The G20 protests, bail, and rights restrictions: a ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ society?

According to internet reports, after having been threatened with solitary confinement in the Toronto East Detention Centre’s “hole” (likely not a euphemism) without being permitted any communication and after having been refused contact with legal counsel, G20 arrestee Alex Hundert has been ‘released’ on bail.  Alex’s bail restrictions are nothing short of incredibly restrictive: amongst other conditions, he is not to directly or indirectly post anything on the internet, he is not to associate or communicate with any number of fellow community organizers and activists, he is not to attend or plan any public meeting or demonstration, and perhaps most tellingly, he is not to express views on political issues.

Bail conditions and restrictions are supposed to be a way for someone charged with an offence to be released with a restrictions to prevent further alleged crimes from being committed.  The restrictions in Alex’s case beg the question: what are the Crown prosecutors and courts concerned about?

Restricting Alex’s freedom of expression – taking away his human freedom, his human right, to have an opinion and share it – shows that the threat that he poses to the Canadian “public order” is not any action that Alex could take, out on the street with a sign, but his very thoughts and opinions.

Here’s what happens in an allegedly “free” and “democratic” society when your opinions and your thoughts and your political stances threaten the dominant order.  You get your rights restricted.  Speak truth about power? Now you’re not allowed to speak.

‘Constitutionally’ guaranteed rights?

Alex is not the only activist facing charges or restrictions of their civil liberties, but his bail conditions seem to be the most restrictive.  Importantly, his bail conditions significantly infringe on his theoretically guaranteed rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – part of Canada’s constitutional law – notably those found under section 2, labelled as our “fundamental freedoms.”  Alex’s bail conditions expressly and clearly violate his freedoms of opinion, expression, and assembly.

At first blush, readers would be forgiven for wondering just how the courts could impose such restrictive conditions, especially restrictions that so clearly and flagrantly violate fundamental freedoms.  Especially those that are supposedly guaranteed under the constitution of our country, which takes great pride in publicly trumpeting its fairness and its democracy to the rest of the world.

Well, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms opens with an important clause: all of the rights contained within are subject to “such reasonable limits, prescribed by law, as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”  So, folks, your rights contain a very important expiry clause in the fine print.

According to the Toronto Star, York University Osgoode Hall Law School professor Alan Young says

[T]he court has gone too far.

“It’s basically putting a gag order on a citizen of Canada, when it’s not clear that the gag order is at all necessary to protect public order,” he said, of Hundert’s restriction from speaking to the media.

“People have to be able to air grievances, and the media is a primary tool in which people can air grievances effectively.”

Young called the strict bail conditions “astonishing” — something unheard of in modern-day Canada.

This means that the government and the courts can – and do, regularly – infringe on your rights.  In order to do this, they just have to plan to meet what’s called the “Oakes test,” judicial jargon for an analytical test applied to the situation to see if the restrictions are permitted under the constitution.

The Oakes test is generally stated as follows: any restrictions to Charter Rights must be prescribed in law in order to realize a “pressing and substantial objective,” the restriction must have a “rational connection” to that objective, there must be a “minimal impairment” of rights in order to accomplish the objective, and there must be “proportionality” between the effects of the restriction and the objective that the restriction is intending to achieve.

Working through this not in a straight line, it is obvious that Alex’s (and others) rights are being infringed.  He’s not allowed to attend public meetings or express views on political issues.  There’s the infringement right there, plain as day.

The infringement is indeed prescribed in law – the Criminal Code of Canada allows for “interim release” before trial (bail) to be granted, with effectively any restrictions imposed by a justice on the recommendation of a Crown prosecutor, provided that they are ‘reasonable.’

However, in order to think about whether or not the restrictions in Alex’s case have a rational connection to an objective, a minimal impairment of rights, and whether or not there is any proportionality, we need to first tease out the objective.  What is it that the Crown and government are trying to do, in order to impose these restrictions?

The answer is effectively provided by the law – bail restrictions and conditions can be imposed in order to maintain public order and prevent crimes from being committed.  Seems simple.  But it’s not.

How is Alex speaking or expressing political views committing a crime? This isn’t a crime.  In fact, it’s a protected activity under the Charter.  So it’s an infringement.  And it’s not a pressing or substantial objective, unless Alex was inciting violence with his public opinions, which he wasn’t (and he’d be charged with something other than conspiracy if he was).  And since there isn’t really a pressing or substantial objective to be achieved, invoking this part of the legislation to restrict Alex’s freedoms through bail would fail the Oakes test.  No need to think about proportionality or the other bits.

However, the Crown could argue that ‘public order’ was threatened, and the Criminal Code allows the justice impose conditions if s/he finds them “desirable” in this case.  So let’s walk through the test again: is the infringement prescribed by law? Yes, the Criminal Code.  Is there an objective? Yes: protect ‘public order’ by preventing Alex from expressing opinions or attending public meetings.  Rational connection to the objective? If the objective is to maintain public order by preventing Alex from speaking, yes, this is a rational connection.  Minimal impairment of rights and proportionality? These are connected to the objective: if Alex’s opinions threaten public order, then his expressing those opinions must be prevented, and arguably, this is as minimal an impairment as one can get.  Proportionality? Arguable.  But it seems to have been argued and accepted.

What’s really terrifying here is the concept that the Crown could – and seems to have – argue that allowing Alex Hundert to express his political opinion threatens the public order or safety.

When opinions are so dangerous they threaten public order [read: 'hegemony']

Now, I come to this conclusion through some entirely untrained legal analysis.  Any second-year law student might be able to poke holes in my analysis above.

But here’s the deal: there is really only one way – with two sides – that the restrictions being imposed on Alex and others can be justified under the Canadian constitution and legal framework.  And it’s this: Alex Hundert, and his opinions and actions, threaten the “public order.”  The two sides are at odds: either this threat exists because Alex is out inciting violence daily and would do so again if released, or that Alex’s opinions, which are shared by so many, are so dangerous to “public order” that they can’t be shared.

The Crown prosecutors have argued the first side, that Alex and other activists are thugs that are just out for ‘smashy smashy’ and destroying everything in sight.  But that’s not the case – and the prosecutors know it.  What’s more dangerous to the public order – and by this I mean capitalism, neoliberalism, colonialism, and so forth – is the opinions and views that Alex and so many others hold.

These opinions and views are dangerous to the hegemony in which we find ourselves.  These opinions and views threaten the happy complacency of capitalism.  This is why Alex isn’t allowed to publicly, or even loudly, have political views.

The danger, of course, is that if they were widely spread, that if people heard what we – Alex and so many others – know and feel and see every day, then maybe we’d change something.

And that’s a threat to public order.

And that’s why Alex was pre-emptively arrested in a pre-dawn raid before the protests happened.  Before any streets were closed.  Before any windows were broken.

And that’s why the government wants to silence him.

And so many others.

And you.

Rights aren’t things ‘granted’ by ‘governments’

An important thing to remember here is that rights aren’t things that government deign to grant to us.  The rights that are enumerated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms aren’t things that Trudeau and Levesque and other politicians thought up and put on paper and had ol’ Liz II sign off on in Ottawa on Parliament Hill.

Our ‘right’ to have an opinion, to associate with the people we choose and love, is a condition, a facet, of our humanity.  Deny our ability to think, and you deny our humanity.  Deny our ability to dream of a better world, and you deny our ability to dream.

Rights aren’t things handed down from our political masters on high.  They’re truths and realities that we have to fight for.  They’re truths and realities that Alex fought for, and dared to share – and now he’s not allowed to share these views. These opinions.

These truths and realities.

It’s not any actions that Alex and others could take that threaten the “public order.”

It’s our thoughts.  And our views.  And our opinions.

A better world is needed.  We need to dream of it, we need to build it, we need to work for it.

And we can’t let them silence us.

Support the G20 arrestees, support freedom, support each other

By now, many of the readers of this website will have read about the ongoing legal battles faced by any number of activists involved in the G20 protests in Toronto.  Community organizers who had planned marches and protests in Toronto to resist the ongoing neoliberal agenda pushed by the G20, along with the governmental calls for ‘austerity’ measures, were preemptively arrested and charged with conspiracy charges.  Arrests, which often involve plainclothes Toronto Police Service officers grabbing people off of the streets and throwing them into unmarked vans, reminiscent of the ‘disappearances’ in military dictatorship era Argentina and Chile, are ongoing.

Legal restrictions on organising or even communicating are one facet of a broader campaign to quell dissent, chill organising, and silence people who think outside of the bounds proscribed for them by capitalism, neoliberalism, and the dominant order.

If you’re concerned about this, like I am, I encourage you to support the G20 arrestees  – financially, if you can, because defending against ridiculous and eventually-to-be-proven-as-illegal charges is incredibly expensive – or in person. On the street. However you can.

Visit the Community Solidarity Network’s website to learn how to donate online. And speak up.

Sitting here in Burnaby, it’s interesting observing the protests in Toronto on television or through social media.  Were I in Toronto, I would have been on the streets.  It would have been terrifying.  But it would have been liberating.

Yes, the protests and actions smashed some windows and burned some police cars.  Yes, the black bloc tactic was employed.  Yes, there were thousands in the streets.  But there’s a reason for this.  The people who are meeting in the downtown core of Toronto as part of the G8 and G20 are our “leaders,” our “politicians,” and they are the people who, according to the popular mythology, we have elected to do the peoples’ work.

But they’re not doing that work.  And the people are rightfully unhappy.  And they want to protest this lack of work.  And they do.  And the police put on their riot gear and pick up their batons and pepper spray and beat back the people in the streets.  Why? They’re “protecting” the people in the meeting from the people in the streets.

The protestors in the streets of Toronto, of Vancouver, of Genoa, of Buenos Aires, of Santiago, of Johannesburg, and of so many other cities and towns and places around the world are demanding a different world.  And they’re demanding a different world, a better world, in the only way that might be left.

Emma Goldman famously said, “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  So many of the people in the streets of Toronto today were there because they voted for a difference.  And no matter who was in power, promising that difference, it has yet to come.

The media argue that the protestors in the streets have resorted to “violence.”  Smashing a window is not violence.  It is destruction of property, certainly, but not violence.  And the property being destroyed when someone smashes a window of a bank or a transnational corporation is but one manifestation of an inherently violent system, capitalism, which requires subjugation and exploited labour and alienation.  The window of a bank is one manifestation of a system with forcibly enclosed public spaces, which removed people from lands and removes the product of peoples’ work from their own control merely because they must work to survive.

The smashing of a window is an act of freedom, as it smashes the manifestation of the violent system and strikes at its heart.

And our “leaders,” the politicians, know the violence of the system and its inherent contradictions.  The capitalistic desire to profit more created the commercial ‘products’ and predatory lending and so forth that caused the economic crises that that hurt so many.  The crises that the G8/G20 meetings are struggling to address, in order to restabilize capitalism.

And the people don’t want this.  They want their education system to be free and of high quality.  They want public health care.  They want equality and freedom.  This is the peoples’ work, and it is what so many of us vote for, when we are permitted to vote.

But our “leaders” aren’t doing this work.  And so the people are in the streets, protesting.

And the fences go up, and the police march in, and the boots come down, to protect the people who have been elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who elected them.  Who want them to do their work.

Friends, we have a choice.  We can continue to hope that the people that we vote for will actually do the work that we want them to do.  Or we can do it ourselves.

I’ll see you in the streets.

If you’re on Twitter (I admit it, I have an account), or on Facebook, or if you’ve watched anything approaching television news in the past few days, you’ll likely have noted that there’s something going down in Iran — especially if you’re on Twitter, where the tag #iranelection has been a trending topic for the past week.

According to the internets, millions of people have been on the streets in Tehran and around Iran recently protesting — at first, they were protesting what they felt was an unfair and rigged election, where the results of an election in which over 40 million people voted were announced two hours after polls closed — and now they are protesting what appears to be, prima facie, extreme violence and repression on the part of a state and a ‘supreme leader‘ who has demanded that all those in the streets return home and accept the results without complaint.

While I will wholeheartedly and emphatically note that I am not an Iran expert, I will comment on the developments as I have observed them, through the media, through online sources, and through discussing the situation with members of the Iranian community at school.  There’s something big happening, and I think that we all need to pay some serious attention.

One thing that particularly strikes me is the power of the people in the streets.  The protests have been described as “amorphous and leaderless,” with some commentators using this as their indicator of an inevitable doom.  Despite these dire predictions, the protests have not waned.  Despite the orders of the Supreme Leader to accept the election results and stop protesting, millions are in the streets.  Despite the blood on the pavement, they are on the street.

Those in Iran, and many thousands and millions around the world, are watching the developments through updates from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.  While it took some time for the mass media to catch up, they have — and while CNN is continuously waving the fax it received from the Iranian Ministry of Culture prohibiting it from broadcasting from the country — the whole world is watching the protests and the violent repression from the Iranian state.

The people in the streets are chanting as they protest.  At first, it was “where is my vote?” Now it is “No more Pinochets.”  At night it is “Allah-o-akbar” (god is great), shouted from the rooftops.  See a haunting video of this here.  As the Iranians chant and protest, there are plainclothes state militia in the street — the basij — literally hunting them down.  One particularly terrifying video is apparently that of the death of a girl named “Neda” who died in the streets of Tehran after being shot by riot police.  A not-safe-for-work and graphic video is online.

(Parenthetically, in this context, there’s no wonder why anarchists cry “smash the state,” especially the one that’s smashing you.)

a complicated situation

The situation is complicated.  I will admit that when I first heard of the Iranian elections — just over a week ago — my first thought was one of surprise that contested elections were actually allowed in Iran.  While there was a decidedly contested election going on  – many analysts, pre-vote, had thought that the 50% majority would not be reached in the first round, and that a second round of voting (that would have been held yesterday) was likely between current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and main opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi – the election was not particularly free, as the candidates must be approved by one of the religious governing bodies before they are allowed to compete.

As we now know, the election did not head to a run-off vote, because Ahmadinejad apparently won a stunning 2:1 majority, beating the other candidates by millions of votes — in many cases, even in their home towns and provinces, which is unheard of in the ethnically divided Iran.  Even more stunning is the speed with which results were announced — as I noted above, the millions and millions of votes were apparently counted within only a couple of hours.

That’s where the protests started.  The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ‘blessed’ the results after they had been provisionally announced.  Many have commented that Khamenei was a supporter of Ahmadinejad going into the election.  Moussavi, a ‘reformer,’ isn’t exactly a radical reformer — he has been the Prime Minister of Iran, and was involved in the 1979 Islamic revolution — but his campaign apparently included pledges to increase awareness in ‘what’s going on’ in government and a potentially more diplomatic relationship with other states in the world, in comparison to Ahmadinejad, who’s well-known in the western world for claiming that there are ‘no homosexuals’ in Iran and other grandiose statements.

In my mind, I can’t endorse or even comment on the candidates themselves.  It’s politics of another state that I don’t fully understand, and there’s an abundance of caution necessary — I don’t particularly want to support a candidate who may not be any better than the current crew.

I can, however, be opposed to oppression and repression — especially the kind that I’ve seen on the internet and in the media as of late.

the amorphous and leaderless movement

It’s also on the internet and through the media that I’ve seen some of the most promising and interesting examples of the amorphous and leaderless movement.

Much of the non-Iranian western world caught wind of what’s going on in Iran through Twitter, because the media basically ignored developments.  On Twitter, thousands of members quickly began following developments and spreading word of what was happening.  How this happened was quite interesting

The development of the #iranelection hashtag
On Twitter, users can choose a one-word discussion topic ‘title’, preface it with a #, and it becomes a hashtag — a tag that can be embedded or added at the end of an individual post (called a ‘tweet’) that allows for the threading and grouping of discussions.  Most interfaces to Twitter, through the main website or separate applications, allow for navigation by hashtags.  The development of a hashtag is an interesting observation in psychology — many potentialities are explored, with one becoming dominant.  According to an online trend tracker for Twitter, the now-dominant tag #iranelection first appeared at about 16:30 on 12 June 2009 — just over a week ago.  Since then, it’s become the most popular tag on Twitter for some time — generally called a ‘trending topic’.

a leaderless, amorphous — but organised — movement
A large amount of the online discussion around the elections in Iran at first focused on reports of Iranian twitterers providing first-person accounts of what was going on.  These first-hand accounts were ‘re-tweeted’ (repeated) by other interested twitterers, to ensure that the messages were heard.  During the last few days of the election, the discussion centred around the fact that internet access and Facebook was often cut off — these being important organising avenues for the opposition supporters — service drops that were perceived to support Ahmadinejad.

It is interesting to note the effectiveness of the leaderless and amorphous movement when it comes to spreading information and eliciting support and action on the part of many of the twitterers.  It was quickly noted that re-tweeting posts that included Iranian twitterer user names was problematic, as it was rumoured that Iranian state agents were on the website tracking users and finding them in their neighbourhoods and homes.  This message was rapidly re-tweeted, and it is exceedingly rare to now find a message from anyone from Iran being re-tweeted with user names or other identifying information — members of Twitter are actively working on supporting each other and keeping each other safe.  A movement to shade user icons (avatars) green to show support for the Iranians quickly flourished, and now a preponderance of user icons in the #iranelection discussion are green.  A second urgent message quickly spread throughout the discussion: all users were encouraged to change their profile locations to Tehran, and their time zones to the one that matched the Iranian time zone, in an attempt to confuse Iranian government agents.

twitter discourse
The discourse observable on Twitter was somewhat like Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action – certain claims of valid information were presented in a public forum, were considered by the participants, and were acted upon.  Rational and logical claims tended to succeed — it made sense that user names should not be repeated, that the phrasing of re-tweeted messages should be altered to prevent simple searches from identifying users, and that changing time zones and locations may help confuse state authorities.  In a way, the discourse worked best because it was not led by a specific leader — all could participate.

As the protests ramped up in intensity, it was also interesting to note the kind of information being passed through the Twitter website.  Many users, not from Iran, began posting links to first-aid guides on the internet, and multi-lingual users aided in translation of such guides into Farsi.  Twitter was also used to quickly and rapidly spread information about the location of protests and rallies in Tehran and the rest of Iran — while internet access, cellphone service, and SMS capabilities were variably available, often being shut down by the state, activists shared information as quickly as they could and in as many different fora as possible — Twitter became one of them.

In the days following the ‘results’ of the election, silent and peaceful protests in Iran were the norm.  Following Supreme Leader Khamenei’s sermon during Friday prayers, where he told Iranians to cease protesting, and implicitly threatened any who continued to rally, the protests turned ugly.  Here, Twitter began spreading useful information: some users began tweeting remedies and solutions for tear gas, while others began advertising foreign embassies where injured protesters could seek refuge.  (Sadly, the Canadian embassy was closed and refusing entry — not a major surprise…)

they even attacked the universities…
To add to the horrors, the Iranian militia attacked the universities of Iran.  They stormed the dormitories, and attacked the students holed up inside, the students who were communicating for their fellow people with the rest of the world, the students who were organising many of the protests.  In Iran, like many other places in the world, it is illegal for military or police to even enter university campuses — hence the horrendous ramifications of police murders in universities.

the leaders will be responsible
While Khamenei threatened Moussavi with holding him responsible for any violence that occurred, as he was a ‘leader’ of the protests, I would argue that the situation has progressed beyond the point where Moussavi is in any true leadership position.  The second that the state militia began firing on civilians who were peacefully protesting, a rubicon was crossed — the movement in Iran (and around the world) is no longer one for Moussavi — it is for the Iranians.

leaderless and amorphous: a strong organising model

The amorphous and leaderless movement is actually a strong point of organising instead of  the prophesied fatal weakness.  Just as the discourse on Twitter has shown the ability for masses of people to collectively share vital information and collectively strategise and organise, so too has other social media and technology — when Iranians are not able to access the internet, they are able to SMS, or they are able to use telephones, or they are able to shout from their rooftops.  The lack of a specific leader provides a significant challenge to the state authorities who cannot arrest a single person and assume that they have cut off the head of the snake — the leaderless and amorphous movement has, using the same metaphor, more heads than a hydra.

The leaderless and amorphous movement has also turned what could have been regarded as a simply parochial dispute over likely rigged elections into something that millions of people around the world are actively taking interest in, and taking action on.  The lack of a leader has allowed the thousands of activists around the world to actively contribute to the online and real-world discussions around the protests.  The amorphous nature has allowed each to contribute.  This is basically a validation of the anarchist model of organising: there are no leaders, and everyone contributes.  The nature of the discourse allows for various statements and validity claims to be evaluated and acted upon.  The nature of the organising model also allows for a quick and efficient ‘weeding’ function: suspected ‘trolls’ or government agents are readily identified (they may have only recently joined Twitter, etc, or they may be maliciously spreading false information — something readily detected) and the movement continues on strong.

Rather than being a movement that is built around a strong leader — which might otherwise quickly decline into a personality cult such as Peronism in Argentina — the movement in Iran (and around the world) is built around a strong idea.  The structure of political life in Iran is most certainly not leaderless nor amorphous; indeed, there is a ‘Supreme Leader’ and a structure so strong that it is ‘taboo’ to challenge it.  The leaderless and amorphous movement for freedom, peace, and democracy allows the protesters to imagine an alternative that would allow them to participate and take control of their own lives — and that is likely an additional reason why it is alluring.  Such an allure is likely also attractive to the rest of us in the world.

Adding state-sanctioned violence into the mix likely doesn’t help: there’s nothing that can lose a regime’s legitimacy more, or quicker, than killing its own citizens, simply because they are in the street voicing their displeasure.  Weber argued that a ‘state’ is something that has a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence; the state of Iran is quickly losing the legitimacy, and with it, the monopoly.

challenging the ‘realist’ model, and de-centering the state writ large

The developments in Iran, aside from illustrating the power of a decentralised organising model, also have begun to highlight problems with the classical ‘realist‘ conception of international politics.  Realism, for those not entirely familiar with the intricacies of international relations theoretical standpoints, is based on the premise that states are the primary political actors.  This theoretical standpoint is so pervasive that it is argued to simply be the ‘reality’ of the way things work, hence the name.  However, realism cannot handle nor deal properly with actors on international levels that are not states — when a terrorist network attacks the United States, the United States, in realist mode, needs to attack a state in return, so they attack Afghanistan.  Wars on things that are not states do not fit into the realist paradigm.

The Iranians in the street do not fit into the realist paradigm.  They are in the Iranian state, but they are not the Iranian state — indeed, they are actively organising and acting against it.  A number of United States Twitter users have remarked on this, noting the sharp difference between the individuals and their leadership — and they note that this division should be remembered for the next time that their state wishes to bomb another.

The current developments in Iran do not fit into the realist paradigm, and this is likely a very good thing.  Here, the state is acting against the people — and the paradigm dictates that a state is the ultimate political actor.  Here, many people around the world feel that it would be unjust to privilege the Iranian state, and those in control of it, over the people in the streets — likely because they could imagine themselves in a similar position.  This challenge to the realist paradigm is much needed, because it takes the state out of the centre of the political sphere, and puts people back into the centre.

hope for the future

The protests in Iran open up a window of hope for the future — both of Iran and of the rest of the world.  Despite the police and military crackdowns, and the horrific and terrifying murders of innocent civilians, who are in the streets protesting the murder of other innocent civilians, there is hope for the future.

For Iran, it is hope that the people who are struggling for a free, peaceful, and democratic future may actually be able to achieve this entirely laudable goal.  The way that the protesters are able to organise themselves and resist the tyrannical and murderous orders of the state in an attempt to see that their votes are counted properly and that they could potentially exercise a bit of control in their lives.  Why should we not support this?

For the rest of the world, the hope is the same.  While it is not the case that we are all facing police bullets every day, the fact that there are some people out there who are should be enough to convince us that resting easy is not sufficient.

As I said above, the most powerful thing to me is the power of people in the streets.  There is an interesting quote from a New York Time columnist that I will reproduce here:

TEHRAN — The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basijmilitia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.

A facebook friend posted the following thought on Facebook:

[Bill] is glad that the Iranian protesters are receiving media coverage and public attention. But it’s also hard not to think about the fact that pro-democracy and labour movements all over the world deal with police brutality on a daily basis. We are very selective about what is seen as urgent, relevant and important. We could tweet pictures every week of protesters being shot by cops, somewhere…

My response? Simple.  ”…and we should.”

I’ll leave the end of this sudden-random essay with a repost of a translated Iranian blog, written just a day or two ago.  It illustrates the hope and resolve of the people protesting.

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”