Would passive resistance be effective today as it was in the past?
Mahatma Gandhi led a passive resistance movement to free India from British rule. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. followed the teachings of Gandhi and employed passive resistance in the struggle for equal rights for African Americans and the poor.
I thank everyone for participating in this stimulating discussion. Passive resistance is an interesting subject to debate. I would like to add that our economy is global and is being run by large corporations whose goal is to make huge profits and to seek funding from the taxpayers when their companies start to fail. Michael Savage, a one time radio personality for conservative talk radio would state that he believed in language and borders. Language, in his words, was English and by borders he meant that the border between Mexico and the United States should be guarded more heavily than what is being done now and during the G.W. Bush administration. Globalism does not see it that way. Lobbyists buy politicians. We are left with higher taxes, home foreclosures, high interest rates on student loans, jobs that do not meet the minimum wage, expensive health coverage, and many out of work and in need of social services which are on the decline. Yet there are those who are placed on watchlists because they speak out against such injustices. Some of you may know Dr. Gary Null, who was approached by a large man last summer. This man warned Dr. Null that spies are being placed wherever Dr. Null works. Their goal was to discredit Dr. Null and if possible, kill him. A few months back I read a Wikipedia article about Dr. Null. The article was in a condescending tone and not a word was written about the accomplishments that Dr. Null has done. More can be said but I will save that until next time. Again thank you for your participation.
The passive resistance of Gandhi and King worked because the populations, and even some who opposed them, were civilized people or had to answer civilized people. The protesters in Tienanmen Square weren't so fortunate.
Passive resistance relies on numbers to have any affect on the issues it address's. Unfortunately this country has been hornswoggled into an "us and them" finger pointing scenario led by an ever increasing complicit press. We don't get the news until "they" say it is news and they will interpret it for us to digest. Subsequently the politicians continue making their opinion fact and proffer statements to keep us divided. Until the sheeple catch on to this dynamic, the status quo continues to rule us.
That's pretty much exactly what Occupy Wall Street was--passive resistance in protest of Wall Street bankers being too powerful to arrest. Then the TV news stations got paid off to proclaim that they were violence-fueled barbarians and that they were being mean to the nice rich bankers who would never do anything wrong.
You do have a paper trail following the money and instructions as to what to say from the bankers to the news stations?
Or just making claims based on opinion and what you want to believe, much like the theists do?Merely conjecture based on what corrupt organizations have always done. I mean, the only other option is that the TV news stations defended the banks with their verbal fellatio for free--without any bribes--and that's just downright stupid. I'd like to think network execs are at least smart enough to accept payment before disgracing themselves in such a manner.
Or, just maybe, that the news stations reported the news as it was. The local sit in went on for months, totally destroying a public park. Protesters (as many homeless as not) stole power from nearby public buildings, destroyed the landscaping and defecated all over the lawns. Cops were needed more than a few times to quell violence between protesters, and there was at least one rape.
When they finally left, the park was bulldozed and started anew, at enormous cost. "Protesters" my a$$; these were delinquents and thieves, destroying public property and violating every sanitation code around.Did you personally witness all that or are you just repeating what the news media told you?
A noble cause for the left wing err......... masses to follow.
My lasting image of the occupy for London activists is one throwing a waste bin through a bank window (live), but this could have been a journalist I suppose.
Whilst I agree that anyone has a right to protest against something they see as wrong I think the occupy movement lost control of what should have been a peaceful non aggressive demonstration and as such lost the support of the public in general.Lost control through their actions or through the actions of agents provocateur?
Primarily their own actions. A demonstration is useless if it doesn't garner media attention, and absolutely the best and easiest way to do that is to add in a little violence. A garbage can through the window, a fist fight, maybe a little arson as a cop car goes up in flames. In the mob scene it will always grow very quickly, attracting the media.
The little guy at the bottom may just want to be a part of a peaceful protest, but the agents provocateur, the people at the top setting it all up and with something to lose if it all flops, they have a different agenda in mind.As do the police and government security services and to a lesser extent the media itself.
Let's see now - just what would the agenda of the police be?
To keep the peace?
To maintain the assets of the park?
To keep the law even, including the one that you can't camp on public land?
To maintain all public facilities for use by everyone, not just a handful?
OR, do individual cops wish:
To see people raped or hurt
To see public property damaged
To keep the majority of citizens out of the parks
I think I would have to put the "agenda" of even the evil capitalistic police force into the first set, not the second.
The media, of course, has the agenda of making money - what a group of trespassers do has little effect on that unless they can draw the public in to watch.
The government security services (national guard, rent-a-cops at the parks or buildings, etc.) I would also have to put into the first group with the cops; I don't think that many of them are sadistic monsters out to hurt someone.OK, I have no experience of such things in the US but in the UK there have been several cases recently of undercover cops (deep undercover, not even their spouses were aware of their real work)
They were employed and encouraged to do most of the things that you claim the police would never do.
Why do it? Well your our I however much we might agree with the underlying cause, would never align ourselves with a bunch of vandals and thugs would we? Divide and control.I am not intimately familiar with deep undercover work, although I do think that such cops often violate the law and assist others in doing so in order to gain the proof needed to put them behind bars. I do NOT believe they are doing that for some personal sadistic satisfaction, and I do NOT believe they are doing that as some hidden conspiracy with politicians to cause harm to innocent people.
I WILL say, however, that the bigger government gets the more likely such a conspiracy exists. The more control govt. has the more likely to demand (and get) more control, whether via legal and ethical means or not. The smaller govt. is the better in nearly all things. Nearly, not all, mind you.No, they are doing it to protect their paymasters.
Their paymasters.
Presumably you don't mean the clerk that writes the checks, but the politician that sets their salary. And no, the days of mafia control are pretty much over here in the US. No deep conspiracies, just a few in small out of the way towns here and there where crooked police and politicians still run amok occasionally.
Of course, we try to limit our govt. instead of grow it, at least on the conservative side. Liberals haven't quite figured out that big government means big control, and that control will eventually affect them. Perhaps via the type of thing you reference here.No, the bankers and other "captains of industry". Not the politicians who are just as much servants of the capitalists.
In the US, bankers and other industry are not the paymasters for the cops. They don't set the wage, they don't hire or fire and they don't write the checks. Politicians oversee all of that, through the police department VIP's.
Oh they don't write the checks, they're drawn on your money, but the money is spent to protect them.
Yes, them and (in the case of cops) you and I and everyone else in the country. It's what cops do, on the whole.
What they do NOT typically do is run around hitting, pepper spraying or harming innocent people. Happens of course - neither cops, the system or the world are perfect) - but is relatively rare. Specifically, the cops didn't spray or harm the OWLS because bankers sent the message to hurt the protesters down the chain of command.Minders do not need explicit instructions to counter a threat to their employers.
By telling everybody that they are capitalists their minders think they are defending themselves.I see. That way the claim can be made but will be accepted as unprovable and therefore proven to be correct because it can't be proven to be incorrect.
Got it. I think.
Er!
Their is evidence to support my thesis, but none to support yours.Uhh...there is evidence to support that cops, without instructions of any kind, caused harm to OWL's innocent of illegal activity, because the bankers wanted them to but gave no orders? Would that be the local banker down the street or the one several states away?
I'd have to say that hard evidence is going to be just a wee bit difficult to find. Circumstantial evidence, carefully spun to promote an emotional response without factual information, yes. Carefully built up conspiracy theories like those of 911, yes. But then I would not be interested in neither of those. Are you?No, I've already said that some police in the UK admitted to having been planted in left wing organisations to act as agents provocateur.
No, you said there are a small handful of cops working deep undercover. You did NOT say that they either caused direct harm to protesters or promoted/caused violence at the protests. And you certainly did NOT say they admitted to being bribed by anyone working in the banking industry or that could be labeled "bankers".
Which is kind of what I said - carefully constructed spin to promote an emotional response and a belief in something that has no proven connection to reality. Even that cops would be "deep undercover" to break up a simple protest goes beyond the bounds of belief.Of course they didn't admit to being bribed by the bankers. They were following instructions from their superiors.
They aren't in deep cover just to break up a simple protest but to destabilise a movement.
BTW, the last year or two, the uniformed police beat a man to death with their truncheons. he just happened to be walking home past the demo.So you have no reason to say the cops were bribed by bankers. That's what I said, isn't it?
I think we have a different concept of "deep cover". I'm thinking 2,3,4 layers of fake ID's, drawing paychecks and loyalty from several competing organizations, etc. You're thinking they joined the movement without having the belief in order to gain information. OK, the cops are undercover, but that's nothing new and certainly doesn't mean the bankers are paying for it. Or any other business.
Cops kill sometimes. And media lies sometimes - very few times do you get the straight scoop from the media. He was just walking by - carrying a newly decapitated human head in one hand and a sword in the other? The point is that you didn't get the entire story the first time around and, if you're like most people, don't care enough to follow up. Heck, if you're like most people you will make a concerted effort NOT to follow up as it almost always means the cops were straight and that ruins the whole thing!
But whatever the complete tale of the killed walker, it does not mean the the police force as a whole is in the pocket of business, does it?Not in the pockets of big business, protecting them is their whole raison d'etre.
I think you're losing it, John. Have you considered joining the 911 conspirators? Or the John Kennedy one? I understand there is another one saying man never went to the moon.
It's the socialism thing, maybe. Govt. is so big it's automatically bad over there across the pond, and everything else with it.No, not a conspiracy. Just observation.
I do understand that your media is in the hands of the right and heavily biased but the UK media has shown many bits of film of police attacking an unarmed man on his way home and we got aeons of footage of the police beating up the miners because they were affecting the profits of the capitalist.Its funny how we see things standing on different sides, from the left you see the big bad government trying to kill anyone that is against a capitalist economy. From the right I see it as trying to protect trade and jobs.
From the left you see the miners as hero's of socialism, from the right I see them as greedy workers wanting more for themselves.
From the left you see the police beating the miners with sticks, from the right I see some miners throwing a concrete block of a bridge and killing a taxi driver.
And as for the UK media being biased I have to agree because you cant get a more left leaning news agency than the BBC has.The miners greedy workers wanting more for themselves! Like jobs that would allow them to keep their families without having to depend on the state! Yes. greedy miners.
The two miners who killed a man were silly and misguided but a life sentence was passed down to them.
What about the four miners killed on picket duty?
How do you feel about the police removing their collar numbers to avoid identification and then riding down and coshing bystanders?As I said left and right see it differently John, I wouldn't call the two miners who murdered the taxi driver as silly, they were so worked up by the strike that they decided to try and stop miners who wanted to work from getting to the pits.
Miners had been on strike previously, they brought the country to its knees to secure more money for themselves. The union decided that they wanted to bring down the government of Thatcher who they hated with a passion, so they used the miners as a pawn in their game.
The miners attacked many of their fellow workers who wanted to work, the hatred between those who went on strike and those who worked lasts to this day.Yes, the young lads were so worked up that they decided to try and stop miners getting to the pit by blocking the motorway, not killing the black leg miner.
No, they were defending their jobs. The labour government had agreed a closure plan with the NUM. This involved closing mines over a decade or so and losing miners by retirement and voluntary redundancies. Thatcher wanted to close all pits instantly.You're spinning, John, just as the media did (and I haven't ever heard of the miners there).
They weren't "young lads", they were murderers.
They weren't "protecting their jobs", not by throwing blocks from an over pass and not by murdering a taxi driver. Such actions, if intended to help protect jobs, are of the same caliber as any al Quaida terrorism where scaring people into submission by murder and pain is accepted practice.
Thatcher didn't want to close all mines (is that the same as a pit?) instantly; it takes days, weeks or sometimes months to close a business that large.In terms of closing many mines even a year is instantly. No opportunity for an economy in a slump to absorb the tens of thousands of new unemployed.
From the beginning of the 20th century, the coal industry was in decline. This process intensified in the years following World War I, and again after World War II. In the two decades from 1950-1970 around a hundred North East coal mines were closed. A common misconception is that Newcastle upon Tyne, and its suburbs was one of the areas affected most by the infamous mid-eighties strike. However, in reality, the vast majority of mines in that area were long since defunct by that time. In March 1968, the last pit in the Black Country closed and pit closures were a regular occurrence in many other areas. In 1979, 130 million tons of coal was being produced annually from 170 underground mines, but by 2010 the three remaining mines produced only 17 million tons. Following the breaking of the union’s power, British coal-dependent industries have turned to cheaper imported coal.
In early 1984, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher announced plans to close 20 coal pits which led to the year-long miners' strike which ended in March 1985 with the miners defeated. Numerous pit closures followed, and in August 1989 coal mining ended in the Kent coalfield. Further closures were announced in 1992 by John Major, who privatised the industry in 1994,by which time the National Coal Board had closed all but the most economical of coal pits.
The miners strike caused coal production to slump to an all-time low, followed by a brief recovery until it declined towards the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s. A total of 100 million tons was produced in 1986, but by 1995 the amount was around 50 million tons.
The last deep mine in South Wales closed when the coal was exhausted in January 2008. The mine was closed by the Coal Board in the privatisation of the industry 14 years earlier and re-opened after being bought by the miners who had worked the pit.
There you go John, she wanted to close 20 pits and when the union challenged the government they brought forward the closure of many more.
The problem with miners not getting jobs is the same as anyone who loses their job, if there are no jobs in your area you have to move where the work is. Apparently we have had to import 5 million people to fill the jobs that couldn't be filled. Are you really suggesting the government should keep unproductive pits open just to give these young men (who wont go and find work 30 years after the fact) a job? At what cost?Yes, the government brought forward the closing of many more pits as punishment for being greedy little miners and wanting to keep their jobs!
The miners were finished whatever they did. Face it, Thatcher hated the working man and she hated the unions and both suffered and continue to suffer as a result of her hatred.
What reason did we have for importing inferior but more expensive coal?Come on John, the miners lost the trust of the customers, they had to have supply to make sure that everything else didn't stop like it did in the previous strike. The miners instigated their own downfall with the help of the unions of course.
I don't blame the miners John but unfortunately they thought they were invincible and this is what their unions used to try and bring down the government, Mind you asking for a 30% rise is a bit excessive.
Did Thatcher hate her father then? Maybe that's one for Sigmund Freud.
No, they don't want a job that will allow a family to stay together. If they did they would be out job hunting.
Rather, they want government to force business to pay double (or triple or whatever is necessary to keep the family together plus make a luxurious life) what a job is worth.They had jobs that they wanted to keep. They didn't want to be kept by the state.
If they wish to keep them, then do so! Just don't expect or require more salary than the job is worth - that way lies the insanity of socialism gone mad.
They want the job, take it. They don't want it, don't take it. Very simple, really, and double so when you consider that the wage is a part of the job package. Take it or not - the choice is theirs. What is NOT theirs is the option to unilaterally set the salary or the job to whatever they wish it to be.The strike was not about pay even though their pay had been eroded considerably.
It was wholly an attempt to keep their jobs.So to keep their jobs they will shut down the business with a strike.
I'm sorry, but this just doesn't sound particularly intelligent. Perhaps they should be looking for other work.Some of the younger ones still are looking for a job.
Not unusual. Younger workers are typically not as skilled and do not have seniority either.
Time to leave the mines, I'd have to say. They will apparently be shut down in the not-so-distant future - better to find something now when the competition (what a horrible word! ) for jobs isn't so great. My wife did that when her job was dying; opted for an early buyout, with severance pay, to start the hunt before thousands of others from the place were laid off involuntarily.Er, young in 1984 but skilled anyway!
There are no mines left to leave, they won't be shut down in the near future, they've been gone for decades.I'm sorry, but my ignorance of England is showing badly.
Why in the world are miners fighting to keep jobs that have been gone for decades? Why are they killing over something that isn't there? Is it like the unemployment in the US - now that the economy and job scene is improving somewhat, people are losing the extra unemployment and mad as heck that they have to find a job somewhere?
The strike was about pay and pit closures, maybe you should read up on it. Even the socialist rag I read about the miners strike said the same.
Average pay in 1984 £127.54
Miners average 1984 £165.55
The NUM was scared to have a national ballot because they knew they would lose it and therefor wouldn't be able to take on the Tory government.
"Paymasters" what next, "wage slaves" is this 1919???
Considering it's nearly 100 years on from 1919, it's worse than 1919.
Some of both. I didn't witness the rape, but police records are easy enough to track. I didn't see the power theft, but it was pretty well documented and mentioned several times in the legislature. I DID see the park during and after the mob left, and the massive damage done, and that was my biggest gripe with them. They not only deprived the public of the use of the park, they absolutely destroyed it for future use as well until it could be completely rebuilt.
It wasn't passive resistance , it was poop in the park and on the police car while waiting for a handout.
The bankers and the mainstream media (especially one particular mainstream outlet i need not identify) treated Occupy Wall Street as a malediction. Persistence is the key to social change. Many years may pass before we see any major change. Thank you for your comment.
Yes, passive resistance is still effective. For example, the women in Saudi Arabia who are trying to end the discrimination against them. One form of discrimination is the fact that they are not allowed to drive cars, or obtain a driver's license. Therefore, they must rely on men to transport them. Women are asserting their independence by taking the wheel themselves. Many women are risking their jobs and reputation to stand up for their rights. This method of protest will inevitably change the law, but it is taking so long because they live in such a male-dominated culture.
Is it passive to take action that violates the law? I would not have considered it so...
I wouldn't think.
In this case passive resistance would be to refuse to go anywhere until they could drive themselves.Your comment is appreciated. Thank you.
No need to thank me. I wasn't talking to you.
Thank you for your response Ms. Reeves. Yes it does take a long time, I would say generations. Passive resistance is not easy; for example if someone is physically abusing a passive resistance demonstrator. Persistence is the key.
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