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<td>[ufpj-activist] Where are the activists as austerity
bites?</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Date: </th>
<td>Fri, 5 Apr 2013 13:45:09 -0400</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">From: </th>
<td>Global Network <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:globalnet@mindspring.com"><globalnet@mindspring.com></a></td>
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<td>Global Network <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:globalnet@mindspring.com"><globalnet@mindspring.com></a></td>
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<td>GN List Serve <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:globenet@yahoogroups.com"><globenet@yahoogroups.com></a></td>
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<h1 itemprop="name headline "><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/04/where-are-the-activists-austerity/print"><font
size="2">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/04/where-are-the-activists-austerity/print</font></a></h1>
<h1 itemprop="name headline "><font size="5">Where are the
activists as austerity bites? They have been beaten back</font></h1>
<p id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone"
data-component="Article:standfirst_cta" itemprop="description"><strong>Protesters
face violence, arrest and serious charges. Only the brave
dare face this savage suppression</strong></p>
<p class="stand-first-alone"
data-component="Article:standfirst_cta" itemprop="description"><strong>By
</strong><span sizset="false"
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"
itemscopeitemprop="author"
sizcache09996327146120834="1.0.46"><span sizset="false"
itemprop="name" sizcache09996327146120834="1.0.46">Laurie
Penny</span></span> </p>
</div>
<div class="publication" sizset="false"
sizcache09996327146120834="1.0.47">The Guardian (UK), <time
itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2013-04-04T08:25EDT"
pubdate="">Thursday 4 April 2013</time></div>
<div sizset="false" sizcache0947241523345985="1.0.50"
jquery18109702302700097367="47">
<p sizset="false" sizcache0947241523345985="1.0.50">First they
came for the students. This week, 12 vanloads of police
arrived at Sussex University, in collaboration with
management, <a moz-do-not-send="true" title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/apr/02/sussex-university-protestors-evicted-arrested">to
evict students</a> who had been occupying a room on campus
for eight weeks. They had been taking a stand against
privatisation of services at their university, creating a
militant "pop-up union" and attracting support from all over
the country: they had to be got rid of. Photographs from the
day show police in antiseptic yellow uniforms swarming in as
if to disinfect a wound in the body politic where the rage was
bleeding through.</p>
<p>The suppression of student protest by the British state has
been savage and efficient over the past three years. The
students of Sussex were brave even to make the attempt. They
knew all too well that they were risking arrest, serious
criminal charges and physical violence from police and hired
security, and that is what happened. It's what always happens
when a government uses force to suppress radicalism.</p>
<p sizset="false" sizcache0947241523345985="1.0.51">Right now,
as millions of people stare down the barrel of job losses,
benefits sanctions, destitution and desperation and the rich
are given tax cuts, I hear a lot of people asking why there
isn't more resistance going on. Well, here's why. There was
resistance, and it was brutally and systematically put down.
The students, the street-organising anti-cuts campaigners, the
Occupy movement. When people speak about the <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/occupy-movement">Occupy
camps</a> and anti-austerity protests of 2010-12, it is with
a tone of regret, as if somehow those grassroots movements
just fizzled out because those involved didn't know what they
were doing. On the contrary: they were cleared out, arrested
and beaten back by police, just like the students at Sussex.</p>
<p>In Tory Britain, as the cuts kick in, even the most peaceful
protests are put down as a warning to the rest of us. Last
November, Bethan Tichborne, a 28-year-old teaching assistant,
appeared at a public event in Oxfordshire and calmly told
David Cameron that he had "blood on his hands". She was
referring to the prime minister's decision to take away vital
social support from people with disabilities, a policy that
has already cost lives.</p>
<p sizset="false" sizcache0947241523345985="1.0.52">Tichborne
was grabbed, tackled to the ground and restrained during her
arrest, as Cameron continued to speak: "The police officers on
top of me either couldn't or wouldn't hear me," she wrote on
her blog. "I was crying and bleeding, I couldn't properly
breathe.". Two weeks ago <a moz-do-not-send="true" title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/activist-shocked-conviction-cameron-protest">she
was convicted</a> of causing "harassment, alarm and
distress" and fined more than a month's wages. The message is
clear: whether or not a protest is peaceful and legal is
entirely up to the police and judiciary to decide, so if you
want to play it safe, stay at home and sign a petition.</p>
<p sizset="false" sizcache0947241523345985="1.0.53">Last month,
two of the students involved in the Parliament Square protests
of December 2010, <a moz-do-not-send="true" title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/mar/08/student-tuition-fees-cleared-disorder">Alfie
Meadows and Zak King</a>, were acquitted of violent
disorder. This is a charge used almost exclusively against
political protesters that carries a sentence of five years in
prison. Meadows, King and their friends spent two years
fighting to overturn the charges, prevented from speaking out
by the courts process.</p>
<p>It seems a curious coincidence that the police singled out
Meadows for scapegoating as a violent extremist, given that on
the protest in question, as the police attacked students in
Parliament Square, he received a blow to the head that
required emergency brain surgery. He still has a hand-length
scar across his skull. Even now, I am obliged to say that it's
not been proved in court that Meadows' near-fatal brain bleed
was caused by a police baton, because if I didn't I might get
sued.</p>
<p>Sadly, many of the liberal-minded folk now wondering aloud
where all the anger on the streets has gone were the same
people who condemned the students and anti-cuts protesters for
being just a bit too noisy, too rowdy, too "violent". As soon
as the frustrated kids of Britain and their allies started
smashing up bus stops and lighting bonfires outside Tory HQ,
that was too much: throw the selfish brats in prison, teach
them to mind their manners. First they came for the students.
Now they've come for the rest of us, who will speak out?</p>
<p>Any government trying to push through austerity against the
will of a large proportion of the population is going to have
to rely on force to deal with dissent. That's exactly what
this government, which had the support of just one in seven of
the population even before it started tearing up the welfare
state, has done. New movements to resist austerity must expect
to meet the same wall of state violence as soon as they become
effective, because that's how the Tories operate. It's how
they've always operated. And shame on us, even in these
cowardly times, if we don't support those with the courage to
take a stand.</p>
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