Yesterday I was reading VoteHarder's diary about the anti-Iraq-escalation protest at UC-Santa Barbara. A kid named Jesse was arrested, but I quickly dismissed my first thought:
Hey, maybe that's Jesse, who's sort of my nephew (my sister married his dad and helped raise him).
So I was pleasantly amused--and damned proud, actually--to see it was him.
He's been released, pending a hearing, and his statement is on the flip.
Jesse says this articlefrom the Santa Barbara Independent is the best reported version of what happened.
Here's his statement:
One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
J. Carrieri
February 16th
While I think February 15th's protest has generated enough media for me not to bother with any sort of summary of the day's events, with all the media spinning different stories, I feel the record should be set straight. Seeing as I was one of the few arrested for the actions of hundreds of students, I feel qualified in giving an accurate, yet oppinionated, account of my arrest.
My personal reasons for joining the protest were slim indeed. I do not blindly support withdrawing our troops, for if there were no terrorists with intent to harm America before our War On Terror, there certainly are now. The solutions to global conflicts are never as clear cut as your president would have you believe; life is not black and white, but a thousand shades of grey, and no true leader should ever have to use terms like good and evil. Such vocabulary can only be a screen for true military conquest. Hell, I'll give my blood for oil when our country's leaders stop hiding behind an invasion for Liberation and boldly state the increbiable need our country has for petrolum to maintain this country's soft cushiony standard of living from everything from transportation to space exploration.
No, my reasons for joining the protest were incrediably simple: to be wittness to a group of young indiviuals awakening from their slumber to realize the power of the indiviual, and the power of uniting together. When we took to the streets, I saw traffic disrupted and people of authority finally taking notice. This is the message I wanted to send to individuals across America. The message that you are not alone; that together we can reshape this mutated democracy we call a government into a government that is truely for the people.
The reason I was arrested was not what you heard. I did not resist arrest, I was not rioting, and I had no concealed weapons. The account in the Nexus that I was order to sit and that I refused is false. Moments after the officers on duty got out of their cars and begin organizing, I approached them and was immediately told to return behind the line. What line they were refering to I could only speculate, as I have checked 217 again recently and the only lines I saw were the two yellow ones in the center. I assume they meant the magical line between protesters and their police crusiers. I told them I understood and that i wished to ask an officer a question. I was told to return to in front of the cars and that an officer would come to me. I waited several minutes and when an officer who appeared to be in charge was in between two of the police crusiers, I got his attention and two took steps forward to talk to him over the noise of the sirens and the protesters. My question was as simple as i could make it: What laws were we in violation of, if any, and under what charges would we be arrested if we continued our protest?
Neither of the two CHP officers answered my question. Their response was to "get back!" Now please understand, I was questioning authority, but not rhetorically. There does exist an answer to my question. I questioned them again, and their response was identical. Upon my third questioning, I was told "that i was pissing them off," and to "get back." I was perplexed. Here i was, fearlessly facing authority in an attempt to settle the dispute that was literally building up on Hwy 217. I made no threatening motions. I only began to express my confusion of their inability to negociate, but perhaps they had enough of my questions. I was handcuffed on the spot, and transported to a patrol car further back to be searched. I was not told why I was being arrested, and I did not resist. I simply stated to the officer searching my bag that I had a plastic water gun (ya know, like a squirt gun?) in my bag and that it resembled a weapon. It was this same water pistal that became a concealed weapon, a starter gun, in later media reports.
I was booked at the county jail shortly after three, and a little after four I was given a penal code that I had violated: PC 148 (A)(1). It took me three hours of questioning officers around the holding cells before I truely understood what I was charged with. The way I heard it: for disobeying a direct order from a peace officer. A little time on the internet revealed 148 (A)(1) in its entirety:
148 (a) (1) Every person who willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer, peace officer, or an emergency medical technician, as defined in Division 2.5 (commencing with Section 1797) of the Health and Safety Code, in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his or her office or employment, when no other punishment is prescribed, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
However, due to the nature of being confined in jail, I had no clue to what was happening around me. I became a sheet of paper to be processed, while my person waited behind locked doors. I was released a little after eight that evening, and found that Chancellor Yang was present and applying pressure for my release. I found later that I legally could have been held up to 48 hours without being charged. If it were not for the campus authority expiditing my release, I imagine i would not have slept in the warmth of my bed last night, and would have missed work this morning.
When I spoke to my mother on the phone (you know how mothers worry), one of the questions she asked me was what I had learned from the experience. At the time I had the wits to sense that it was a loaded question and that she wanted to hear that I would avoid jail time in the future, but now that I've had some time to consider it I can pinpoint what I bore witness to. So, Mom, in answer to your question...
The military, and I do mean to include peace officers under this broad lens, functions on indivuals working togther to achieve limited goals over as little time as possible. Most businesses operate under a similar structure to produce the most money. One fundelmental of this structure is to give an order and to have it be carried out without question. This implies trust in your superior officer, and trust that your superior officer trusts his superior, and so on, until you reach the top of the layer cake, and thus your basic trust that your leader knows what the fuck he's doing. One virtue, or call it a vice if you wish, that I have poccessed from a tender age, is to question that trust.
I have never served in the military, but I have it from a reliable source that most soldiers have no idea what they are doing; other than the simple fact, they are following orders. My time spent in the county jail was not wasted. I watched. I listened. Occaionally I asked a question. All I saw were soldiers, and not one officer knew what was going on out on Hwy 217, or could answer a simple question of why was I locked up. Question a member of any hierarchy and you will get one of two pre-determined answers: "I'm just doing my job." or "I refuse to stand here and debate this with you." I state from experience that the latter response is incrediably frustrating when you are locked up and your questionee is free to roam. And roam they do, like sheep without a shepard, as we are all slaves to the American hierarcty. Our trust is misplaced. Our superiors are as blind as we are, placing trust in a fictional figurehead that I'd rather see doing stand up at an open mike than giving a State Of The Union address. We all obey unquestionally, and now I challenge you to question that authority, seek your answers, and do not relent until you are satistified.
There's two things I thought were way cool about Jesse's statement:
First, and most importantly, he decided to do something about stopping the war, and took considerable personal risk to do it.
Second, and this really tickled me, is how Jesse's outlook, although completely fresh and derived from his own experience, is so reminiscent of what I remember myself from the 1960s: The realization that the problem is not just war and militarism and intolerance; the problem is sheeplike conformity and the lack of independent thought.
And fear, most of all. Perhaps that's what is not so obvious to someone as young and brave as Jesse. People act in blind obedience not just from habit or stupidity, but from fear.