“Protest” is a word that means different things to different people. To me, it means an exercise in one’s First Amendment rights to speak on controversial issues.
To CNN, it is a way to obfuscate the actions of petty criminals.
The good doctor Jill Stein, the Green Party’s candidate for the presidency, apparently decided her enviro-warrior bona fides needed strengthening last week and decided to travel to North Dakota to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Never mind the carbon emissions of such a drive.
Dressing as one would for a TV show about harassing Japanese whalers as they pursue centuries-old traditions, Stein harassed construction workers in the name of protecting centuries old Sioux traditions.
I enjoy a good protest just as much as anyone else.However, to Stein, and apparently to CNN, a protest involves damaging others’ property.
In fact, much of the media reported her actions as a “protest.”
Unfortunately for Stein, the pictures posted told a different story to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, which decided to charge her and her running mate with criminal trespass and mischief.
If only she could have deleted those pictures like other candidates delete emails, perhaps she too could have escaped prosecution.
I am still confused where the line between protest and crime lies for CNN, as the words “charged,” “mischief” and “trespassing” are placed in the same headline as “protest.”
Surely when prosecutable criminal behavior has been committed, to the joy of those in attendance (look at the pictures!), the events that transpire should be pedagogically separated from core First Amendment activity.
Certainly, this disturbing trend of abusing language for ideological ends is not new. But it seems particularly onerous now.
Because of this, words are losing meaning. This is how tipping bus shelters and stealing hair extensions in Milwaukee becomes an “uprising,” placed on the same moral plane as Hungarians desperately battling the tide of Communist oppression in 1956.
Terrorist shootings of military bases become “workplace violence” in the unflinchingly politically correct language of the current administration. As Obama said in a 2014 Cabinet meeting, administering executive action has become nothing more than utilizing a pen and a phone.
After at least eight years of this nonsense, this is how we end up with Donald Trump. Who cares if he knows little about anything in particular when the very words we use to describe such issues are malleable and fluid? If the target is a barn, shooting from the hip becomes the best strategy.
Both sides can play the game.
To begin the long process of digging out of our current political climate, CNN should call a crook a crook.
Stein did not engage in a protest. She engaged in petty criminal activity and nothing more. Real protests draw attention to issues without causing physical damage.
The world can survive one Stein defacing one backhoe, but it won’t long survive the normalization of this behavior and the damage done to our language.
zaochamb@indiana.edu
