OWS, Police Brutality, and the War on Terror: An Empire State of Mind

[marmar]

Published on Sunday, November 20, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
OWS, Police Brutality, and the War on Terror: An Empire State of Mind

by Falguni Sheth


Over the last week, among the multiple images that horrified and angered the American public, two stood out: One is an image of Dorli Rainey, an 84 year old protester at Occupy Seattle with milk dripping from her face after being pepper-sprayed by a uniformed Seattle officer. Another is the video clip of a uniformed Davis, California police officer pulling out two cans of pepper-spray and directing it at the faces of non-aggressive, stationary student protesters at UC Davis. Both images have gone viral. I suspect this is because there is something so grotesque and terrifying about watching a uniformed officer pull out a can of chemicals that are designed to seriously, if temporarily, cripple and paralyze the its victims. Watching the lurid spectacle happen in real-time has the effect of paralyzing the viewer.

Besides the outrage that these events provoked, several questions have been raised, even by those who have followed most global political news over the last decade: “What are they thinking? Why these heavy-handed tactics? Why is it ok to assault people instead of arrest them?” And others, perhaps without knowing why, are horrified but not at all surprised. Why not?

These heavy-handed tactics should come as no surprise to any of us. The ability to assault people prior to—no, instead of arresting and charging them with crimes—has become an explicit staple of United States foreign policy since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, on Oct. 22, 2001. That bill, some 350 pages long and written over much longer than a month’s time, authorized the state police and army forces to wiretap, investigate, search and detain individuals as part of a pre-emptive strategy to seek out “suspected terrorists,” that is, before they could do damage to “US” (pun intended). Augmented to this was G.W. Bush’s presidential endorsement of torture and rendition strategies, along with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan under the auspices of waging a “War on Terror” and the associated military bombings of thousands of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (with President Obama’s continued support of rendition, the expansion of military drones targeted towards “suspected Al-Qaeda” buildings, and of course, civilians). Tack on Presidential Obama’s enthusiasm to assassinate suspected terrorists in lieu of a trial (Osama Bin Laden), even when they are American citizens (Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan).

What does any of this have to with police brutality in response to peaceful political dissent and protests in NYC, Berkeley, Seattle, Oakland, Davis, and elsewhere around the country? Everything. We are in an “Empire State of Mind,” with apologies to Jay Z and Alicia Keyes. We have become conditioned to accept and expect police brutality to be imposed on everyone but “US”: African-American men and women; Muslim men and women all over the world, including Western and Northern Europe; Latino migrants in the US. We have also become used to justifying police brutality as directed towards “people who deserve it.” This, at bottom, is an Empire State of Mind. An Empire State of Mind is one where those who order and those who carry out the brutalization and murder, can do so with the assurance of complete impunity because they have the approval of political and media elites, and through them, a widespread public. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/20-2