of crowd control policing I have heard of in my entire lifetime. All of the cops who weren’t busy transporting and processing the voluntary arrestees lined up, blocking the stairs down into the plaza. They stood shoulder to shoulder. They kept calm and silent. They positioned the weapons on their belts out of sight. They crossed their hands low in front of them, in exactly the least provocative posture known to man. And they peacefully, silently, respectfully occupied the plaza, using exactly the same non-violent resistance techniques that the protesters themselves had been trained in.
As Forbes concluded, “This is a more humane, less costly, and ultimately more productive way to handle a protest. This is great proof that police can do it the old fashioned way – using their brains and common sense instead of tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray – and have better results.”
It can be done.
Police will not voluntarily give up their gadgets and war toys and combat tactics, however. Their training and inclination towards authoritarianism has become too ingrained.
If we are to have any hope of dismantling the police state, change must start locally, community by community. Citizens will have to demand that police de-escalate and de-militarize. And if the police don’t listen, contact your city councils and put the pressure on them.
Remember, they are supposed to work for us. They might not like hearing it—they certainly won’t like being reminded of it—but we pay their salaries with our hard-earned tax dollars.
“We the people” have got to stop accepting the lame excuses trotted out by police as justifications for their inexcusable behavior.
Either “we the people” believe in free speech or we don’t.
Either we live in a constitutional republic or a police state.
We have rights.
As Justice William O. Douglas advised in his dissent in Colten v. Kentucky, “we need not stay docile and quiet” in the face of authority.
The Constitution does not require Americans to be servile or even civil to government officials.
Neither does the Constitution require obedience (although it does insist on nonviolence).
This emphasis on nonviolence goes both ways. Somehow, the government keeps overlooking this important element in the equation.
There is nothing safe or secure or free about exercising your rights with a rifle pointed at you.
The police officer who has been trained to shoot first and ask questions later, oftentimes based only on their highly subjective “feeling” of being threatened, is just as much of a danger—if not more—as any violence that might erupt from a protest rally.
Compliance is no guarantee of safety.
Then again, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if we just cower before government agents and meekly obey, we may find ourselves following in the footsteps of those nations that eventually fell to tyranny.
The alternative involves standing up and speaking truth to power. Jesus Christ walked that road. So did Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other freedom fighters whose actions changed the course of history.
Indeed, had Christ merely complied with the Roman police state, there would have been no crucifixion and no Christian religion. Had Gandhi meekly fallen in line with the British Empire’s dictates, the Indian people would never have won their independence.
Had Martin Luther King Jr. obeyed the laws of his day, there would have been no civil rights movement. And if the founding fathers had marched in lockstep with royal decrees, there would have been no American Revolution.
We must adopt a different mindset and follow a different path if we are to alter the outcome of these interactions with police.
The American dream was built on the idea that no one is above the law, that our rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away, and that our government and its appointed agents exist to serve us.
It may be that things are too far gone to save, but still, we must try.
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It is liberation theology, which compares the repression of chaos agents to the martyrdom of Jesus Christ.
“They crossed their hands low in front of them, in exactly the least provocative posture known to man. And they peacefully, silently, respectfully occupied the plaza, using exactly the same non-violent resistance techniques that the protesters themselves had been trained in.”
I don’t believe that sjw kamikazes are necessarily pacifistic, though.
I despise cops, and my governments.
I don’t protest in public as I see it as a waste of time
and demonstration to the world that you are an idiot.
I do my best to be sure the police are poorly paid
and have bad morale.
I do everything legally possible to not pay taxes.
Full disclosure; I do pay taxes on my taxable income.
The governments run by Democrat unionists is totally
out of control and should be obliterated.
I don’t see anything and I don’t say nothing to any
agent of the government(Which is easy given where I live).
We need more city people to get an attitude, that the government is a bigger threat than the Russians or Chinese.
you sound like you could be my twin brother
lol i could not have said it better myself
have a great evening
Rellik, good points you made but the two places cities mentioned in the article were riots perpetrated by the ‘minorities’ for no good reason.They went out and burned down people’s homes and businesses for no good reason. It’s ok to go out on a public sidewalk, holding a sign, and maybe shouting a few slogans as long as you’re behaving yourself. But when you start interfering with other peoples’ movements or damaging/destroying their homes or businesses, THAT IS ANOTHER STORY. THAT’S NOT A PROTEST; IT’S A BUNCH OF BLACK BS. I know if they ever came and tried that shit where the family and I live they’ll just be sent to meet their maker. And nobody preach to me about any black civil rights crap.
DR,
You make a good point. Basically, where I live I’m a minority,
and I’m not out burning down other peoples properties because
of some perceived “discrimination”, although there is some discrimination against “Haoles”, my boss of nearly 10 years here is Japanese. Chinese and Japanese pretty much stay in their groups family wise( they don’t generally marry outside the race) but generally Hawaii is VERY diverse. One thing that always stands out is American Blacks. We don’t have many here, we also don’t have many moslems. Perhaps that is why we have very little crime.
Get it? Stupid people, strange religion, are not here.
Peaceful life is. And we, despite our Hawaii laws have lots
of guns legally and “illegally”.
You guys could have both simply said;
The non-aggression principal must be abided.
Could have saved like a lot of page space.
I watched ghandi the other day. Let me know when all the people with so much supposed conviction are willing to walk forward one at a time, get bashed, and come back for more.
What we got here is failure to communicate. And failure to hold the government accountable, with something like say, the government accountability project.
Nothing stops you from forming a grand jury on your own. You don’t need governments permission to do so. Nothing stops juries from going outside of the judges questioning and instead demanding additional independent investigations of prosecuting parties.
Know your history, or be condemned to repeat it. And get your asrs back in the free speech zone if you know what’s good for you.
Your first mistake was asking the government for permission to be free. The constitution was not formed around a need to finally allow people to be free. Rather it was formed around the existing natural condition that people are already free. The constitution is the rules we give to government.
I’ve got the constitution and declaration right on the wall in my garage. They’re great birthday presents, awesome stocking stuffers, and are super cool. Don’t panic.
“What we got here is failure to communicate”
Communicating is a two way street.
You can’t communicate with those only interested in talking.
If there’s not an audience willing to listen,it’s basically the proverbial “talking to a brick wall”, and that’s where we are today,nobody wants to listen anymore.
Yo, I’m right here. I’m not invisible.
Well digitally I am, sort of. But I’m still here. Don’t give up hope.
Patterns change and people are paying more and more attention lately. How could they not? Some things are just too difficult to sweep away and when an ideas day has come, it is a force that can not be stopped.
Liberty 2020, and beyond.
Returning to invisible status; Now.
Rellik, in my new home area I haven’t even seen any ‘minorities’, not even when I go to town once-twice a week. To my knowledge it’s all white and no diversity. Everything is peaceful here and there’s most likely more guns than people here, lol. At least we can keep the peace here.
DR,
Good job!
I’m in Hawaii, you are in Georgia?????
I think I’ll take my natural disasters
and benefits over yours.
That Sherman march always
sticks in my mind.
Rellik’ I’ll still take GA over the dem-run shithole I just recently left. More of us here remember the Sherman march than you realize. What we have is what it is. We can still hold our own here and more. We’ll be just fine.
Before moving to Houston in 1980, I was watching evening news. A group of Iranians were protesting. When they burned the American flag, a group of rednecks jumped them and started kicking the crap out of them. The cops clubbed the Iranians and threw them in the paddy wagon. I knew I was going to like Houston.
Times have changed and now Houston sucks.
When you have ANTIFA in front of you the language of force is the only thing they understand. Most demonstrations are peaceful and require little force. But when you have idiots like ANTIFA,they exist to foment strife and confrontation with their narrow minded ideology. They all dress the same in black,backpacks,faces covered so they can’t be identified and turning to weapons. Talking sweet and giving them flowers won’t solve that problem. Otherwise give govt. as little as possible in cooperation and funds and trust them as far as you can throw them uphill.
Unfortunately heavy handed force likely justified on (A) is applied on a later date to (B). ANTIFA is not organic its funded for the very purpose of creating chaos. I believe “The Proud Boys” are likewise. I’m not claiming that the members are in cahoots but somewhere they’re organized and funded by the outside. The public faced with sufficient fear ask for the heavy hand to be applied to (A). At a later date it will be applied to (B) they themselves, some say if, I’ll bet when this economic deck of cards gets a sufficient breeze to collapse the system. In effect it’s dangerous to increase governments power into the omnipotent range.
It’s all a warm up, training the forces and simultaneously conditioning the body politic to accept that which wasn’t previously acceptable. The public will plead for its own enslavement for the perception of safety and security.
Im afraid almost half of society has been successfully propagandized. They are more than willing to give up their GOD-given freedoms (they don’t even know our freedoms and liberties come from GOD). They’ve been inculcated to believe safety can only be attained when freedoms and rights are surrendered to the autocrats. Now they want to give up their freedoms and rights for the New Green Deal, which is really a scheme to change our traditional culture, society, and economy to a socialistic one. Self-hating whites who have been successfully dumbed-down and propagandized with white guilt call for the extermination of their own kind. On top of all this, many of these useful idiots want Christianity eliminated from our society but endorse the practice of all other faiths.
I will not give up any of my liberties, I despise collectivism, I will maintain my faith, and I don’t bathe in the tears of white guilt.
They serve the same master!!! The Democrat party!!!
Mr. Whitehead is always spot on in his thinking and writing. A man of that intelligence would make an excellent President of the US. Of course that’ll never happen. Civil forfeiture fits right in to the tyranny described in this article. This reality police state overkill will only worsen as the overwhelming mass of citizens have been systematically silenced to stand up collectively in their favor.
Martial Law is the suspension of our Constitutional Rights.
I however, believe there are Two rights given to me by GOD that will Over-ride any man made laws.
I have the RIGHT to protect My family
I have the RIGHT to protect My property
Try to hurt my family or steal my property – I will do my best to kill you.
John W. Whitehead, put down the crack pipe. Your utopia of castrated unicorns and endless free government entitlement checks. BAHAHA
The enemy isn’t law enforcement, it is the 150 of the 200 million shit-holers living in American cities.
The government doesn’t want the people fighting each other. THE SOCIALISTS ON THE LEFT WANT THIS.
Whitehead, you wouldn’t live ten minutes without government or law enforcement, as your beloved SOCIALISTS would eat you alive, as you scream like a cuk mangina. “Help, HELP ME!!”
Bert,
Truth spoken!!! Many who post here are no different than those who they attack!!!