Sunday, November 30, 2014

Wichita's Ferguson protest —Civil disobedience and it was the right thing to do

Protesters in solidarity with those in Ferguson, MO briefly stopped holiday shopping traffic, Saturday Night, near Town East in Wichita – to protest a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict a police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown.

This is the first time in a long time that Wichita protesters committed civil disobedience. And it may have paid off for them.

Unlike other events, people not connected to the protesters and organizers went out of their way to post comments on the protester's Facebook page; FERGUSON PROTEST, WICHITA. Usually only those invited to the page or those who take part in that event leave comments on the page. This time there were lots of comments from outsiders who signed up to leave comments on their pages.

There was the usual anger and insults:

Kevin Oneth

Idiots.

Valan Vopat

Just stupid, get a life

Nila L Burch

Stupid people

Teresa Jarvis

Geez!!!

Kip Hildebrand

Get a job, get a job, get a job, get a job, get a job!

The last one shows the prejudiced belief that people who protest on the left are lazy welfare recipients who live of government handouts and have lots of time to protest. Whether these people really believe that is hard to say. That seems to be the stereo type they have of a Democrat or liberal (Even though many of us are neither). But this kind of jeering from bystanders is typical at protests.

Then there are those who actually don't understand what we are doing:

Rachel Ho-Jo

Who cares.

Guy Roberts

And they are protesting in Kansas because....?

The idea that white people in a different city, unrelated, would care what happened to a black teenager somewhere else seems to confuse some people. It also looks as if many people are just not used to the idea of feeling any empathy for those who are victims to this system. They are taught to think only of themselves as individuals and it seems strange to them when people's compassion goes outside of people's normal comfort zone.

Then there were people who posted comments on their own pages about the protests. This guy tried to run over and bully the protesters:

And then there seems to be those who seem miss-informed on who we really are or what we are really trying to do:

Usually our protests are easily ignored, brushed aside and blown off by the public. While there might have been some anger over the traffic stoppage, the public was faced with this issue and this time it didn't get ignored. In theoretical decisions at the Kasama Project, many of us have discussed the need to be ready to break the law if the need arises and to support attitudes of contempt for the system's laws. A revolutionary cannot always expect to obey the laws. This is a good example and in this case it paid off. Some people have tried to compare it to violent action, but it is obviously not to that extreme.

These same tactics have been used in other parts of the country. Demonstrators temporarily shut down two large malls in suburban St. Louis on Friday, as rallies were held nationwide.

-សតិវ អតុ

From KSN: