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After Cell-Phone Switch-Off, Anonymous Promises BART Protest
According to the San Francisco Appeal, the cellphone service shut-down that the BART system imposed Thursday (by disabling transponders which allow cellphone communications in the underground portion of the system), besides drawing rebukes from various civil liberties groups, has generated plans for a protest Monday organized by Anonymous.
People have the right to protest all they want, but:
1) BART has no obligation to assist them in doing so. BART had every right to turn off their equipment. Do these protesters expect to have the police drive them to the protest as well?
2) If the protesters are interfering with mass transit, they're just being assholes. Yes, it's sad that someone got killed. No, this doesn't mean that tens of thousands of people should have their schedules fucked around with.
The fact that this is such a big deal in the first place shows that these aren't real protesters anyway. They're just a bunch of spoiled SF kids thinking they're activists. Real activists wouldn't let something like not having internet access during the protest get in their way.
There's two things going on that aren't the same thing at all. One is the protests over police using black people for target practice, the other is the looting that takes place during the "riots".
The government keeps making excuses for the actions of their police officers; he was just doing his job, too bad that black person got in his way. This will continue and we'll see more of these protests
The other thing is the looting - this is (to put it simply) those who are just barely getting by taking the opportunity to grab up some of those consumer goods they could never afford to buy.
This is a symptom of the extreme imbalance in income distribution in the US (and England). Explain it however you want, the black and brown folks know that they're getting the dirty end of the stick and they aren't accepting those stories. They're kept in their place most of the time, but when things get protesty they'll come out and get some of what the "rich folks" have.
Of course, the "authorities" says that every protester is a criminal and they're busily putting "those people" back in their place. They'll never admit that it's the actions of their enforcers that start these protests - and they'll never admit that it's the greed in the upper class that creates the tensions that drive the riots and looting.
Those "upper class" folks are very aware of this and they're busily building taller fences, hiring more guards, and loading up on weaponry. They lean on their government friends to "keep things under control" and they do their best. Did you think that monitoring phone and email traffic was to stop terrorists? Maybe it's to keep track of groups forming that might present a threat to the established order in this country?
You'll keep hearing stories about how this is all about bad people - and as long as you keep believing that and supporting those who benefit from keeping those people in their place - you'll just postpone the date and increase the intensity of the "correction".
Here's a tip for those in California - did you know that you white folks are in the minority there? Sleep well...
Wow shut the fuck up.
This latest string of BART protests are still about the death of one Charles Blair Hill, a white homeless drunkard who threw a vodka bottle at a pair of passing police officers and then pulled a knife at them. He was shot as he prepared to throw the knife. I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but I'd say the idiot had it coming. It was clearly an act of self defense by the officer(s) involved.
People see "MAN KILLED BY POLICE" and instantly go into RAGE PROTEST RIOT LOOTING mode and blame the DIRTY PIGS for all of life's ills. Or people like you go and call them RACIST AGAINST THOSE BLACK AND BROWN FOLKS and then subtly threaten us white California residents by telling us we're in the minority. Maybe you were trolling, idk.
There's two things going on that aren't the same thing at all. One is the protests over police using black people for target practice, the other is the looting that takes place during the "riots".
Here's a tip for those in California - did you know that you white folks are in the minority there? Sleep well...
Um, dude? The man who was shot, Charles Hill, was not black.
He was, however, intoxicated, violent, and armed. He threw a vodka bottle at two police officers and then attacked one with a knife. The police (or pigs or whatever the PC term is now) shot him in self defense. There's partial video of the incident—he was out of camera range, but the video shows the bottle flying at the officer who is in the picture. It happened very quickly: the officers saw Hill, he threw the bottle at them and charged brandishing a knife, and the police shot him all in under a minute. It's the kind of situation no one wants to have happen, but not because the police are some sort of racist murderers waging class warfare: rather, because no one wants knife-wielding drunks rampaging in the subway.
Are the pigs guilty of keeping the black man down and put "those people" in their place because they didn't decide to hug and sing kumbaya with the drunk white guy trying to stab them? Probably, in the minds of some people. I would say that you can see their pictures here: http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2931/bart-protest-delays-evening-commute/ , but they at least have a photo of Charles Hill and seem cogent enough, despite trying to climb on top of the BART trains, to know enough about the case they're "protesting" at least to realize that Hill isn't black.
How about protesting outside station entrances? It is doubtful that the cellular providers would disable service at street level. Protesters also wouldn't disrupt physical transit service, though they can still make their point by disrupting individual commuters.
Most important of all: it doesn't endanger the lives of people, since platforms can be a dangerous place.
I remember hearing stories from a friend in a third world nation. When the government did something wrong they started destroying the trains in protest. The thing is, that destruction meant bugger all to the government (they don't use trains) so it really only made the lives of the protesters and the people who they claimed to represent worse. Which is exactly the sort of thing that Anonymous is doing. While it isn't quite that extreme yet, it could be within a few years if protesters keep upping the ante.