Forum Post: Who Will Guard the Guards?

That is to say, the police that are charged with our protection. For the sake of fine speaking, I will keep this sophisticated, as the lack of this has harmed your perception.

I don't speak contemptuously of you, nor do I speak with an eye to your full endorsement. But have you thought of this class of people - that is to say, the police - for whom you entrust your security? It is not enough that one occupies vast spaces for the purpose of airing your grievances. Your eyes are pepper sprayed and your heads bludgeoned in the effort, as if protest were for the purpose of soliciting war-like brutality - quite the opposite of which I would expect. Shall the vegan follow suit by petitioning for the right of land to establish a slaughterhouse?

To speak more plainly, the police are corruptible. Henry Thoreau enjoins us - 'If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.' Supposing the streets and busy thoroughfares of the sky are blocked - how shall we be conveyed to these airy castles? We will make our children heir to grounded poor-houses than these fine palaces, now mere monuments to lost ambition.

If the police have cordoned the mass of you to the fringes, our castles shall not go into disrepair from our being absent them. They are more easily persuaded by disobedience than by painted signs attesting your plight, as if the painted whore were sufficient for the young gentleman when his inheritance lies afoot; a woman of more facility will secure this. This movement is called 'Occupy Wall Street', though the skyward paths of the wealthy are free while your byways are blocked. The police are not so enriched in their position, though they tend to the keeping of blockades surrounding their own lives with surprising conviction. Are their own children so fortunate as to be afforded the means to hire out service for the keeping of their vaulted castles? They are as grounded as the beggar. The police will corner themselves into desperation before they have done so with you. If you have not the means to protest sufficiently, disobedience is the warrant of right. That is, to live by the sword for your own bulwark, than by the guards condemned.

It's said that he who lives by the sword will perish by it, though one mustn't need live by the sword to die from it. Best to secure our own protection by means of civil disobedience than to entrust to police the right of brutality.

-Marcus J