November 21, 2011

UC Davis, and fighting peace with violence

It should come as no surprise that one of the many results of UC Davis campus police trying to break up a rally by wantonly pepper-spraying passively-protesting students is … another rally. A march will take place on the quad today at noon.

The real surprise is that so many of the powerful people opposed to the Occupy Wall Street movement seem not to realize that violence and mass arrests have been the single best public relations tool activists have going for them.

Nick Kristof wrote in The New York Times on Sunday, “You have to wonder: Could Mayor Michael Bloomberg and police chiefs around the country be secretly backing the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

Bloomberg may have taken back the park, but he also re-energized both the activists and the media attention on them. “The high ground that the protesters seized is not an archipelago of parks in America, but the national agenda,” Kristof wrote.

Meanwhile, as Kristof’s column was hitting middle and upper class doorsteps all across the country, Youtube videos of the UC Davis pepper-spray incident were going viral across the world.

The university chancellor, who has to date resisted calls from faculty to resign, will meet with occupiers today and the campus officers responsible for the pr nightmare will be placed on administrative leave, according to ABC News.

And all of a sudden, the Occupy movement is once again the biggest news narrative in the country.

Occupy activists know they can’t fight fire with fire. It’s why the vast majority have remained peaceful even after the numerous instances of police brutality against them. But it doesn’t seem as if those who want to quell the populist uprising realize that you can’t beat peace with violence; or, to use the parlance of the popular euphemism, you can’t fight water with fire. Assuming all else is equal, the water will always win.

— Bob Plain