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Anyone who serves the public -- from "officer friendly" on the street to the man in the oval office -- takes an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, yet without any fear of being held accountable, all of them have violated that oath by participating in the process of disrupting peaceful assemblies from coast to coast -- from giving tacit consent to using any means necessary to exercising those means by force. to suppress the constitutional right of "we the people" to peaceably assemble.
Sure the police were "just following orders," but that claim is nothing more than a convenient excuse expressed by cowards in a vain attempt to conceal their abject failure to object to an unlawful order hiding behind ignorance of the law to break it by swinging a night stick at somebody just like them, or pepper spraying somebody trying to get by just like them -- somebody created in God's image just like them, at least according to the true believers who stand by in the silence of complicity, watching a crime being committed by instrumentalities of The State against people just like them or shamelessly applauding violent repression and the dismantling of the rule of law.
With rare exception [e.g. Mayor Jerry Jennings of Albany NY], the mayors and governors violated that same oath as well and showed utter contempt for the supreme law of the land, i.e. the Constitution, by replacing it with arbitrary and capricious legal justifications or reducing their argument to pathetic rationalizations expressed in newly found concerns for public health and gun violence. These petty state and local politicians, with their perverted priorities, protected the interests of the privileged few instead of the majority of the people they're supposed to represent by unleashing gangs of armed men to crush dissent and calling it "law and order."
Indeed, where are the limitations on peaceable assembly enunciated? In what legal document(s) are time constraints and/or manners e.g. with or without sleeping bags placed on peaceable assembly located? Where are these interpretations of what was originally intended to reflect a society in which "government" will not make any laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble; and to petition the government for a redress of grievance"? In fact, any encumbrance would render these rights meaningless, for when "the state" decides when, where and how one is to peaceably assemble to speak, that freedom no longer exists in direct proportion to the amount of influence "The State" has on codifying and legislatively imposing time, place and manner constraints on the First Amendment and how it is to be exercised. After 235 years, our representatives have added so many small constraints on the First Amendment to render it meaningless.
Ironically, this President took an oath not once, but twice, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic. Yet when the Constitution was being violated here at home, our President would only say that he understood the frustrations of the people demonstrating, but did nothing to protect their right to peaceably assemble -- once again providing another example of rhetoric that isn't matched by reality.
On Feb. 1, 2011, President Obama said: "To the people of Egypt, particularly the young people of Egypt, I want to be clear, "We hear your voices.'" And during a White House news conference on Feb. 15, he said: "I find it ironic that you've got the Iranian regime pretending to celebrate what happened in Egypt, when in fact they have acted in direct contrast to what happened in Egypt by gunning down and beating people who were trying to express themselves peacefully." Personally, I find it ironic that in Iran people don't have a right to peacefully assemble while in the U.S. people do have that right -- at least until they try to exercise it. That's when police here act just like the police in Iran, exposing the empty rhetoric of American exceptionalism by shattering yet another myth about ourselves, for we are not "the world's leading democracy."
When the example we are leading with is the one which says might makes right, it is no different than similar forms of coercion used by the thugs and tyrants that we condemn in the rest of the world who suppress the freedom of their people.
The change I was hoping for won't happen until my President upholds his oath of office by nationalizing the state militia and sending them to the occupy camps across the country to protect those who are exercising their freedom to peacefully assemble to speak truth to power when government is no longer "promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty."
Perhaps all those veterans who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and were willing to make the supreme sacrifice of their lives overseas to keep that oath so we could enjoy our freedom here at home will return from places like Iraq and Afghanistan to keep that oath here at home by defending those exercising the freedom to peaceably assemble against those domestic enemies of the Constitution here at home -- if for nothing more than to honor their fallen comrades throughout our history by insuring that their sacrifice was not in vain.
