YES, WE CAN! OPPOSE THE STATE…BUT BE CAREFUL ‘HOW’

You can’t fight City Hall. This is propaganda issued by City Hall – government and bureaucrats – to discourage those who would dissent, rebel or resist. ‘Nothing can be done to change the situation,’ they declare, ‘so nothing should be attempted.’
A corollary lie is that one person cannot successfully stand up against the system. Bradley/Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden prove the opposite. Each contributed a surprise plot twist in the history of totalitarianism being written by officials. Each also point to the price individuals can pay for speaking truth to power. They provide valuable lessons on how to dissent, rebel or resist while sustaining the least possible damage to your life. [Note: the following are examples of extreme dissent, not more muted protest such as walking down a street while carrying a sign.] Spotlighting Others Who Made a Difference
Other dissidents have grabbed recent headlines for counter-state actions in the past.
On the night of March 8, 1971, eight proto-Snowdens stole files from an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They were anonymous members of the leftist anti-Vietnam war group, Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. After careful surveillance, the activist-burglars timed the break-in to coincide with the hyped boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier; they figured security guards would be glued to their radios.
The resulting files documented the FBI’s COINTELPRO program with its explicit mission to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups considered to be “subversive.” Anti-Vietnam war and civil rights organizations were particular targets. The purloined information was disseminated to media sources, many of whom initially declined to publish. Enough information became public to create a furor, however, especially in concert with the Watergate scandal. The ensuing Church Committee, named after its chairman Senator Frank Church, investigated the FBI, CIA, and NSA for illegal gathering of information. COINTELPRO was disbanded. And Americans learned shocking secrets about government such as the FBI bugging of Martin Luther King and the CIA medical experiments on American citizens.

This post was published at Dollar Vigilante on 2014/10/15.