Notes on the Oregon acquittal

The Twitter essay is, at best, an imprecise tool for presenting one’s views. It’s value lies in the its brevity and immediacy. Its flaws lie in its sequential nature on a platform that does not necessarily encourage sequential reading.

So, when I posted a six-part Twitter essay earlier today on yesterday’s verdict in the Oregon Bundy trial, I knew I was likely to be misunderstood.

At the same time, I knew my thinking on the Bundy case would fly in the face of the broader narrative. From the beginning, I was troubled both by the Bundy brothers and their followers — by their rhetoric, their readiness for violence, their commitment to firearms. At the same time and for very different reasons, I was troubled by the reaction from my fellow progressives — the accusations of treason, the calls for police action and a clampdown.

My argument — which you can read in detail here — was that we have to separate the Bundys and their aims from the use of occupation as a protest tool. Remember, there are precedents for occupation (from labor sit-ins and factory take-overs to Occupy Wall Street and the Dakota pipeline protests) and even for armed resistance (the early labor movement armed itself against the Pinkertons and the Black Panthers did the same in an effort to “police the police”).

Don’t get me wrong, I am opposed to violence. I subscribe to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s belief in non-violence, even though his message has been mangled and manipulated over the years. King urged non-violence, but encouraged disruption. He believed in creating tension and using that tension to force change. But I digress.

My point is that we should be careful with our language and arguments in the Bundy case. We can denounce their goals, their motivations and their methods, but we need to be careful not to do so in a way that will give authorities new tools that can be used to crack down on progressive protest — which we already are seeing.

I still believe this, and I think my Twitter essay, when taken as a whole, reflects this:

Let me be clear, though: I didn’t and still do not support what the Bundys did. I didn’t and still don’t support their use of firearms as implied threat. I didn’t and still don’t think they should be free from the legal consequences that come with what they did. But, and this is the key for me, I fear the potential that the federal government might overstep their power in political cases.

I didn’t follow the trial — like most of the people who have weighed in — so I can’t comment on the specifics of the prosecutors’ case. But I’m generally skeptical of the use of conspiracy statutes — as I am of the use of the Patriot Act and the expansive use of the RICO statute — and it appears that the jurors felt that the prosecutors failed to make their case.

via SIZZLE

One other point needs to be made: The racial optics of this case cannot be ignored. The fact that it was an all-white jury that acquitted the white defendants — at a moment in our history when black men and women are chewed up and spit out by a racially biased criminal justice system and when state and federal officials are cracking down on non-violent protesters in North Dakota — can’t be dismissed. Because of this, the ruling gives off a distinctive odor of privilege.

Rather than calling for a crack down on right-wing protests, we should be demanding the federal government back off in North Dakota, for police to tone down their aggressiveness, especially in urban areas. Rather than just being outraged by the acquittals in Oregon, we should be outraged at the excessive use of government power against its own citizens in North Dakota, Charlotte, Baton Rouge, Staten Island and all across this country.

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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