The American Uprising : Week One

If The Police & Army Won't Help Quell Protests, They'll Send In The Robots

By Darryl Mason

Extraordinary scenes from Wisconsin last week showing the birth of the anti-austerity/USUncut movement. An occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol was supposed to be ended by police, but a police union representative instead announced hundreds of police would be joining the occupation.



During the first UKUncut protests, British students chanted at police who were beating them, "Your Jobs Are Next!" American cops seem to already know this.

So who busts an occupation when the police number themselves as occupiers? The Army? Or the Homeland security teams being trained by Blackwater/XE?

And so the American Uprising begins.

MSNBC :

A crowd estimated at more than 70,000 people on Saturday waved American flags, sang the national anthem and called for the defeat of a Wisconsin plan to curb public sector unions that has galvanized opposition from the American labor movement.

In one of the biggest rallies at the state Capitol since the Vietnam War, union members and their supporters braved frigid temperatures and a light snowfall to show their displeasure.

The mood was upbeat despite the setback their cause suffered earlier this week when the state Assembly approved the Republican-backed restrictions on union collective bargaining rights over fierce Democratic objections.

There was no violence. Protesters described the occupation as having "a party atmosphere." The better the party, the more peaceful the protests, the more people will join them.

And over the weekend, solidarity protests broke out across the country :

Rallies were held across the country Saturday to support thousands of protesters holding steady at the Wisconsin Capitol in their fight against Republican-backed legislation aimed at weakening unions.

Union supporters organized rallies from New York to Los Angeles in a show of solidarity as the protest in Madison entered its 12th straight day and attracted its largest crowd yet: more than 70,000 people. Hundreds banged on drums and screamed into bullhorns inside, while others braved frigid weather and snowfall during a rally that spilled into city streets.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker has introduced a bill that includes stripping almost all public workers, from librarians to snow plow drivers, of their right to collectively bargain on benefits and work conditions.

The mega-wealthy will be hoping that the people will fight amongst themselves, squabbling over economic scraps, protesters clashing with counter-protesters, lots of TV magnet violence, maybe some shootings, to keep the people divided, at each other' throats, instead of the 98% turning as one towards the top 2% and leaving them with no choice but to give up their wealth in this age of austerity.

But it's not going to be easy to blackmail, badname and breakdown these protesters. This time. It's not students at a G20 rally, this is mums & dads, teachers, police, firefighters, people who hold communities together. When they are threatened, communities feel threatened and those who never dreamed of protesting anything will spill out of their homes and into the streets.

Or into the State Capitol.

The mainstream media will learn quickly if they want the precious news site clicks and the YouTube views, they will have to deal with America Uprising fairly, if not be biased in their favour. Why go to CNN to see the protest you attended misrepresented or flat-out falsified when you can celebrate your day of action with your new revolutionary friends on Twitter, Facebook or look for yourself in the dozens of YouTube clips already uploaded by the time you get home from the rally?

It's going to be very hard indeed to portray this uprising as "fat privileged unionists getting rich off poor taxpayers". They're already trying to pump that puppy, but it's not working, unless you think Fox News is reality.

At least 15 million Americans who want to work are without jobs, more than 45 million need food stamps to survive. The old Left-Right distraction game doesn't seem to be working, it's harder than ever to slip agent provocateurs into calm protests to incite violence, particularly when governors admit this is a standard tactic, and the police, the firefighters and paramedics (who are themselves exempt, for now anyway, from being stripped of their collective bargaining power) are more than likely to remain on the side of the protesters. As we see in the above video, they are protesters.

Good thing the Pentagon has been live-field testing all 'non-lethal' crowd control weapons and all those unmanned aerial and ground vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan then, eh?

If the National Guard and the US Army refuses to fire on their own people when called to do so by state governors, they can always roll out the robots.