What Happened in My Home? : Police and Protest in Pittsburgh

http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/09270/1001203-482.stm

I am a skeptic. I tend to shy away from protests--I guess I don't find the efficacy in them, often wary of their purpose.

But I know that feeling. People want a cause to fight for. They want to be part of a group, a collective. This applies to both a police force and a protest group. Behavior quickly imitates itself and spreads like wildfire. The collective is an imitation of itself.

So it begins. You get students gathering, for instance, do these girls below even know what they are doing? This isn't a Steelers game girls. This is the G-20.

These sights of SWAT officers 4 blocks from my High School KILLS me. It pains me to see this force come out from seemingly no where and run the streets like an insurgent brigade. Like an insurgent power.

Its easy for a police officer to fall back on coercion, on power, so tediously balanced on the scrim of governance behind it. It feels like at any moment it could fall through, but can it really now? Is that even possible? You protestors, you think the state is afraid of you?

Perhaps you do. You have Twitter revolutions, Facebook revolutions, and a global community of supporters, looking for a way to connect themselves to a cause. And this is powerful. Lucrative (in some cases that you may not realize--think of all those Urban Outfitters T-Shirts). Frightening. Exciting.

While I remain a skeptic about your intentions and your cause, you drive an industry and for that I applaud you. I applaud you for creating a culture that could rival any large business. You are connected. You are young. You are fighters. You are what everyone at one point wishes they were. You want to stick it to the man and you don't even know who the man is. But that fact that you want to stick it, matters somehow.

Look, the G-20 issues will drag on. People in the Man are going to fight Climate Change. They are also going to fight recession. They are going to investigate these things and change them in policy or hard work within (hopefully, if the right people win anyways). I don't know the issues in and out, I don't know if even you know the issues. But props to you for thinking you can change the world. Because someday, you actually may.