Riot Police on Mcgill campus

[Linkman226]

Using your body as a physical obstruction while refusing to move is the most basic form of violence there is.

Right, like these guys refusing to move from lunch counters. I mean, really, damn those violent civil rights protesters acting as physical obstructions and refusing to move:

 

[emzie]

Read it and weep:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence

Physically using your body to deny access to an area others wish to use is violence, however mild.
Guess what the military's use of force continuum is?

1.) Presense
2.) Verbal Commands
3.) Soft Controls
4.) Hard Controls
5.) Intermediate Weapons
6.) Deadly Force.

The OWSs are definetly using one and two, and I bet a good portion are using three. All those resisting arrest are guilty using four. We have evidence of many using five.

We only have evidence of one using six as a means of protest (pushing the cop in front of the a bus). Though a few have used six for tangental reasons while at the OWS sites.

So verbal commands are more violent than presence?

 

[Patroklos]

You generally have to be present to give verbal commands, and yes that is far more forceful to use than mere presence as it is specifically directed at a person of group while pre sense is just general in nature.

All the examples above just prove my point, the fact that mild violence is met with more powerful violence is irrelevant to your objection. Whether either instance of violence was justified or u justified or legal or illegal is also irrelevant.

 

[Camikaze]

Does this mean that all of what we may have considered to be peaceful protest is in fact violent? Is it possible to protest peacefully? How would one go about engaging in a peaceful protest, if merely being present is a form of violence? Is a city street a venue of high violence because a lot of people are present on it? Is the word 'violent' being devalued if we broaden it that far?

 

[Patroklos]

Protests were you do not compel others to do what they don't want via physical presence or submit to those who have legal authority to have you moved are not violent, you are not compelling anyone to do something by force.

Non compelling presence is a but more tricky. A sentry is of course preventing a subset of people from going where they want to go by physically occupying a space of course, but it is also talking about being menacing. Looking alert, professional, obviously armed and capable of doing harm in and of itself compels action in others by a means the US military considers force.

 

[Camikaze]

That should count a perfectly legal and organised protest march down a city street as violent, though, because someone else might want to be driving on that road at the time and your physical presence prevents them from doing so. You are compelling others to do what they don't want (i.e. find an alternate route than the closed streets) through your protest and your presence, but it's clearly not violent.

 

[Patroklos]

A perfectly legal protest march down a public street that made normal use impossible would generally have a permit and police protection, or be allowed by a law on the books that enjoys the enforcement of the police.

The police can be as violent as they want subject to the state they work for., the state monopoly on violence and all.

 

[CaptainF]

Today I learned that people in the military consider civilians to be violent enemies.

 

[aelf]

I didn't know Rosa Parks was violent when she refused to vacate her seat.

 

[CaptainF]

I didn't know Rosa Parks was violent when she refused to vacate her seat.

Rodney King totally deserved that gangbeating. As did those girls who got pepper sprayed.

State monopoly on violence, after all.

 

[GenMarshall]

Read it and weep:

Physically using your body to deny access to an area others wish to use is violence, however mild.

The OWSs are definetly using one and two, and I bet a good portion are using three. All those resisting arrest are guilty using four. We have evidence of many using five.

That does not prove anything. You're just trying to add justification for excessive police force when clearly there is no violence within the OWS movement . Hitting you upside the head with a pipe wrench is, blandly obvious, violence. But standing around and refusing to move is violence?! It makes no sense!!

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Response from one of my friends.

Spoiler :

Get Over It!: Myths and Stupidities from November 10th
By arminiussaw
I’ve said before that I intended to keep this blog “a non-political kind of affair;” but, alas, politics descend on all of us who think, and the hysteria on McGill campus over the past week have been too much to handle. And so this post. I hope that this doesn’t turn into a trend – my primary focus for this blog is to help me develop my fiction writing – but this is by far the most convenient space to speak publicly on my opinion, even if nobody reads it.

Today the “We Are McGill” protest took place outside the main administration building, gathering a massive crowd amphitheatre-style around a microphone to address the problems caused by the riots in that same courtyard just four days before. I arrived when the event was pretty much in full swing; I lasted some ten minutes before I had to go and wash my mouth of the taste. It was the most self-centred, self-satisfied and deluded propaganda event I’ve ever been witness to. I’d watched the planning of the event only a few days before and had been impressed that people were at least trying (if, in my opinion, in some futility) to plan a frank exchange of views in the aftermath of an almost unprecedented outbreak of violence; this gathering showed none of the hallmarks of that. The crowd knew what it wanted, and the speakers knew what to give it: attacks against the administration were invariably accompanied by cries of “Shame! Shame!” and people recounting their stories of facing off against the riot police were greeting with wild cheers and a standing ovation. A friend of mine complained afterwards that he’d lost his voice shouting. I still regret not taking the opportunity to go up and volunteer to go to the mic (at the very least I know I would have been accepted), at the very least to confirm that a dissenting voice such as mine would be shouted down immediately. I’d feared before that trouble would break out when naysayers publicly clashing with the protesters escalated: such a fear was unfounded, as no naysayer would dare go up to the mic.

What sickens me is the degree to which the speakers were committed to victimize themselves. The possibility that the students could have been guilty of any sort of wrongdoing seemed totally beyond anyone’s comprehension. This CBC interview with Principal Heather Monroe-Blum illustrates the phenomenon quite well. There were two or three main myths that kept coming up consistently in the leadup to and during the rally that I’d like to debunk before they drive me up the wall.

Myth #1: “HMB called the police on us because she hates free speech!”

It’s hard to construe this as anything but a wilful denial of reality in favour of some sort of bizarro alternate universe where the World Government is controlled by the Principal of McGill, cackling in her underground office fortress as she summons battalions of policemen to crush the pesky but heroic student opposition. The open letter from the students that occupied the building reflects this to some extent, although it’s obscured by some unexpectedly strong anarchist sentiments towards the end. To a certain degree, this stems from the legal injunctions brought against the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) general strike since its beginning on September 1st. An Art History professor speaking at the event claimed that McGill had used its contacts (through the Desautels Faculty of Management, he specified) to force the court decisions. This may have been the case – I’m not qualified to say. The specific myth here, though, flies directly in the face of the facts. To the best of my knowledge, it was McGill Security that called the police, in part because there were students occupying private property that refused to leave, in part because there were people that were afraid to leave the building, and in part because there was a screaming mob outside. Listen to the radio interview – Mrs. Monroe-Blum was not on campus. This was not a concerted attempt to quash freedom of protest, this was entirely an issue of public order where certified peacekeepers asked a larger force to intervene on their behalf.

Myth #2: “This was a peaceful protest! We were attacked without cause by the riot police!”

This is one of the more infuriating points, and the most obvious attempt to cast the protesters as helpless victims. Those that go along with it have not done the research. People have posted on YouTube videos showing the events, and they completely contradict everything being said on this subject. Let me stress: I was at the larger student protest against the raising of tuition fees by the Quebec government, which marched for well over two hours from UQAM to Premier Jean Charest’s office close to McGill. There were 20 000 students present, and it was conducted in perfect order. Escorted by police, protesters followed behind a van with a sound system mounted on it shouting slogans and waving banners despite light rain. At every turn, four or five volunteers wearing red vests went out in front of the crowd and waved them down the correct street, and only people trying to exit the protest disobeyed their orders. That was a peaceful protest.

In front of the James Administration building, protesters threw things at police officers approaching with bicycles and then chased them down to the Milton Gates some fifteen metres away.

At the rally today a graduate student that had been present claimed that the protesters were simply “throwing pieces of paper at them,” and that the police response, brutally spraying those students with pepper spray, was out of proportion.

Number one: If you look at the video closely, especially at the 1:45 mark, you can clearly see that the protesters are throwing placards at the police, meaning pieces of wood about as long as my arm attached to a piece of wet cardboard.

Number two: There is no situation, short of an uprising, where it is acceptable to throw anything at a police officer. I cannot make myself clear enough here. A police officer is an appointed representative of the law, and any aggressive action – from spitting to Molotov cocktails – towards one must and will be interpreted as an assault against the rule of law in the country where it takes place. When you attack a police officer, you essentially declare war on orderly society, and it is now that society’s sole mission to bring you down. This is not ambiguous. The degree doesn’t matter. Challenging the force of law in any society will bring that society down on your head, so you better be damn sure that you meant to do it in the first place. Without a clear ideological backing behind your actions you become a common criminal – possibly worse. Which makes it sound like hitting a police officer is acceptable if you’re doing it for a reason. Certainly. But your reason must be, then, an attempt to bring about the collapse of society starting with the rule of law. It is a symbolic action that cannot be revoked and cannot be done frivolously. The degree is utterly irrelevant.

There were certainly anarchist sympathies within the protesters, but they fail to explain the degree to which people deny responsibility for the police’s actions. The dedication to seeing those that were pepper-sprayed as victimized martyrs amounts to a refusal to do the research.

Myth #3: “The police can’t come on campus! This is an invasion!”

Picture this: You are the Montreal Police commissioner, and you’ve just received a call. Right in the core of downtown you have about 200 yelling young people, organized into a homogeneous group (a human chain was formed outside the James Administration building), and attacking uniformed police officers (I said I couldn’t stress it enough). Less than half an hour ago a group of twenty thousand possible rowdies began to disperse from their position directly outside the offices of the provincial government. What do you do?

According to the protesters, apparently nothing. The continued order of downtown Montreal – a city that’s seen its fair share of violent chaos – is not worth the sanctity of the university campus. The possibility that McGill is not some sort of separate country with its own system of laws and policing is utterly alien to them. Apparently I’ve been attending a university surrounded by a moat that I somehow missed.

There’s always been a complaint that McGill, as a prestigious anglophone enclave in a bilingual city, has been isolated from the realities of Quebec, but I’d had no idea that this extended to complete ignorance of the existence of an entire system of government and law. McGill is not sanctified ground. Is it private property? Certainly. But if I come back to my apartment and hear somebody trashing my bedroom, I’m not going to demand that the police stand politely on the sidewalk until the crook comes out, I want them to keep the civil peace, even if it means temporarily violating my right to property.

This has been compounded by a demand that there also be a reduction in security guards on campus, or at least a freeze on hiring. Apparently Batman is to address threats to our personal security and property.

Myth #4: “This was police brutality! Pepper spray and batons are an outrage!”

I’m not sure what exactly the protesters were expecting here. On encountering an unruly mob forming a human chain and blocking the exits to a building, apparently the police were supposed to entice them to disperse with several batches of fresh-baked cupcakes? The active ingredient in pepper spray and tear gas is capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers. Ever rubbed your eyes after handling peppers? It’s unpleasant, but you’ll survive. The riot was cleared forcefully, yes, but it still escapes me what people were expecting to happen.

-

The reaction to the events has been infuriating to me, but I don’t blame too many people personally. Some of the effect has been produced by stupid and naive people latching on to the pure emotion of events, to the sense of invasion and oppression. Some of it has been purposely crafted by people trying to push their own political agenda – it didn’t take long for MUNACA spokespeople to seize on the event as evidence that McGill is unfair to its students as well as its workers. Even some more has been urged on by anarchists that want to target the very fabric of society, its laws. And, of course, this is all permitted by a complete unwillingness of people to challenge the main narrative being crafted, to actually investigate events, watch the videos, and come to a conclusion through the tradition of critical thought that McGill seeks to promote. But apathy is omnipresent, and hard to fight. The initial series of events, beginning with the occupation of the Principal’s office, remains a moral grey area right up until the police are involved. Up until then the right of the protesters to occupy private property conflicts with their right to protest, and that’s a different question. But the entire situation changed when the first malicious, blinkered idiot decided to throw his placard at the police officers approaching the line. From then on, holding the line becomes morally indefensible. And anybody that tries to say otherwise is either an idiot, totally misinformed, pushing an agenda, or all three.



UPDATE: A quick caveat, to my friends that were sat in support of the rally. I never stopped respecting and liking you as people, but my mood is bad and my patience is low when it comes to this issue. I welcome differences of opinion, and trust you to be willing to think about these issues; if you weren’t, I wouldn’t be friends with you.

 

[emzie]

You generally have to be present to give verbal commands, and yes that is far more forceful to use than mere presence as it is specifically directed at a person of group while pre sense is just general in nature.

Wow, this forum is e-violent.

 

[choxorn]

A perfectly legal protest march down a public street that made normal use impossible would generally have a permit and police protection, or be allowed by a law on the books that enjoys the enforcement of the police.

The police can be as violent as they want subject to the state they work for., the state monopoly on violence and all.

So, we can protest... so long as we have the permission of the state.

Kind of defeats the point.

Also, the notion that someone merely occupying space is being violent is ridiculous. Does this mean that the people who are in front of me in line are violent?

 

[Zelig]

Read it and weep:

Why would I weep?

You have no idea how thrilled I am at the prospect of sleep violence while not moving.

 

[amadeus]

So the Tienanmen Square demonstrations were a violent insurgency?

My first thought was of abortion clinics. The type of people that occupy college administrative buildings typically don't seem to have qualms (and rightly so, I may add) about having protesters ejected from those spaces.

 

[ParkCungHee]

My first thought was people sitting in what is clearly my seat in the movie theater.

 

[Hygro]

Patroklos, violence isn't choosing to not move out the way, violence is choosing to move someone out the way.

 

[CaptainF]

Such astounding cognitive dissonance. If the US military truly believes that sitting or standing somewhere is violent, we are in a very sad state of affairs.

Then again, it's not surprising really. The US military has already demonstrated on multiple occasions throughout it's existence that it doesn't care one whit about civilian lives.

 

[Commodore]

Since when does just standing in a certain space, even if it's blocking other people, qualify as violence?

Since Patroklos decided that all protestors are violent thugs and the police are the noble heroes who are the only line of defense from the unwashed barbaric protestors.