Pepper spray can’t be washed off with water. The intense burning it causes — the stinging, the redness, the swelling, the coughing and gagging and gasping — will only subside with time, usually several hours. It can cause tissue damage and respiratory attacks. A study of its most commonly prescribed remedies found that none of them really work. It has been prohibited in war by the Chemical Weapons Convention, so our enemies don’t have to experience it on the battlefield. If only our citizens were so lucky.
That is the powerful opening paragraph of this Washington Post op ed by Katrina vanden Heuvel, whose title I have borrowed for this posting.
There are a number of powerful points made in the post, which I am going to urge you to read.
I quoted the opening paragraph in part because it was one of the points I explored last night in a few random thoughts on a Tuesday night. How is it legitimate to use something prohibited in warfare on a non-violent civilian protest? Why is this kind of approach ever acceptable for use by the police? What does this say about our nation? If one argues that the use of Oleoresin Capaicin, a more appropriate name for the spray, is acceptable, perhaps one should be aware that even by itself it can cause a fatal reaction, and that it is far more than a pure food product as Megyn Kelly of Fox News attempted to argue - the other substances in the spray are themselves harmful. If the argument is that it is intended to be a non-fatal means of subduing a protest, causing sufficient damage for limb amputation would similarly be intended as non-lethal, yet is horrific enough that surely the American people would find it unacceptable. To understand the power of "pepper spray" you might want to read this piece.
But I digress. As horrific as the spray itself is, those using have failed to understand that each usage - on those already kettled in NY, on an 84 year old women in Seattle, on the non-violent students on the ground in Davis - has served merely to stiffen resistance, to get ever more people to turn out in support of the Occupy movement.
Let me, below the squiggle, further explore the vanden Heuvel piece, as well as continue to offer some observations and musings of one mid-60s person who has lived through several other rounds of protests, and who as a student of history knows that what is happening here is nothing new, although as is always the case the outcome as of now remains uncertain.
Let me quote another paragraph from the op ed:
ames Fallows wrote of this act of police brutality, “Think how we’d react if we saw it coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria.” We know how we’d react — how we have before: with a combination of disgust and outrage on behalf of those who are viciously victimized abroad, and with a deep sense of relief knowing that the United States is not the kind of place where such things unfold. In that sense, the cause of the brutality is the same as that which has driven so many thousands to occupy parks and squares and campuses: a political system that has abandoned its commitment to the ideals it is meant to uphold.
Let's parse this a bit.
Were this something happening in another country, would not we react with disgust for the authorities in that natio? Did not we do so with the early events in Tahrir Square? Did not the brutality of the authorities undercut American support for the Mubarak regime?
Can we still believe that we as a society are that different when we see similar brutality applied to non-violent protest here in the U. S.? When people literally look down on protesters while imbibing champagne, do not we see the contempt of too many (not all) at the top towards those not like them, not protected by the cocoon of power and wealth?
Cannot we see similar patterns when wealthy hedge fund operators insist that schools for the poor, especially people of color, should be restructured and the education narrowed not to the interests of the students who attend but for the benefit of those who want a compliant workforce large enough to suppress wages and maximize profits? Would they submit their own children to the educational regimes they seek to impose on others?
If people can justify retaining their privileges, including obscene bonuses, when the entire government seems more responsive to the protection of wealth and the wealthy than to serving the needs of the vast majority whose economic and personal liberties have been contracted, will not the people at some point simply say no?
Gandhi, from whom we learned so much about direct action and the willingness to stand up on principle, made clear to the British that a quarter of million Brits could not continue to rule 300 million Indians if the latter were unwilling to be ruled. One has to wonder if less than four million Americans can any more effectively suppress the dreams and aspirations of 320 million Americans.
Part of the protest in Davis was the ever escalating cost of tuition at a public university. Allow me to again quote vanden Heuvel:
Those tuition rate hikes were the result of a massive budget shortfall in California which, in turn, was the result of the housing collapse and recession, which, in turn, was caused by the same bankers and politicians thousands are protesting against in New York and Washington, D.C., and throughout the rest of the country.
Public chools are laying off teachers, class sizes are exploding, curricular choices are being limited as electives are eliminated, because local governments rely upon taxes on the value of real estate to fund education and other local government services. Yet the ill-gotten gains of those who created the crisis remain untaxed, unfined. Those responsible for creating the mess have not been charged. Governments at the national and many state levels seem too willing not to hold to account even those whose actions were clearly criminal.
We have a new student organization at our school. Several tenth graders approached our principal, and he gave his permission if they could obtain sponsors. It is a student Occupy organization. It is not that they will occupy the school. It is that they want to explore and education - to explore the issues driving the movement, and to educate their fellow students and perhaps the adults as well. As it happens the students who took the initiative are in my AP Government classes. As it also happens they asked me to be one of the two teachers to sponsor the movement, because they must have an adult sponsor in the building in order to be able to use school facilities. This is THEIR initiative, it will be THEIR effort, and I am honored to be asked. Their initiative is a further sign that the movement cannot be sprayed away.
Several of my students have been to events in DC, a few even went up to Zuccotti Park. These are kids who are 13-14-15 years old. They understand that what is at stake is their own future.
I suspect what I am seeing among our students is far from a unique occurrence. We may be seeing a pattern with which I am familiar from my own life. Something starts among a few people. The violent attempts to suppress that something draws first attention, then a desire to understand, and then ever spreading support, especially among younger people.
So it was with Civil Rights. From one sit-in at a lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960, by four students, within weeks a movement spread across the country and began to have an impact.
Seeing fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham provoked outrage in Larchmont New York where I grew up.
So it was with the conflict in Vietnam. Violent reaction against those demonstrating against the war, combined with the images from Southeast Asia, helped begin to turn the nation against that war. It took more than a few years. I was in New York City for the first major march against the War in 1964. The events in 1968, around the world as well as at home, combined with the images of the Tet Offensive, began to tilt the balance of American opinion. When Walter Cronkite came out against the war, even Lyndon Johnson knew he could no longer sustain it. Unfortunately when Nixon won the presidency he did extend it.
Perhaps you think I ramble. Perhaps I do. Yet while our times our different, and I also see many difference between the compatriots of my age cohort and the young people I teach today, I also cannot help but note similarities. There is still a passion for justice among many young people. There is a real concern among many for people other than themselves. There is an ability to find a moral connection between what happens to others and can happen to them.
So I find myself very much in agreement with a lot of what I read from vanden Heuvel.
I began as she did. Let me similarly end with her closing paragraph. Perhaps we can still hope that the passion of young people, what is often even if not fully developed is a moral clarity that too many adults have forgotten, can yet save this nation.
If the movement can occupy the national debate for long enough, it can change it. And if it channels its passion, anger and hopes into workable strategies, it might actually forge a new politics. That chapter is being written right now by Americans all over this country, including and especially that small group of college students in California who stood up for what they believed in, and then refused to stand down.