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By Arjun Janah
By Any Means Necessary?
By any means necessary!
That was a phrase used by Malcolm X, I believe, for which he was reviled.
But we see it in action here, as police check microphones to follow orders.
Ultimately, their orders are coming, not from their superiors in the police hierarchy,
but from those higher up in the feeding chain on which our society is based.
Free speech, demonstrations, including sit-downs and sit-ins, are fine, if in other countries
— or even here as long as they do not challenge the premises, authority and operation of
the feeding chain and its associated hierarchies.
By any means necessary? Those giving the cops their orders appear to believe in Malcolm
X’s dictum.
Note that guns were drawn and pointed by the police at regular intervals during the retreat.
After witnessing what they had just seen, many in the crowd were incensed. The police
saw that. This was a remarkably docile and disciplined crowd — of university students in
an almost rural campus (U.C. Davis, where the agriculture school used to be a major draw)
far from the turmoil of the big cities. But the situation could have deteriorated further, quickly.
I know that if I were there and seen sitting students sprayed at close quarters with burning
chemicals on their faces and then set upon and handcuffed with arms twisted behind their
backs, I might probably not have shown the restraint (or caution or wisdom) exhibited by
the onlooking students. There are such things as gut reactions beyond one’s control, at
least in my and I would hazard in many others’ cases. Guns can’t stop such things.
Guns have and will again be used — and people will die and be blamed for provoking their own
deaths — as the killings are justified and even celebrated by the brain-washed segments of our
population — brainwashed, by the way, by many decades of what amounts to censorship and
propaganda by the media to divide workers from workers.
Just yesterday afternoon, right after school ended and I stepped out to get a cup of coffee before
returning to the building to do the endless prep and other work there, I was harangued by an older
gentleman at a store right by the school. He insisted that a young person bloodied in a picture (on
the Daily News cover) of the OWS protest Thursday here in NY City — in reaction to their eviction
was being paid by Obama, the unions and the public workers, including teachers like me, all of whom
were socialists and parasites, with Obama being, in his words, one of those “nigger rich”. I told him
that though I was no supporter of Obama or of Clinton before him (whom he also reviled), who I thought
the real parasites were and who the true creators of wealth.
He was incensed and cursed me out as f****ing communist. This was a man who watched the TV news and
perhaps read newspapers. He quoted articles from the NY Times and the NY Post and recommended Fox
News to me. I suspect he might have heard about the newspaper articles on that channel. I had told him
that both papers were anti-union and anti-worker, with the Post only being more rabidly so.
This is what we are up against in this country — and, I suspect, in many others. Politicians — both
Tories and Labor, and no doubt the Liberals (who are not liberal in the sense used in this country)
used to bow down to Rupert Murdoch — until recently, when his spying obsession began
to interfere with, instead of support, his wheeling, dealing, blackmailing king-making one.
So now we have the systematic War on Workers, supported by other workers — as well as these
violent actions on protestors — even non-violent students staging a sit-down protest on their own
university campus.
Shades of Kent State or of Tien An Men Square?
This is America — or many another country, for that matter.
Arjun