Images
of Civil Disobedience
The
pictures of the UC Davis protesters seemed eerily comparable to those of the
Birmingham protestors from the sixties. Personally, the pictures resonated with
me because the protesters are our age, they are on their college campus, and
they are being attacked by their campus police. College for a lot of people,
especially those who attend institutions like Rhodes, becomes sort of a haven,
a safe place. To think that that safe zone has been entirely destroyed for some
students by the very people who were supposed to guard it is disheartening and,
frankly, absurd.
Both
pictures created an uproar. People were absolutely outraged. Looking at the
pictures side by side, there are several sad similarities. In the UC Davis
picture, the students are sitting down with their arms linked. Their arms show
solidarity and unity. Their heads
are bent as they try to protect their faces from the pepper spray. They appear
absolutely nonthreatening. The Birmingham protesters are also sitting in a row,
showing no violent intentions. Both pictures cause the viewer to be angry at
the police officers and sympathetic towards the protesters. The police in both pictures are in the
obvious power position with the protesters being completely submissive.
At
one point, a newscaster placed blame on the security guards, not because they
pepper sprayed nonviolent protesters but because they should have known their
actions would be videotaped and displayed on the internet. Really? The media
has become an avenue for accountability. It is both disappointing that people
need the pressure of the media in order to do the right thing, and exciting
that people do have to take responsibility for their actions.
The
UC Davis pictures obviously did not spark an entire movement like the
Birmingham photos did, but they probably would have created even less of an
uproar if they also wouldn’t have been accompanied by the video. Would the UC
Davis incident have been national news if we didn’t have had pictures and
videos of it? Would the Birmingham riots have had such a profound effect on the
civil rights movement if there would not have been photos of it?
The UC Davis story struck a cord with me when it first broke, and my early perception of the events was conceived solely from the video provided by media outlets. Fully influenced by mass media, I believed that officers' actions were indeed egregious, and very much comparable to certain events that took place in during the Civil Rights movement.
ReplyDeleteThen I was sent this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hhPdH3wE0_Y (it's 15 minutes long, but its important).
The video shows much of what occurred before the instance caught in the photograph occurred. I don't think it justifies the officer's use of excessive force, but I find myself disgusted by the media's portrayal of the event in comparison to Birmingham. The actions of the UC Davis protesters were by no means entirely non-violent. At one point in the above video, hundreds of students circle around the officers and say that if they release the protesters who have already been arrested, they will allow the police to leave. Is that not an act of aggression? Did the Civil Rights movement include any openly threatening actions throughout its use of nonviolent protesting? Does chanting "Fuck the police," qualify as nonviolence now too?
The media, as the post mentions, comments on the shocking nature of those who are supposed to be protecting the people turn against them. But the media doesn't show the crowd's sudden turn the nature of their protest towards the officers. The crowd is no longer protesting the 1% or even participating in the OWS movement, they are protesting a group of campus safety officers doing their job, not to mention that campus safety officers don't exactly bring in the big bucks. The protesters turn the direction of their chants to public servants. They repeatedly antagonize these men who spend each and every one of their days protecting them. The actions of this crowd embarrass me as a member of their generation. The second the officers became the object of the crowd's protest is the second the parallel between this event and Birmingham is destroyed.
Like I said before, I don't think the officers were in the right to use the amount of force that they did, but honestly, I understand it. What I don't understand is how these self-righteous entitled children consider their actions to be an exhibit of non-violent protest.