I thought about this today after I read the news on human rights violations during the Wall Street occupation and how cities are utilizing public force in order to keep people from protesting in public places all over the country. The mayor of Oakland, the first person to utilize force (I believe) during this event, says the people in NYC are in a “private” park and not in public domain. I’m here thinking, is there anything in the constitution that says people have the right to public assembly? I know there is such statement in both Colombian and Canadian constitutions… so enlighten me here, please.
After I graduated high school, my parents sent me to a nice private university in Colombia. A year later I decided the distance was too much to bear and I went back to my hometown, applied to enroll in a public university (one of the best in the country) and that’s where I went for 5 years. Public schools in Colombia (and many Latin-American countries) are well known for student protests, sometimes marked by violence (I had my share of escaping gun shots back in 1994, but that’s a story for another day). Anyway, many days of classes were interrupted by protests, assemblies, students demanding a better education, better cafeteria lunches, better prices, etc. A semester even got cancelled, and everyone had to graduate months later than they were supposed to. You learn to live with it; you may not be part of it, but it becomes a second nature.
I remember very well one day when one of my classmates told me I should go to protest because they were going to increase the price of lunches in the public cafeteria. At that time I didn’t understand why I would have to risk someone hitting me in the head with a rock when I really didn’t eat lunch there. At 18-19 I wasn’t fully aware that there were people who could hardly pay for their food and who struggled every single day, travelling long distances, so they could go to school. If they had money to pay for transportation, they probably couldn’t afford lunch. And there I was, kinda privileged girl who MADE the choice to go to a public university, but who lived like she was going to a private one. My friend called me an oligarch, I laughed at him and continued studying for a test while the protest went on outside.
Did I ever make part of a protest? No, not really, except against the war in Montreal, on a very cold winter morning and against the FARC when we lived in KC. Would I attend a school protest now? ABSOLUTELY. Last week, thousands of students in Colombia went out on the streets after weeks of protests, to ask the government not to make an educational reform that would greatly affect public education and people who rely on it. They said what they wanted, they occupied the streets of the major cities in Colombia, nobody was attacked with rubber bullets, water hoses or tear gas. At the end of the day the president said “OK, we won’t do it.” It worked, the protest worked, and nobody took that right from the students, to express their needs and tell the government “DO SOMETHING ALREADY!”
As I have matured, I understand the needs of many people and the intricacies of this world a little bit better. I am not blind to suffering and injustice, and I’m not blind to the reasons behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, my husband and I have been blessed and shielded during the current economic crisis in the U.S. We both have our jobs, we can put food on our table with no problem, our house is not going on foreclosure, etc. So, it’s hard to have perspective; and while I would never apologize for not struggling, in my head it is VERY clear that the inequality of this country’s social classes is abysmal. There we have the very rich 1%, getting richer every day and the 99% having to conform to whatever the powerful say. Does it sound fair to you? IT ISN’T.
And now we have city governments telling their people they have no right to protest? That it is unsanitary to occupy a place for so long, that it is an inconvenience to have a bunch of “hippies” soiling the streets. Don’t they see that these “hippies” are well-educated people who are tired of getting doors slammed on their faces no matter how much they busted their asses getting prepared to face the world? Instead of throwing people out, why don’t city governments help the protesters to set up peaceful protests? After all, isn’t that a human right? Yes, a human right that is being violated… in the LAND OF THE FREE.
Discuss?
