The Trail

Issue date: 3/23/07 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Joe La Sac Tacoma riot control stands ready for possible police action against demonstrators at the Port of Tacoma.

Once again, I have been overruled. My suggestion last November that UPS jettison its historic, albeit elitist, apellation: "Harvard of the West" - in favor of the "apathetic, activist-free, Kent State of the West" was resoundingly rejected March 9, following a tense four day standoff at the Port of Tacoma between anti-war demonstrators, Tacoma policemen and unaffiliated student journalists - most notably Joseph La Sac - whose mere presence somehow exacerbated the conflict.

With so much here to discuss, all I can hope to do is briefly critique the actions of all parties concerned.

Peaceful protesters: I appreciate your plight. Your choice is to be complicit in an illegal war or active in illegal peace demonstrations. In a sense Bush has placed you between Iraq and a hard place (stupid pun, I know). But your radical and provocative tactics, while certainly courageous and on some level even inspiring, are nonetheless substantively futile. None of you are Nelson Mandela and it is absurd to think that getting arrested by crossing a police barricade is going to make a difference.

We all remember Rosa Parks: a black lady from Montgomery, Alabama who was arrested for refusing to observe her city's segregation laws on public buses. What few of us do remember, however, is that her bold action reflected a premeditated strategy of the NAACP-later featuring Martin Luther King and a massive 382 day city-wide bus boycott that ultimately forced segregation off the road.

These less dramatic/confrontational/memorable tactics were nonetheless both economically and legally effective at pressuring politicians to implement change. Like Parks, your arrests have done little more than to raise local awareness. If you want to do something more substantial you're going to have to find a way to fight the Power that is both economic and legal. Instead of wasting resources and time paying fines to the court, volunteer to raise funds for the Democrats (even for the Green Party would be more constructive). Learn which corporations are benefiting from the war and then expose and boycott them. Organize peaceful, legal, marches - don't discredit yourselves by breaking the law, otherwise you'll be no better than those who defied the UN in order to save it from those who defied the UN.

Continued...

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