this is how… the war came home

I want you to hear Jim Page sing.  As a brief aside before that, and having heard from several people reporting on the targeted arrests and bedlam at the Convention in Minneapolis (and seen a few of the tapes from the street and de-briefings), I can believe his to be an absolutely fair and accurate critique.

Nothing about Obama’s election spares us the lingering impact of the label “terrorist” and how it has been widely applied in so many instances to hold, spy upon, arrest, hurt or torture people in the course of what otherwise would have been once simply lawful protest, dissent, the exercise of free speech and even innocent travel, inquiry or charitable donations in this country.   All this since the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was written and passed (without being read in full by most of the people who originally passed it).   Those laws are still on the books.

What Jim’s song fails to capture, perhaps, is the absolute shock and disbelief… one family at a time… as individual and idealistic supporters of non-violent protest found themselves in the crosshairs.  Their front doors were kicked in as they ate supper with their kids.  SWAT teams crowded in with leveled automatic rifles – it was the movie “Brazil” come to life, over and over again all over the city.

Being labeled “conspirators,” “terrorists,” and “agitators” (when what, in many cases, they were really doing was providing food to hungry people) was generally a new and terrifying experience.  Except for the people of colour, few had the first-hand feeling of being an “enemy” inside one’s own country, one’s own town.  For the police – it made little difference who these men and women were as individuals until after they were processed and delivered.  

Enough of the police and security squad members were Iraq combat veterans that at the least sign of resistance, or appearance of what could be a threat to themselves, their bodies and psyches went into automatic reaction.  It is actually fortunate that none of the protesters were killed – although many did get very badly roughed up, quite out of proportion to their demeanour and their non-violence training. (Which is not to say that the police violence against the protesters was not pre-planned… by all appearances, it was.)

People protesting on the streets… should they choose to be on the streets… will have to become accustomed to being called “the enemy.”  They are no better than the residents of Fallujah for those brief moments they come face to face to black-armoured security personnel.   Jim Page picks a precise title for his equally precise song – “This Is How The War Came Home.”