(From a discussion on Jesse Arreguins timeline: ) > Isolate the trouble makers and the ring leaders, You can not jail an idea. You can not prosecute a leaderless movement of society. You are looking at the actions of a large and growing number of people who realize that this society offers them no future. Your government, predictably, will mount a reactionary response that includes further encroachments on *your* liberty. Many of you will welcome this. Regardless of the official responses -- the loosely coordinated attacks on capitalism itself will predictably continue for a time, then fade out, then later return -- each time returning with incrementally greater sophistication and disruptive power as the mob learns what works and what doesnt. Probably equally lawless reactionaries in society will take matters into their own hands leading to citizen-on-citizen clashes. City Council will make a show of ineffectively investigating BPD behavior and implementing do-nothing checks on further abuses. Probably they will be unable to resist simultaneously praising and reassuring the force. There will be no serious examination of BPDs (and other regional agencies) participation in the surveillance state and the conversion of regional forces into a standing national army. There will be no effective effort to restore citizen oversight of the police. Politicians like Jesse will struggle to issue a series of ambiguous, balanced statements condemning supposed excesses on both sides. The Citys supposedly progressive politicians will merrily continue to push for ineffective, pro-capitalist, pro-developer non-solutions to the housing crisis. Land-use policies will continue to favor rentiers and destroy the utility of land for regional robustness. Economic development will continue to mean what is good for profits not what is good for the people. It will remain taboo for our progressive politicians to lead by critically examining the contemporary state of capitalism and its implications. Environmental disasters will receive no serious attention except in the form of scams and schemes like the current efforts to turn RECO into a regressive subsidy for contractor profits. High rates of incarceration and criminalization will continue to be the rule and will continue to bankrupt the society even while Berkeleys middle class continues to pretend there is a serious debate about whether this is good policy, whether indeed it goes far enough.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:32:10 +0000
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