Get a lawyer! Get a lawyer! Yes, go get a lawyer! In days gone past, people would shout, ‘Get a witch doc, he will intervene for you with the Gods!’ Well, us Justice and Peace folk got a lawyer for the St Patrick’s Day Seven, and we seem just as credulous as the most primitive of people about this magician playing against the legal Gods on behalf of those criminally charged.
No need to stay together, the lawyer says. Split into two! And get another lawyer, two. Two, three, many lawyers! I’ve seen folk meekly following the worst guidance of doctors many a time before, but now I guess I will get to see pro-peace people hypnotized by their legal, uh friend, the lawyer.
Eric seems to have accepted the advice to split The Seven into Six plus One, and so has the Six. Solidarity now thrown out the wind. This is now a legal issue and stand still.
It seems, we will stand still until the court rules against The One in favor of the city and its police, that the city government had assault people who tried to walk against the Pentagon. Gone is the issue of how John O’Donnell is mere front man for how the city issues permits and tries to stifle all but Pentagon led (and fed) parades, air shows, and assemblies in this city. No counter social issues Now! It’s divisive! Eric misled the poor city of Colorado Springs. Guilty as charged. Now stay out of any parade.
What is typical here, is how this decision to split the case was made not by our group discussion, but by a lawyer or two in our midst. And perhaps a publisher, too. In fact, most of the Justice and Peace still have yet to hear about how there will be two trials, not one. So sez the lawyer and we shall follow and do. All fall down. We got the lawyer, and he will be our downfall. How often this happens when Movement activists fold up, and allow themselves to be led by the nose by ‘legal specialists’. Deals and decisions get made in secret, and input of commoners get wiped out.
Such faith! To oppose the guidance of our legal counselor would be ‘inappropriate’, they would say? Of course, what was once a political matter that needed the mobilizing of public support, has now been turned into a hidden away, private court matter with all the rules to be followed of a legal system that allows Guantanamo to happen. People who still believe in following the rules of a democracy that doesn’t really exist, also seem to be content following the rules of a legal system that only exists in skeletal remains, too.
It looks bad in the days ahead for the St Patrick’s Day Six plus One. Shaking hands and hugging the police by the ACLU (as done at their recent annual meeting) will lead to defeat in the court room, but good relations between wanna-be power brokers and power. Lawyers most often get the people beat, not saved. A ‘good lawyer’ gets the Six saved, the One beat, and the Movement down the drain. And for that, he will be thanked.
That’s the better scenario. The worst, is well worse. Solidarity would do better.
I have just heard that the Six plus One division has been healed and that the group is back to having one trial and not two. This is good news, and now the St Pat’s Day Seven really are seven and not just a big mess divided in half by a lawyer.
Lesson here is that sometimes it might be best to not just blindly follow a lawyer’s legalistic mind set, but rather to stick together and make one’s case about the political issues involved.
What is the most important political issue in this media trial that is going to play alongside the court trial? Simply that the city cannot have it both ways, claiming that some city events are ‘apolitical’ events that their semi-private contractor, John O’Donnell, can set the tone for, and that in other events John O’Donnell can then get paid from tax monies to organize military pro-war parades in this city.
If you are going to use tax monies to organize ‘victory’ celebrations for the Pentagon then it is best not to use the police to attack civilians at a later fate that carry a different message in parades, a message that is pro-Peace not pro-War.