Arresting Developments

So I’ve been joking about getting arrested (I shoulda done it with Cornel West! Though our current OWS boarder says she’d hold out for Christian Bale) for a while, and occasionally worried about it when fortifying myself for direct actions (see this post for that anxious but stubborn meditation)...

But watching the police harry the protestors out of privately owned public spaces (the winner of the 2011 Oxymoron Award, I hope) twice in less than two hours tonight has my knickers in a twist.

Freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly. Seeing as how our government is ignoring our petitions for redress of grievances, Freedom of Getting Shit Done (aka Good Governance) Ourselves. These are really important things, not just words to trot out at the 4^th of July… They are what makes us citizens of a great country, not consumers of a plastic-but-comfortable culture.

They can be just words, but the words made manifest can create a healthy and sustainable reality for a large and diverse group of people.

I’ve never been able to sit/stand through a whole GA (I can never hear past the tall backs and there are lots of people wonking off on polysyllabic jargon and I don’t have the patience to get through the personal agendas before we get to the real agenda. That’s why I chop carrots and carry soup…) But by golly, the wonking needs to happen, and it needs to happen in public.

And this is something I might just be willing to get arrested over.

Free speech. Free assembly. Free alia.

P.S: Happy New Year, wherever you may spend it...