O3 Demos in Boston

This is What Democracy Looks Like
by Sean Donahue 7:19pm Tue Oct 10 \'00

address: NH Peace Action, PO Box 771,
Concord, NH 03302
phone: 603-228-0559 wrldhealer [at] yahoo.com

Commentary on the O3 demonstrations in Boston

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
by Sean Donahue

\"My measurement of a true friend is not by what they are
willing to do for me, but for all we love. Selfless acts of
kindness and compassion that are given with the expectation of nothing in return other than the satisfaction that you have done what your heart desired for those in danger. There is a kind of love that we often try to convince others that we represent yet we frequently fail to display in our own behavior.
That is unconditional love, a love that emanates from your
heart for your fellow warriors not for what they do for you, but for what they do for all we love and fight for.\"
--- Rod Coronado

Sometimes you can only find democracy hidden behind a
cloud of pepper spray carried by the wind. Outside the
presidential debates on Tuesday night I stood behind metal barricades staring down a line of mounted riot police with 5,000 other people, protesting corporate control of our \"democratic\" process, the exclusion of Ralph Nader from the debates, and the failure of the Democrats and the Republicans to address the growing suffering of the poor, the powerless, and the Earth. When people began to step over or push aside the barricades and walk toward the police line, holding their hands in the air to show that they would not strike out at the police, I expected to begin seeing mass arrests.
Instead the police pushed forward into the crowd on their
horses, pushing everyone back to the barricade.

People on the front lines ran back into the crowd, blinded by pepper spray. Volunteer medics rushed to flush people\'s eyes out with water and wipe their faces down with mineral water and alcohol. Soon it became clear that the cops were also beating people with nightsticks as well -- many took heavy blows to the head. An officer ripped out one man\'s hair and his scalp was bleeding. About a dozen of us formed two lines of people holding hands to create a corridor for people who had been hurt to get from the barricades to the medics. The police used so much pepper spray that everyone near the front of the
crowd could feel it in their throats and lungs.

The masked \"black bloc\" took the brunt of the assault. Though the media has portrayed these anarchists as violent and out of control, they showed tremendous discipline, courage, and creativity -- helping people who were stuck at the front of the crowd and didn\'t want to be there get away from police who tried to pull them over barricades; pressing forward in waves to continue confronting the line of riot police who were preventing us from getting close enough to the debate hall for us to be able to make the media and the candidates hear our message; generating a strong spirit of resistance that refused to give into police repression or degenerate into violence against the police.
Gore supporters punched marchers and broke a wooden cross over one demonstrator\'s head. Police treated people on the front lines brutally. But in an entire night near the frontlines I only witnessed one act of violence from our side: a man threw a plastic bottle and people around him immediately confronted him and told him to stop.
The brutal response of police to people engaging in nonviolent direct action from the WTO protests in Seattle to the demonstrations at the debates in Boston brings home the painful reality that domestic policy in the US is now being guided by the same policy that guides US foreign policy. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson crudely summarized this principle when he said \"Other people want what we have, and we aren\'t going to give it to them.\" Globally, the US has used its military to force other countries to grant us access to their labor, their forests, and their minerals. Domestically, prisons, racial profiling, and police brutality keep the poor \"in their place.\" The violent suppression of nonviolent protests fits this pattern. But it also undermines the government\'s moral authority -- if a government needs riot police to keep people from disrupting presidential debates, can anyone say the election is really democratic?

Facing down police violence, we hold up a mirror, showing our culture how monstrous our own institutions become when we as a society forget the sacredness of each life, the integrity of each will. Taking risks together, we build new communities bound together by our love and respect for each other as nonviolent warriors who are willing to make great sacrifices in order to stop the destruction of the Earth and her children.
Coming together as a community to make decisions and take action, we build democracy in the streets.

A Mayan prophesy says that in the years to come Huixilopoctli, the hummingbird goddess, will break the world open with her beak unleashing the chaos that will wash away darkness and bring us into a new world of peace and light. The hummingbird symbolizes the will of the people -- frantic, chaotic and shockingly beautiful, longing to see its rainbow feathers in the light of a new sun. In Boston on Tuesday I felt the spirit of Huixilopoctli flying though the crowd, saw the flash of her brilliant colors through the corner of my eye. Huixilopoctli flew out of the clouds of gas, away from the swinging batons, eastward toward morning. Thousands are now following her path, trying to catch a glimpse of her beauty again before she flies on further.
This is what democracy looks like.