OCTOBER 11TH, SACRAMENTO CITY HALL
by Red Slider
Part 2 is at: THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK DEMOCRACY TO LOOK LIKE:
All Too Often, Democracy in America looks like this:
On October 11, 2011, the citizens of Sacramento, California waited expectantly for the members of their city council to do the right thing and grant the occupation across the street in Cesar Chavez Park the right to peacefully assemble and petition their government for the redress of grievances without curfew or unreasonable restriction of that right guaranteed them under the Constitution of the United States. They had no reason to expect their government would do otherwise. Why, that very afternoon one of our own core facilitators, via livestream, had argued with an online citizen of the occupation, assuring the virtual occupier that he had spent the day at city hall talking with Council members and they were quite ready to recognize the rights of the people; to waive the local “camping ordinance” and other restrictions, and to give the people what they needed to conduct their assembly round the clock.
The online citizen texted back to the facilitator, warning that the City Council didn’t operate on good faith or the recognition of people’s rights, and had not done so for fifty years. Instead, he cautioned that they worked in back rooms and at private meetings, making promises they have no intention of keeping; giving signals meant to obscure their real purpose, suggesting progress when all they were really doing was delaying matters and covering their real agenda with false hopes. The facilitator didn’t heed the warning; nor did the other, mostly youthful, occupiers listening in to the conversation. Many of them had never been to City Hall before. What they knew about our city government was what they had learned in school; the official view of democracy, the one they expected to be fully responsive to their needs and rights.
Now they were sitting in the audience at a Council meeting, fresh from having delivered their speeches on the need for camping in the park overnight and their petition for a “waiver” of ordinary restrictions on their assembly. Why should they have any doubt at all that their request would wholeheartedly approved? Indeed, the citizens that spoke that night spent more time praising the police and the City Council than they did in raising the points intended in their 2-minute talks. When they were finished, and the Council members were fawning each other and including themselves in the 99%, the audience cheered and approved. When the Council members spoke about “democracy” and the importance and welcome of citizens participating in their government, the occupiers greeted their statements with jazz-handed cheers of more approval. They were all as one in those chambers that night, officials and citizens all passionately engaged in the work of democracy.
Save one citizen, unable to attend the meeting, but watching closely from home during its live broadcast. He knew the way the Council members shifted in their chairs, the way they made back-chair comments, the way they raised seemingly trivial concerns and postured in serious thought. He knew, because he’d seen it all before, over and over again, through many years of watching. He knew this Council was no different. It hadn’t the slightest intention of granting the occupiers modest demands. Moreover, he knew as one of the members began to hem and haw over the matter, raising the need to “look into some questions a little further”, that the Council not only would deny the waiver, it would cleverly avoid saying that it intended to deny it. Instead, it would delay the matter, keeping the occupiers on the defensive, making them hostage to a promise that would never be fulfilled, buying time for more maneuvering and to wear down the resolve of the group. He’d seen all that before, too.
And so it was. The denial was wrapped in the clothing of putting it off until the next Council meeting. There would be no waiver, no granting of rights, no shred of democracy, not in those chambers. Not then, or ever, if the Sacramento City Council had anything to say about it. But ‘We the People’ would not know that. We the People did not even get that when the “Brown Act”, that great legislative attempt to give the people a seat at the table of their public bodies, was invoked as a reason the Council could not stop the arrests until the following week (inferring, of course, they might do just that), the people accepted that these formalities of government were for the protection of their own interests. They did not stop, were not suspicious enough, to think that the city could have suspended the arrests or informally nullify enforcement until a formal decision could be made. Instead, the people would leave those chambers a little disappointed, but fully believing everyone, the Council, the people, the City Manager, the police were all one big democracy doing its job on the high road of American ideals. It was nice to think so, for a few days anyway. But that was not to be, of course.
Still, there was one surprise in store that even the lone dissenter couldn’t have predicted. Something he had never seen in the endless days of watching the Dog&Pony shows conducted by Sacramento’s public officials. It would be a phenomena he had never seen before in all his years of following the news and the machinations of local government. Certainly, had he been told such a thing were possible, he would not have believed it could happen in the short week between what he had just witnessed, and the next Council meeting scheduled for October 18th. For now, he simply waited for what he already knew would be the outcome of the charade he just witnessed. The arrests would continue at the park. The disruptions of setting up a public assembly each night and having to reassemble it each morning would tax the petitioners. And, the next meeting with the City Council would arrive soon enough…
(Part II – This Is What Democracy Ought To Look Like …)
