So there's an article in today's Chronicle about how some fringe environmental folks are increasingly turning to blowing things up as a form of protest. Some are saying that since there have been crackdowns from the government on legimate forms of protest, they are left with little choice.
I have to confess to a twinge of amusement when I heard about the SUV and Hummer vandalism a few weeks ago. (I hates me some Hummers — what a pointless form of transportation. The Hummer started getting marketed to consumers after the first Gulf War. Nuff said.) But still, bombing offices? Or worse, going after executives homes, which is supposedly the next step in the Chiron protests?
What happened to civil disobedience? Or Michael Moore-type tactics, like bringing the Washington D.C.'s Gay Men's Chorus to sing "On the Street Where You Live" at the home of Jesse Helms?
Once you start viewing the world as being at war, it's very hard to turn that off, and it unleashes all kinds of ugliness. I don't think there's a single terrorist alive who thinks "I'm going to go do evil things today!" Nope, they think they're part of "Operation Just Cause" (say, what a great name for a military action.)
Yes, I'm against animal testing, or at least for doing as little of it as possible, in a humane way. Yes, I hate SUVs and I worry about global warming. I'm angry at our government, oh yeah. But I want to yell at those stupid violent protesters, "Gee, THANKS A LOT FOR MAKING OUR SIDE LOOK BAD!!!"
A few weeks ago I had dinner with my parents and a friend of theirs who was visiting from New York. She kept mentioning her friend Kathy who was in prison and coming up for parole soon... turns out it was Kathy Boudin, who used to be a member of the Weather Underground, was in hiding for ten years, and finally got caught after a violent armoured-car robbery with the Black Liberation Underground. (She didn't shoot anybody.) My parents' friend explained that since she was on the run and the FBI had infiltrated the mainstream liberal organizations, she was pretty much driven towards the more extreme fringe groups. She's apparently a great person, and her life has been ruined... and she hasn't gotten to do all the great things for the world she probably hoped to do.
People just don't learn from the past, though...
--> "Activists see more violent activity from extreme protesters", September 6, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle, sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/06/MN258847.DTL
--> "The Object of the Outrage", Anna Quindlan, Newsweek, September 8, 2003, www.msnbc.com/news/959312.asp
