A year or so back, a bunch of the "Black Lives Matter" people shut down all of the lanes of the Bay Bridge in lovely San Francisco for an hour and a half. Protesters chained themselves to cars that ran parallel on the lanes heading into San Francisco and were stopped, blocking all traffic.
The protest was claimed to have been organized by the "Black Seed" and "Black Queer Liberation Collective" as a statement against recent police shootings. That would be because, you know, nothing will get sympathy for your movement and objectives like shutting down a major highway and leaving innocent people with rapidly-filling bladders not knowing when they are going anywhere.
According to a published report from the CBS San Francisco affiliate, the protesters were "demanding divestment of city funds in policing, investment in affordable housing, the resignation of the Oakland mayor, the firing of the San Francisco and Oakland police chiefs and the termination of police officers involved in several recent shootings."
Claiming to be trying to "reclaim Dr. Martin Luther King's radical legacy and take a stand against anti-black racism and terrorism", the group said it was showing "resistance to a system that continues to oppress black, queer, brown, indigenous and other marginalized people throughout the Bay Area."
I read that and wondered a few things. First, where were the Asians on the list? If they are not one of the "marginalized people", then are they part of the system oppressing them? Are they maybe just bystanders or something? They distinguished "black" and "brown." Is "brown" a code name for Hispanics, like the horribly oppressed one that murdered Kate Steinle on the pier, despite having been repeatedly deported and returning, or does "brown" include Indians and Middle Easterners?
Second, the California Highway Patrol was aware of the plans for the protest and even had crews at the toll plazas, but failed to be able to stop it. I might have tried closing a couple lanes proactively so they could be reopened after the protest started, but what do I know about traffic management. They ultimately arrested 25 of them but for just misdemeanors (false imprisonment, public nuisance, obstructing free passage) and no felonies. Why didn't the police make "a statement" by coming up with a felony charge or two to try to stop this sort of thing?
Finally, let's ask this -- at what point do more serious actions by global terrorists and those by groups like this collide? In other words, when does obstructing a vital city access like a bridge and imprisoning innocent people become tantamount to a terrorist act? What is a terrorist act, after all? It is an outrageous action taken to frighten a citizenry into changing their daily lives in fear that it might be repeated with them as victim. It is intended to make some kind of point, like "convert to our version of Islam or else", you know. Or "we want police chief X to resign." Get it?
My Best Girl and I saw this story on the news, and she immediately turned to me and asked "How is that not terrorism?" I have to admit, in a split second I thought "essay topic" even before I could answer her. Yes, I told her. Terrorism can vary by degree, and this doesn't come close to Paris or Boston or San Bernardino, or 9-11. But it's awfully hard to look at it as being of a different stripe, if not a much different level. Had a pregnant woman in one of those imprisoned cars -- your daughter or sister or niece -- gone into labor without medical attention, or a driver or passenger panicked into a heart attack, surely asking for a police chief to resign would seem like a pretty darn lame excuse.
I would close by asking yet another question. It's about that "system that continues to oppress black, queer, brown, indigenous and other marginalized people throughout the Bay Area." You know, the Bay Area that is by a long margin the, if not one of the, most liberal parts of the country. Who the heck is doing the oppressing? Do these people think that the mayors elected by all these liberals -- these people send Nancy Pelosi to Congress, after all -- readily supervise police chiefs they don't support?
The president of the United States was then Barack Obama, a flaming leftist and, by the way, black. The head of the Justice Department then was a liberal black woman who replaced an outrageously liberal black man. The head of the Department of Homeland Security was also, just saying, black, as was, ironically, the Secretary of Transportation. The lady who even now still whispers in Obama's ear, Valerie Jarrett, is ... OK, you get it. Opportunities are there for those who choose not to rob convenience stores, sell drugs and then get shot by police while resisting arrest.
I can't quite recall any of the organized protests of Martin Luther King that might be construed as terrorism. It's been 50 years, after all. But this kind of thing IS, and invoking his name is a pretty slippery slope.
Let's think about it.
Copyright 2017, 2016 by Robert Sutton
