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Rallying For A Cause

Late Sunday night, I strolled a few blocks from my house in Allston to check out the scene at Brighton Avenue and Harvard Street. The intersection was choked with a horde of people chanting and dancing around a huge bonfire, celebrating the outcome of the Super Bowl. Both streets were shut down, and there were five or so police standing around, watching the chaos disinterestedly.

More than anything, I was overcome with frustration, and it’s not like I’m a Rams fan or anything. I am frustrated because, like a handful of other BU students, I had been in New York City that afternoon, where hundreds of riot police cracked heads and dragged kids off to jail for occupying the streets. We were there to demonstrate against the World Economic Forum, which was having the last day of its summit meeting in the city. We disrupted the calm of the city to show opposition to the violence of the WEF’s practice.

Unlike the intoxicated stupidity of the football fans’ actions, ours had a clear political agenda: the WEF is the opposite of economic justice. The neo-liberal economic agenda it promotes is violence against the developing world and a threat to democracy at home. The more we allow policy to be shaped and influenced by corporate elites unaccountable to the public, the less decision-making power we all have.

Why, then, is it the kids with heart get beaten down, while the police remain aloof as the brainless fools who play the games set up by the corporate media do what they want? Why is it that the ones who organize for a better future, the kids who care enough about the world to put their own freedom on the line for it, get brutally repressed, while jocks sweating testosterone and chanting patriotic slogans are left to tire themselves out?

Both groups were probably unlawfully assembled. Both groups were engaging in disorderly conduct. Yet today, there are kids in jail in New York City for it, while Patriots fans merely had to deal with one heck of a hangover.

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