Sat
Apr
4th
Boston.com home of great galleries and my thoughts on dissent
Demonstrators climb out of the broken windows of a Royal Bank of Scotland branch, near the Bank of England in London April 1, 2009. (REUTERS/Andrew Winning) #
Without much intent but on a regular basis I find myself viewing a wonderful gallery via boston.com. I really appreciate the photos they pull together to visually tell a news story. The captions are minimal and let the photos do the talking.
This morning I've come across a gallery of photos from the protests against the G20 conference in London. The photos capture the push and pull of protesters and police but they also capture something else. The journalists themselves. Photo number eleven and twelve are amazing, three or four protesters with a message and two dozen professional cameras trained upon them.
I can remember protesting the lead up to the second Iraq war and wondering if we would get any coverage, obviously we didn't get enough. Now that we are few more years into the digital age I feel it's easier to get that coverage, especially if a protester is willing to take violent or extreme action. Such action feeds the media.
In turn it also feeds the police state that we've found ourselves in and by escalating the situation the police further militarize themselves and their actions.
Protesters and dissenters feed on the lunacy of a police state and since the media gives little coverage to little else but violent action, that is the path they take.
It's a circle of violence and it's only taking us down a path that will cause more pain.
What can a dissenter hope to accomplish then? We can hope to find ways and means that disarm our police-state and make their method of containment pointless.
Is this possible? It must be, our only other choice is razing the fields that we have sowed for so long.
You say we don't have to anything anyways? You don't really believe the economy is fixing itself right now? Do you?
