bobm said:
Just how far would one get while excercising one's rights in the streets and protesting in such locations as China, Russia, N. Korea, Cuba, etc. ?
With all due respectwhat you have just told me, shows that you have never had the experience of protesting in the streets of America and that you are not aware of what actually is happening in your own country. Do not be so quick to judge other countries by our own.
At this very juncture just a few days ago.people in their communities were protesting about a unarmed neighbor who had been shot in the back by the police. The cops let loose dogs with children in the crowd and babies in strollers. One twelve year old boy threw himself on his little brother to protect him and this child was attached and mauled by the dogs. Some to the others were treated for the rubber-bullet wounds. I bet some of you think rubber-bullets or bean-bags are harmless. Do you remember the young man in San Francisco standing in the crowd? Ask me sometime about what a provocateur is and what a provocateur does. It is a way of creating a problem where none exists, so that you can go in and break heads and say it was justified. I have seen this with my own eyes.
I have twenty years of experience in this and I have worked with lawyers and civil rights experts. I consider myself as much a patriot as the next, only I do not hide behind a flag.
What do I think? I think that somenot necessarily you, but some and some in my government have already decided for me and the rest of us WHAT it is that we can, or cannot protest against in our own streets.or we will get our heads busted in.
I have a lot of experience in what passes for freedom in my streets. I have been threatened with dogs, guns and cops on horseback. I can hear you now saying .well you must have been doing something wrong.
What was I doing? Well in my country, it is ok to keep dozens of women from Indonesia as slaves holding them against their will in one house ( in El Monte, CA) all locked in with a barbed wire barrier keeping them there making clothing. They were not allowed to leave some were beaten and threatened with death.
When these women were finally discovered and freed, some organizations and people like myself who felt it important to let the rest of the world/community know what was going on, we went to the streets to support these women in their demands for justice.
We were protesting in the streets of America.where these women were ecstatic.yes they were asserting their rights herein this country.knowing that where they came from .they might get killed if they protested.
These women were tiny little things, some only came up to my shoulders, and they were marching to let the world know what had happened to them. They wanted recompense for their unlawful treatment.
America always has been the greatest experiment in the world, after all we are a nation of immigrants and that is how we have evolved.
As I marched along side of these women, I listened to their stories and how they had sought freedom and happiness in this country, a country where everything they had ever heard about was where if they worked very hard they would find Nirvana.
As we marched it was obvious to us that if we.the WHITE PEOPLE had not been in that march of thousands..if we were NOT there, these tiny little women with brown faces would once again have been shown a form of American Justice.
Numerous times, the cops kept trying to run the horses into the crowd as intimidation and it was not needed.no one was out of line doing anything wrong. The cops had their hands were on their guns and they were very. (I cant use the p-word in this immature forum.) We were all peaceful and still we were treated as criminals for protesting in our own streets, and they took glee in getting in our faces to take our pictures. When they do that to me.I just wave and say.Hi Mom!
Once while protesting a $25,000.00 a plate dinner in Beverly Hills for Bill Clinton. (I wonder..... can you pay twenty-five thousand dollars for one dinner with your buddies. With lots of money you can do anything in this countrylawfully or not. Mostly not! ) anyway, I was helping an 85 year-old friend off the curb and a cop drew his gun on us and made us get back on the curb. I could go on but I would only bore you to death.
However, in this matter, I do know the streets. And your streets are not as free as you think they are. It takes a real sense of justice and backbone for one to go into the streets and some are just not cut out for it.
I mostly marched with older people, those in their seventies and eighties. They had the history of the world under their belts and they knew if they did not use their right of protest they were surely to lose it. They were my teachers, they were a part of history, they were the keepers of the flame and I loved them all.
