1984 comes 24 years late, give or take 7 years

in the latest outrageous, flagrant act of disregard for the Constitution or the Rights of the Citizenry, the washington dc police have announced plans to restrict access to parts of their city. by "restrict access", they aparently mean setting up monitored checkpoints, and ejecting under threat of arrest any person who is not a resident of the area. no, really.

http://www.examiner.com/a-1423820~Lanier_plans_to_seal_off_rough__hoods_in_latest_effort_to_stop_wave_of_violence.html


where have we heard this kind of thing before? police Chief Cathy L. Lanier claims it has been "done in other cities", and therefore she is "not worried about constiturionality". she's right, of course. it has been done in other cities. just, not in the united states. mostly in former soviet bloc countries. in cities like warsaw, stalingrad, belgrade, and of course east berlin. also, in south africa under apartheid. and more recently, good old bagdad. so yeah, thats a safe precedent, right? jesus fucking christ.

now, i understand that there are some pretty fuckin scary parts of dc. and yeah, something should probably be done about that. clearly, if people dont feel safe on the streets, thats not an acceptable state of affairs, and they should do something about it. but this kind of martial-law style tactic is insane, and its fucking terrifying.

if this kind of thing is going on in our nations capitol, then my friends, its the end of the line. there is no more america as we knew it. the land of the free is officially no longer free. and most of us probably never would have heard about how it began in the ghettos of dc.

i saw my first real proof of this trend on memorial day weekend, when i was driving back from the annual camping trip in the white mountain national forest. for some reason, the united states border patrol had set up a blockade / checkpoint on the southbound lane of interstate 93, in between exits 31 and 30. all traffic was forced to stop. american citizens were seized, in the deffinitive sense of the word. some cars were searched, with dogs.

it is this seizure in the definitive sense that absolutely floored me. the border patrol was acting not only out of it's jurisdiction (about 250 miles out), but was acting in direct violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/).

so i ask you, friends, what is happening here? I want anyone who reads this to think about what this means. nothing is being done about this stuff. its happening all around us, and we dont like to think about it so we shrug it off and go about our business like good citizens.

except that we are not being good citizens. if we were we wouldnt allow this kind of thing. the constitution doesnt stand up for itself. its the responsibility of the citizenry to make sure that it is adhered to. this is done partially through electing people to office whom we trust with it's care, but also through standing up and stopping it's abuse like we would stop the abuse of our own family.

i'll admit, i didnt do that. i hid my knife (which i always bring camping), put gum in my mouth (i had three beers the morning before we left the site), and stopped my car. i felt exactly the same way i did in grammar school when i pretended i didnt notice the bully throwing dirt at me. i felt self loathing and a rage that i could feel looking inside me for a place to hide and fester and eventually explode. i should have said something, asked for an explanation, even though it would surely result in my car being searched and possibly in my arrest, even though i wasnt doing anything illegal.

i dont know whats to be done about it. i need ideas.

any thoughts?