>As for the Oden & like cases, it doesn't make political sense to say,
>"hello, Virginia, you should have known that this is no democracy," when
>your fellow leftists are getting arrested, harassed, etc.
it's no time to write press releases about how leftists' civil liberties are being infringed while never once mentioning in that press release that the civil liberties of people of color are continually being infringed, with or without a war. right now is the time to link the issues that affect the lives of the historically oppressed to the infringement on civil liberties that will now affect the lives of white people.
no one was bitching because Oden doesn't understand that this isn't a democracy. she was taken to task for exercising white, middle class privilege--both in her failure to place her experience in terms of a wider knowledge of the operations of the police state against historically oppressed groups and her dishonest use of PR techniques that have manipulated untold numbers of people into believing, without a shred of evidence, that she was flagged for a search b/c of her politics and then detained because of her politics. she was clearly detained because of her own behavior--which is enough to be concerned about and a story more consistent with the way police state tactics actually work most effectively which is what we ought to spend time getting across.
kelley