Respecting the process

[sabotabby]

Two stories have really dominated my consciousness—and the consciousness of most people in this part of the world—over the past few months. One is the murder of Mike Brown by Darren Wilson; the other, is the exposure of Jian Ghomeshi as a serial rapist.

A few days ago, a grand jury voted against indicting Darren Wilson despite mounds of evidence and that whole thing where usually a prosecutor is working to prosecute the defendant, rather than exculpating him. Predictably, protests followed, and the state responded with brutal violence. That same day, Jian Ghomeshi surrendered to police and was let out on bail.

As these stories were developing, a parallel narrative emerged. Jian Ghomeshi's many, many victims were interrogated about their motives and methods. "Why," cried the concern trolls, "did these women not go to the police?" Any honest person knows the answer to this, but the question itself is a fundamentally dishonest one, designed to protect the powerful predator. The concern troll is concerned about due process and not trying the nice rich man in "the court of public opinion"; he extends no such concern to the victim, who shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt/shouldn't have been into kink/shouldn't be working in the media, etc.

Likewise, both Mike Brown and those outraged by his murder and by the farce of the indictment hearing were placed under a scrutiny that the murderer (who profited quite handsomely for his crime, and even managed to get married while off on taxpayer-paid vacation!) somehow managed to avoid. "Why not wait for due process?" the concern trolls ask. "Why the anger, the rioting, the uppity insistence that this is about race?" Wilson was given the benefit of the doubt; the 18-year-old child he gunned down was not.

Now that The Almighty Law has spoken, we know that Ghomeshi may face jail for his crimes, and Wilson will not. (It bears pointing out that the two high-profile men who've been in the news for serial rape are both men of colour; some people get held accountable more than others.) Proof that the system works, right? The Powers That Be are listening and the bad guys get their day in court.

Except. There is no fucking way that Ghomeshi would ever, ever, see the inside of a courthouse if his victims hadn't gone to the media first. We know the CBC wouldn't have acted, and police would not have charged him. It was only the massive international outrage that forced the accumulation of evidence and the arrest.

Likewise, Wilson wouldn't have even made it to the indictment hearing were it not for the protests that have shaken Ferguson since August. That we even got as far as an obvious miscarriage of justice is credit to those who wouldn't let it get swept under the rug. Because of those—yes, violent—protests, the fact that a white cop murdered a black child is now an international issue.

Marginalized people have always been told to shut up and be patient while the system works, despite the fact that the system is designed to work against them. We've seen, over and over again, that trust and patience is rewarded with inaction or re-victimization. The only justice Wilson's, or Ghomeshi's, victims will ever see is brought about by working around the system, whether that means going to the media and generating outrage on social media, or burning shit in the streets. It feels very obvious for me to type this, but over and over again, I find myself arguing with well-meaning white liberals about the futility of sitting back and trusting in some sort of magical objective legal system. Here is your concrete proof. I can never be a pacifist because it is only the threat of all hell breaking loose that can threaten the dominance of the powerful.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.

[sabotabby]

:D

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

Women didn't get the vote because one day the men in power spontaneously decided that women should be legally considered people after all, and that they should totally be allowed to vote. They got the vote because enough people argued for it, loudly and, yes, violently enough that our society was forced to have that conversation, and it became simpler for the men in power to change the laws than for them to uphold the status quo.

No one whom a given system benefits spontaneously decides that it should be changed to also benefit this Other who currently isn't benefiting from it, without it being brought to their attention that, no, the system (whatever it is) doesn't work like that for everyone, and no, that is not okay. And I think often it isn't even about greed or anything like that; it's that society as a whole has a subconscious view of what "a regular ordinary person" is like, and if one happens to match that view, then often one won't even realize that it isn't universally applicable without being directly confronted with that information, because why would you? "Everyone" looks like this, and is treated like this, "everyone" knows that, so when one's own life experiences bear that out, why would you even think it might be different for someone else without them telling you?

But it's easy to dismiss their different perspective as just that one person's, rather than being representative of a whole group. Or they're obviously being over-sensitive, because, geez, everyone has to cope with these little inconveniences now and then, so stop being so damned sensitive about everything! I mean, hey, the other day a cab I was trying to flag down ignored me (speaking as a hypothetical, privileged straight white male) so I mean it happens to everyone. So stop complaining that cabs won't stop for you at all, because your experience doesn't math mine so you're obviously exaggerating.

(Continued!)

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

(Continued!)

Which is why it's so important to point out when they're wrong, that it isn't the same for everyone, that the system isn't equal and fair and no, if you aren't a straight while male then yes, things can be really fucking awful sometimes, and that it needs to change. And to point it out repeatedly, and loudly, and occasionally violently if that is required, because people are literally, actually dying out there because of stupid bullshit like this, and even after the murderer is brought to trial (assuming he ever is) he isn't brought to justice, because on the one side we have the Other, and on the other side we have a straight, white, male symbol of authority. So of course he couldn't have done anything wrong, because if the system finds their symbol of everything that is normal, and respectable, and of the society itself with its rule of law and blind justice actually did murder an innocent kid for no rational reason after all, and based only upon the kid's different colour of skin (or sexual alignment, or religion, or mental health, or anything else that marked them as Other), then they are as good as admitting that the system itself is flawed, deeply flawed, and that would mean having to do something about it (which may or may not include a perceived sharing/loss of power). Which is not only a scary thing to do, but which also may have deep personal negative effects for the person doing so, because by siding with the Other, they would be symbolically aligning themselves with that Other, and risk being Othered themselves, with a heavy risk of major impacts to their career and social standing and potentially even personal lives and relationships.

So the only thing to do is to loudly and constantly inform those in charge of making these kinds of decisions that, yes, we have noticed what they've done, and that, no, it is not okay. And to try and raise the next generations to be aware that, yes, people do come with different coloured skins, the same as they come with different coloured hair and eyes, and that treating people differently based on the colour of their skin is as stupid as doing so based on the colour of their eyes. And to hope that, if the people in power right now don't have the courage to change things, at least the next generation will realize how fucking stupid all this bullshit is, and make whatever changes remain to be made when it's them in charge.

I sincerely hope that the people currently in power are the ones to decide to change things, though, because having to wait for a more reasonable, less bigoted generation to come into power and change things for them would be ridiculous. So it behooves us as members of what we hope to be a less institutionally-racist society to do what we can to change it.

So good for you for heading down, I guess is what I'm trying to say, and, yeah. This needs to change. Soonest.

[sabotabby]

This.

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

On not being a pacifist I say we are better off with a diversity of ways of being and a variety of tactics. We don't all have to be the same do we? I find in many circles an insistence to be and think precisely the same creates additional problems of its own. Including a decidedly weaker and more vulnerable understanding of the world and issues around us.

[sabotabby]

Of course. But this is why I, personally, can't be a pacifist anymore.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I'm American and it has been singularly irritating to see other white Americans say "violence never solved anything" while also glorifying the American Revolution, in which we definitely took up arms against a distantly-headquartered judicial system we didn't think was working in our interests. (Support our police and armed forces! Who are totally nonviolent!)

I am myself a pacifist. (Quixotically; I'm not sure I'd recommend it.) But I can't get worked up about poor people doing property damage and saying angry things, which seems like a measured and disproportionately pacific response to having your children murdered by representatives of the government.

[sabotabby]

Well, they tend to be pacifist when it comes to other people.

There's also the conflation of property destruction and physical violence. People will get upset at a window being smashed but find excuses for child-murder.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a lot of flattening. I had to explain to a three year old recently that "I want to play with trains instead of pausing to wash my hands" and "ow, you're hurting me" are not identical and interchangeable statements, although I can see how as a three year old he'd be confused by that. I am less sympathetic toward the number of grown adults who have told me that typing one word of a sentence in all caps is equivalent to a punch in the face.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

> We know the CBC wouldn't have acted

As Jesse Brown reminded people in his podcast this week, not only we know the CBC wouldn't have acted; when they were shown video of abuse by Ghomeshi, they offered him to resign quietly. So the CBC fired him, but they /did/ not act on behalf of the women, in the sense of your statement. Then the Ghomeshi came out, the Star followed, and they were forced to deal with this.

The Fifth Estate's show tonight was on this whole issue and the CBC; this is also Linden McIntyre's last show, IIRC. I haven't watched it but let's say I have high hopes for it.

Hey, it seems they've done some decent work.

[sabotabby]

I'm not quite ready to watch that yet. But good?

[ironed_orchid]

Thanks. This is exactly the sort of bullshit that pisses me off.

It's this idea that somehow because the police and courts are the system we have established to enact the law, they can't be guilty of abusing or breaking the law themselves. Let alone the idea that laws can be wrong, and need to be broken because the law itself is unjust. That's the very basis of civil disobedience, to break those laws which need to be changed.

[sabotabby]

I think that's where being a red diaper baby and a long anarchist history makes me ill-equipped to discuss these things with regular people. My first encounters with the cops were scary and fucked up, and I do not assume that the institutional structures that exist are there to protect anyone other than those in power. I find it weird that the right venerates people like King and Mandela now (well, not really; they cherry-pick quotes) when they were both lawbreakers.