AUGUST 23, 2024 POLITICS A book review: You are found guilty of all counts, as charged DAVID KE DODGE Groundcover contributor Political Repression in Modern America: from 1870 to 1976 a graduate school thesis by Robert Justin Goldstein, PhD, Political Science, U of Chicago Pub. by University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago c. 1978, 2001 To the reader: “You are found guilty of all counts, as charged.” “What!?” you protest, affronted; “Of what charges? Based on what evidence? In what court?” Such questions merit answers. The crimes you committed, and currently are committing, are copious — they include complicity in: loitering; disturbing the peace; vagrancy; impeding pedestrian traffic; peddling without a license; being a public nuisance; solicitation; disorderly conduct ... And the evidence against you is manifest: clearly, it is a crime to possess a “street paper,” and clearly, you are in possession of one. “WHAT?” you say. “This is the United States! There’s such a thing as Freedom of the Press in this country. And since when is it illegal to possess a street paper? There’s not a court in this country that would entertain such bogus charges, much less enter a finding of ‘guilty.’ Good luck finding a District Attorney who would even touch such prosecution!” In response, I refer you to page 518 of Goldstein’s graduate school thesis. Goldstein recounts the plight of the workers and vendors of “underground” newspapers, starting at least as early as October, 1968. In at least 13 cities across the nation, local police raided underground newspaper offices, sometimes without a warrant, seized “evidence” necessary to the functioning of the papers and damaged the offices, leaving behind gratuitous destruction. The papers’ staffs and vendors were arrested on a potpourri of charges — the police would go shopping for a charge which the courts would buy. If a charge wasn’t deemed “legit” by a judge, the police would try something else: vagrancy, littering, obstructing the sidewalk, possession of pornographic material, obscenity, instigating a riot, possession of marijuana; peddling without a license, possession of a copy of an underground newspaper … You’re right; such arrests and prosecutions are unconstitutional. And, though the Supreme Court of the United States has a spotty record as ultimate defender of Constitutional Rights, it at least sometimes comes through. But the point is that these are the tools of political repression. As unjust and wrong as they may seem, these are the instruments The State may use to avoid change in the overall system. And before you persist in your lawless possession of an underground newspaper you might ask yourself some questions and come up with candid answers: “Is time behind bars, awaiting justice, daunting?” “Is a criminal record daunting?” “Are your pockets deep enough?” and perhaps most telling, “Are you feeling lucky?” (Justice is a fickle mistress.) Your answers to the last two questions are the most important, if you recognize the Truth that in the U.S. justice is a roulette wheel, and that the “house” has deep pockets, and is near-infinitely patient. This means that, when it comes to resistance to or deviance from the status quo, the “system” generally wins. The system, at worst, risks the draw of a court proceeding unfavorable to itself (oftentimes, a mere temporary inconvenience, with the precedent always being subject to eventual reversal). But win or lose at the wheel, the system — the house — will score a victory against you: you’ll think twice before you again let Groundcover News filter its way into your life. At a number of points in his book, Goldstein cites evidence that a mere atmosphere of endless harassment and litigation, however legally bogus, can decimate dissent among activists. The status quo will be a small bit safer. Over the years of innumerable such victories, the status quo (as I call it) has become near-infinitely secure. An overriding theme of Goldstein’s book is that U.S. institutions, long accustomed to legal, tax, regulatory, property, protection and subsidization contexts “friendly” to their customary operations, are quite zealous that those contexts remain unchallenged and unchanged, Any proposal for reform which might truncate those contexts, or expand their benevolence to new institutions or methods of operation deemed uncomfortable or inconvenient to those already legitimized, can expect severe resistance. A reality of life in the United States of America is that nearly everything about the Constitution makes the status quo difficult to change. Slavery was abolished; what made it possible is that the nation was at war, and abolition of slavery made the North’s task easier. Labor unions were legitimized when the choice posed to the already legitimized business community was that of life under Communism, or that of life with labor unions in their plants. The status quo can be changed, and in the past, when the status quo has been changed, I personally regard the outcomes to be a blessing. Thus, the emancipation of the slaves. Thus the Wagner Act and its legitimization of labor unions. The “legitimized” institutions can count on a veneer of due protection of the law not available to the “illegitimate” outsiders. The actual offense of Richard Nixon’s “plumbers” in entering the Democratic Party Headquarters during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s was one offense, and mild compared to a longstanding program of routine invasion and destruction of property and records in the Socialist Party Headquarters by the FBI. But Richard Nixon was guilty of something unthinkable, and unacceptable, even to his fellow Republicans — he had violated an unwritten code of what is right to do to an institution which has the blessings of being part of the status quo. Between page 10 and page 15 of PRMA, Goldstein gives proper names of six companies serving as profit mechanisms which used at least two of those three components to fight workers: Pullman; US Steel Corporation; Republic Steel; General Motors; Pinkerton Detective Agency (which does not belong in a list of proper names of companies which served as a profit mechanism, it was listed as a company which illustrated the magnitude of the private police phenomenon); Pittsburgh Coal Company; Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police (again, a tool of tycoons, rather than a profit mechanism); and see REPRESSION page 11 GROUNDCOVER NEWS 5
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