Obstruction of Justice

Photo by Shlomo Adam Roth. NYC, Dec. 2014

They totally agree with your goals, but they're not fans of the tactics. Don't obstruct parades. Pride and the brutality of police forces are different matters. And don't obstruct highways. And don't let the constant threat and actuality of murder turn into hard and real anger. It's disruptive and only serves to polarize people. Making people late for work will only make them angry, more so than when people see a bleeding man die on 'facebook live'. Some saw gross injustice in that blood stained car as tears welled up across the country. Others saw a one time, or maybe one hundred times, or perhaps a one thousand times incident, but definitely not something systemic.​

Photo by Shlomo Adam Roth, NYC, Jan. 2015

Many, who are not targeted by the armed and uniformed, lament your bodies on the shoulders of the U.S. Highway System, bleeding under the blue and red flashing lights, as they wait in traffic wondering why your living body is blocking this highway.

You've successfully demonstrated that you are facing murderous brutality. It's clear that you can't breathe and can't be, to the powers that be. And, though a change is going to come, change takes time and... Oh my, would you look at the time! History is over and politics and culture have been put on pause, because we've reached the end credits and most of the audience has left the theater. Technology can do your research and drive your car. And now it will move our movements. The 21st century is a bodycam on an American cop, and a twitter feed in the hands of an Egyptian protester. A Skype seminar with a Palestinian organizer and a hashtag against colonialism. You can record that cop placing a weapon on a corpse, or a soldier in occupied territory blowing out the brains of an attacker, now laying on the ground. 

But somewhere in the back of our heads we recite that old book we were read as children called "History Is Over" by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, with illustrations by Brian Mulroney. A neoliberal tale of the pinnacle of politics and smooth and orderly democracy.

And if history is over, who needs to know about it? Organizing people to demand a new way of being from their societies is naive. If there's a problem there may be an app and if not, it may not be that much of a problem. There's no need for voting drives, and marches, and sit ins, and disrupting the ongoing order by taking power in education and in living and physical space. You'll only polarize people and make them angry. 

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