If you're in a group of black folks protesting police brutality, you can expect to have weapons pointed at you, hit with tear gas and pepper spray, have dogs sicced on you and hauled off to jail on flimsy, bullshit charges.
If you're in a group of Indians protesting desecration of sacred sites, you can expect to have weapons pointed at you, hit with tear gas and pepper spray, have dogs sicced on you and hauled off to jail on flimsy, bullshit charges.
If you're in a group of modern hippies, protesting the American Oligarchy, you can expect to have weapons pointed at you, hit with tear gas and pepper spray, have dogs sicced on you and hauled off to jail on flimsy, bullshit charges.
If you're a reporter covering any of that, you can expect to be hauled off to jail on bullshit charges that violate the First Amendment.
But if you're a pack of heavily-armed white guys, protesting the Federal government's administration of its own fucking lands, you're going to get treated with kid fucking gloves and if you get charged with anything, a jury's likely to wink at you and let you go. Because you're going to get a true jury of your peers, something that everyone else will be denied. The prosecutors in any jury trials of the other groups will do their damnedest to ensure that.
This has nothing to do with guns, by the way. If black protestors were openly armed, the cops would hose them down with machine guns. For the Indians, protesting on rural land, they'd have gotten a couple of Cobras or A-10s for that (with WP rockets).
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4 comments:
You've seen dogs?
Thing is, they were guilty of carrying firearms on Federal land. Video and photographic proof.
Guilty of preventing Federal employees from doing their duty at that location.
Yet even for those charges they were not found guilty.
I too think that they should be in jail. They WERE guilty of many of those charges and should have been found guilty and should be serving the time for them.
This is the issue with juries.
I hope prosecutors for the second batch learn from the first case.
A few of them already pleaded guilty and the Bundys are still in jail ahead of their February trial for the Nevada standoff...
I read that the prosecutors overplayed their hands this time and didn't press them on the lesser charges which they felt probably wouldn't amount to much jail time. I could maybe see a jury from Eastern Oregon being sympathetic to them, but wasn't the trial held in Portland?
-Doug in Oakland
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