WEBSITE UP!
www.defendpeacefulprotest.org
Great work from our two volunteer web designers who got a site up in under 24 hours! You can see some actions to take and we will be putting up more content as time goes on. Its early days yet so we dont have our own domain but this is only the beginning!
At the moment we are a loose collection of volunteers from all walks of life who have been united by the shocking use of violence displayed at the G20 protests. If you feel the same and want to change our policing for the better, email us!
no2policeviolence@googlemail.com
Archive of news about police violence and intimidation - see related facebook group http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=60467068334
My Blog List
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(9)
-
▼
April
(8)
- Police taser raids on whitechapel squats show poss...
- Website up!
- Update on campaign
- Legal ruling and opinion on kettling from an expert
- Ian tomlinson officer still not questioned by IPCC...
- another update on Police violence, campaign grows!
- Hi all,So according to the guardian, it now seems ...
- Updates pt 1: My personal position on how to app...
-
▼
April
(8)
About Me
2 comments:
Some questions arise from your website:
"Our campaign is inclusive, non-political, and advocates non-violence."
If your campaign is intended to be inclusive and non-political, why does it have an exclusive, political, position on 'non-violence'?
"We seek an independent investigation of all individual police officers that were alleged to have assaulted innocent protesters or passers-by."
What of 'guilty' protesters and passers-by, should assaults on them be ignored?
"We seek a police presence which supports and facilitates peaceful protest rather than one that deters or intimidates individuals from exercising their right to protest."
Why do you seek a police presence which deters or intimidates non-pacifists from exercising their right to protest?
As Frederick Douglass said:
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
Hi Bentham,
An answer to some of your questions.
Firstly I'd like to stress that this blog is a unedited archive for reference and some elements of the campaign and wording have been corrected and refined now on our main webpage and facebook group. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to do it on this particular blog.
Firstly you are correct in stating that our campaign is in some senses political, in our main website
www.defendpeacefulprotest.org that has been corrected to 'non-aligned'
"What of 'guilty' protesters and passers-by, should assaults on them be ignored?
Agree this should be corrected as essentially we are concerned with all instances of disproportionate use of force. We don't condone committing violent acts or criminal damage but equally the police should not mistreat people or use excess force in the process of arresting them for any crime they might be under suspicion of committing.
However, individual police officers also have a right to defend themselves from violence just as a protestor met with excessive force by a policeman would have the right to act to defend themselves from harm.
'Why do you seek a police presence which deters or intimidates non-pacifists from exercising their right to protest?'
You may need to clarify your own position here for me. I'm not sure you are correct in conflating pacifism with peaceful protest. Do you condone all forms of protest, violent or not?
My view is as follows:
The use of force by individual protestors to acheive their objectives has no more legitimacy than that of police to suppress peoples right to demonstrate. You may say I am being divisive, but an individual use of force to selfishly attempt to acheive one's aims is the truely divisive act.
You talk about non-pacifists right to protest. Firstly I would distinguish peaceful protest from pacifism. As I state above in my view those under threat from excessive force from either police or other individuals have the right to protect/defend themselves in a proportionate manner.
However, individual protestors have no right to infringe on the fundamental rights of others by committing acts of violence
Post a Comment