
Sister of Python Hacker arrested for protest - His essay on protest and change - jmtulloss
http://blog.ianbicking.org/2008/09/02/on-the-rnc-monica-bicking-eryn-trimmer-and-protest/
======
jrockway
If the government is going to file charges against the protesters for
"conspiracy to riot", shouldn't the people that were maced for holding a
flower file charges against the government for assault? I would. The way you
"beat the system" is not by standing around holding a flower -- you beat it by
ruining the pepper-spraying guy's life. Once people's lives start getting
ruined for hurting people exercising their right to free expression, they're
going to stop doing it. (As an aside, I have some savings that I call "fuck
you" money. It's so that if I'm ever arrested, I can pay a good lawyer to get
the charges dropped quickly. Generally a good idea, I think.)

BTW, at the '68 DNC, the government lost its case against the protesters:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven>

Unfortunately, the charges against the cops didn't stick either, which is
probably why things like this keep happening.

~~~
Prrometheus
It's hard to win a case against a cop in this country. Radley Balko has
chronicled the plight of many citizens who were victims of paramilitary SWAT
raids for the suspicion of committing non-violent offenses. In most cases no
action is taken against the cops, even if an innocent person or a non-violent
offender is killed in the raid.

This can get you started: <http://www.cato.org/raidmap/>

Even more disturbing have been cases of people being severely beat by police
officers in jails. Rather than helping bring the culprits to justice, police
departments rally around their own and it is rare that any charges are filed
against officers. Here's one case:

<http://www.theagitator.com/2006/08/02/jesse-lee-williams-jr/>

(NSFW, a picture of the victim in the hospital after the beating)

If police can get away with murder in this country, then I doubt that a little
pepper spray will be noticed. Government is a monopoly of power. They have it,
you don't. There is no justice if your assailant has a badge.

------
rw
Finally, a post on anarchism on HN that doesn't imply anarchism means "being
greedy."

~~~
randallsquared
However, speaking as an anarchist, not all anarchists are against institutions
in general. That is, all anarchists (I believe) would say they're against the
State, but some anarchists include more than some of us would in that term.

~~~
rw
I am implying that on HN "anarchist" often refers to a particular niche,
anarcho-capitalism, which is mostly unconcerned with notions of cooperation,
voluntaryism and humanism.

~~~
gojomo
Huh? Anarcho-capitalism relies on cooperation, voluntarism, and humanism as
much as any other anarchism. It just posits that respect for property,
including giant consensual property constructs like capital/corporations, is
the best basis for creative cooperation.

~~~
rw
Demand curves are not democracy.

~~~
gojomo
Both democracy and demand curves are means, not ends.

~~~
stcredzero
Hallelujah! Markets are great because they are a decentralized method for
regulating resources that can adjust for changing conditions. One wants them
in situations where there are too many factors and actors to be regulated by
something as large and slow moving as a government. Markets aren't to be
worshiped. They are a _tool_.

Governments and laws are good for certain things too. I would like murder and
violence to be illegal. I want human rights to be a given. Democracies aren't
perfect, but they do embody a mechanism for ensuring the above. Unfortunately,
they also allow their constituents to turn them into non-democracies.
Democracies require constant maintenance.

~~~
david
Who has committed more murders and violence in the past century? Random
individuals/groups, or Governments? If you support nonviolence, why support an
organization that threatens violence if you do not follow rules have no moral
basis (ie, not "don't murder" and "don't steal") that you never agreed to
follow?

~~~
run4yourlives
Do you honestly believe that random individuals organized in some other
fashion than government - say a corporation - are not just as able to murder
and pillage on the same level as governments past?

If you think that governments are some sort of special organization, and that
the same problems would not occur with any other power, you sir are a fool.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Voted up, but almost didn't with the reference to corporations being as evil
as governments.

Haven't seen that yet, mostly due to free market influences. (There is a good
reason why your neighborhood store owner is not also a flagrant lawbreaker --
it's bad for business)

But substitute "armed gangs", "the mob", "terrorist organizations", etc --
works great.

~~~
run4yourlives
Give corporations power and an absence of government and it does happen. Look
at the industrial revolution prior to workers' rights, or even look at telecom
and communications monopolies today.

That law that the store owner doesn't dare break is what holds him back!

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Corporations are government-defined entities. You can't have them without
governments.

Not trying to argue, but it's a non-sequitur.

The industrial revolution had corporations over-taxing the body politic. It
was the natural result of taking rural agricultural ethics and putting them in
a mechanistic world. It led to labor reforms. trust-busting, and labor unions.
Sucked a lot, and lots of folks probably died early, but it was hardly the
stuff of the holocaust. You have to remember that everybody was just figuring
all this stuff out as it was happening. Once it became clear where we were
headed (and that we didn't want to go there) then the government, which
defines corporations, defined what they could and couldn't do in a different
way. Badda bing, badda boom, your democratic republic at work.

------
tocomment
That seems sad. I wish someone had a solution as to a viable method to effect
change in government.

~~~
hugh
I think that's called an "election".

~~~
whalliburton
Hmm. No. That's called a "revolution".

~~~
randallsquared
I'm not sure I'd call that "viable", either. The vast majority of revolutions
do not accomplish their goals, even if you only count the revolutions that
succeeded in overthrowing an existing regime. The US War for Independence is
remarkable in large part because it actually worked and the result was more
freedom (for a while), rather than less.

~~~
turkishrevenge
So what is to be done? Tolerate a degenerate system of government? How can you
elect officials to represent the people, when the very men and women that run
for office have absolutely nothing in common with the average citizen?
According to your position, maybe our founding fathers should have been more
cautious.

~~~
brianmckenzie
The founding fathers didn't have anything in common with the average citizen
either - if anything, they were relatively more wealthy than politicians
today.

~~~
gaius
Which demonstrates that wealth isn't the problem per se.

------
jm4
So now the sister of a programmer being arrested at a political rally
qualifies as Hacker News? The signal to noise ratio here decreases every day.
_sigh_

------
hugh
No politics, please (especially not of the whiny-extremist variety).

The fact that the guy has occasionally whacked together a few lines of python
doesn't make it relevant.

~~~
jmtulloss
Why no politics?

~~~
gojomo
(1) It's considered off-topic by the site guidelines:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._

(2) It's political silly season -- a presidential election year -- here in the
US and every other forum without strong topical guidelines is already full-up
with politicized crap. Having it here, too, is redundant and dilutes the
unique value proposition of this site.

(3) If "happened to a sibling of a hacker" is enough to rate a story here,
everything is again on-topic.

~~~
jmtulloss
All good points.

I wouldn't normally post something that just presents a political opinion, but
in this case I felt that the story was more interesting than that. Here's a
guy that wrote some software that I and hundreds of others use every day, and
that's why I respect him. However, this is a reminder that there are much
bigger things than software happening to real people every day, people who are
just like us. These are issues we all have to deal with.

I apologize if it's not appropriate.

~~~
menloparkbum
I used to use a lot of Ian's earlier work on webware back in the day. I found
this much more interesting than the article about the guy who scrubbed a
Lamborghini for 2 days straight.

