Little Eichmann of the Day

I'm proposing a new feature for the progressive Canadian blogosphere: Little Eichmann of the Day, awarded to the functionary / cog in the apparatus of repression whose actions best combine bureaucratic compliance with an utter lack of any moral sense.

Just to be clear: you don't need to be wearing swastikas, goose-stepping, or perpetrating genocide to exhibit these qualities, and I'm not saying these people are Nazis.

Today's nominee: the B.C. Attorney-General's Office.

Alison has posted this horrifying story about Betty Krawczyk at the Galloping Beaver and at Creekside; I urge you to read it. She is a grandmother in her 80s. While she has never harmed another human being, nor has she even damaged a single piece of logging or construction equipment, she has been hit with eight jail sentences. Now the Crown wants to argue that she suffers from a personality disorder or mental illness and use that as an excuse to lock her up for the rest of her life.

The money passage (link here): 

Her real crime in the eyes of the courts is that she challenges the legitimacy of the judicial system to criminalize dissent, to punish protesting:

"I won’t do community service should that be part of my sentence. I have done community service all of my life and I have done it for love. I refuse to have community service imposed on me as a punishment. And I won’t pay a fine or allow anyone else to pay a fine for me. I won’t accept any part of electronic monitoring as I would consider that an enforced internalization of a guilt I don’t feel and don’t accept and I refuse to internalize this court’s opinion of me by policing myself."

Back to jail for Betty K.
After serving out her last sentence in full, Betty appealed it on the grounds that the squelching of protest inconvenient to corporations and governments is an illegitimate use of the legal system.

The Attorney General's response to her appeal has been to recommend the court re-sentence her under the rules of "accumulated convictions", designate her a chronic offender, and lock her up for life!

I'm sure Michael Brundrett is just following orders.

Update: Cliff at Rusty Idols has beaten me to it, as has Chet Scoville, but yes, it's the old Soviet model: redefine dissent and opposition to the State as a form of mental illness and then you can incarcerate people indefinitely. For their own good, of course. 

The G20 and the criminalization of dissent

Public protest, activism and dissent are long-established and honourable traditions. From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, no society, no matter how egalitarian and how well-resourced, can make progress without people -- inside or outside the loci of power -- who are willing to stand up and risk censure or worse for pointing out that the emperor is naked. The Industrial Revolution prompted class consciousness. Women's activists brought universal suffrage. Labour activism and organization brought us the 40-hour work week, the weekend, and benefits. All of those are under attack now; nothing new there.

What is new, and especially worrisome, is the obvious state / corporate goal of tarring the very idea of activism itself. Thanks to the narrative propagated 24/7 this weekend in connection with the G20 -- the seeds of which were clearly sown weeks, if not years, in advance -- it'll be impossible even to use the words "protest," "demonstration," and "activism" without thinking of burning police cruisers, smashed store windows, and violent confrontation. In the days and weeks to come, we'll be hearing tropes like "violent black-clad anarchist thugs" so frequently that they'll become part of the subconscious noise. They'll become the norms. They'll become so ingrained that any suggestion that activism or opposition to the G20 / corporate agenda might be justified will come as a shock, a departure from established and acceptable ways of thinking.

Separating words from their meanings has always been part of the apparatus of repression, of distraction, of domination. In the United States, right-wing operatives have successfully turned the term “liberal” into an epithet. That strategy is clearly at work here, now, with the endless display of violent images and the feverish efforts to entrench a manufactured storyline – one we can all write in our sleep. Violent protestors are used to justify a massive investment in security and coercive state actions, which then have a chilling effect on further public participation. No one will want to be tarred with labels like “activist.” How convenient for the powerbrokers orchestrating events. God knows, democracy can be messy and unpredictable and even interfere with profit-seeking.



We cannot meet the operators / foot-soldiers of the corporate / state security apparatus on their own turf. They'll always have more guns, gas, tasers, truncheons and testosterone. Our best strategy is to undermine the narrative. We can't let them associate protest, demonstration and activism with negative connotations (as is clearly their strategy). We must challenge the storyline at every possible opportunity. Undercover cops as agents provocateurs? Unprovoked violence against peaceful demonstrators? Wholesale suspension of our fundamental rights? Rousting people from their beds in midnight raids? Privileged access to G20 leaders for business leaders and other ruling-class functionaries?

This is a challenge that goes beyond this weekend's G20 events in Toronto. What's at stake is the very idea of public participation, the very notion that we have rights that go beyond the channels so carefully delineated for us.