The Future of Protest In Panopticon Nation

Hugh Pickens writes "James Fallows writes that you don't have to idealize everything about the Occupy movement to recognize the stoic resolve of the protesters at UC Davis being pepper sprayed as a moral drama that the protesters clearly won. 'The self-control they show, while being assaulted, reminds me of grainy TV footage I saw as a kid, of black civil rights protesters being fire-hosed by Bull Connor's policemen in Alabama. Or of course the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square,' writes Fallows. 'Such images can have tremendous, lasting power.' We can't yet imagine all the effects of the panopticon society we are beginning to live in but one benefit to the modern protest movement is the omnipresence of cameras (video) as police officials, protesters, and nearly all onlookers are recording whatever goes on bringing greater accountability and a reality-test for police claims that they 'had' to use excessive force. 'What's new is that now the perception war occurs simultaneously with the physical struggle. There's almost parity,' writes Andrew Sprung. 'You have a truncheon or gun, I have a camera. You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.'"

Comments

What the Davis protest looked like to me

[istartedi]

I almost immediately thought that it looked like the cops were fertilizing the tree of liberty.

There's a good idea there for a political cartoon, if it hasn't been done already.

At least, we hope it's the tree of liberty and not just weeds; but it's certainly something.

Wrong

[Nom du Keyboard]

"James Fallows writes that you don't have to idealize everything about the Occupy movement to recognize the stoic resolve of the protesters at UC Davis being pepper sprayed as a moral drama that the protesters clearly won.

What is this propagandist tripe doing in Slashdot? I don't idealize anything in the Occupy movement, and am part of the growing 65% who feel the same way. I don't recognize it as stoic resolve, but rather unending stupidity, on the part of the protesters who refused to leave after multiple warnings by the police that it was long past time to go. I don't consider obstructing the police to be "peaceful" or "protected" protest, and if I'd been there myself with a pepper spray container the size of a small fire extinguisher I would have hosed them down myself as a lifelong lesson to quit being so stupid. There are valid ways to protest -- and this was none of them. Those protesters won nothing in my book.