Being Seen And Heard

by C. A. Matthews

“The people are not to be heard…”

You could have heard the gasps from miles away.

“The people are not to be heard at council meetings,” the chairwoman of Toledo’s City Council announced after anti-Flock camera activists clapped for a few brief moments following another council member’s brief statement. He’d actually had the audacity of wanting to hear more about what was actually being done with the data the Flock cameras were collecting before renewing the contract. (The vote on the contract is scheduled for later this week.)

Obviously, Toledo City Council doesn’t need to listen to its citizens—citizens who voted each of these city council members into office. We’re allowed to show up at the council’s meetings and listen quietly, but our wishes are not to be made known.

“The people are not to be heard…”

We are to be treated as children—seen but not heard.

If you’ve ever been in a similar situation where someone in authority told you to shut up and stay in your place, I’m sure you would have gasped at that ill-considered statement, too. Residents concerned about ICE obtaining data from the city’s Flock cameras and using it to harass and wrongfully deport others of color are to be scolded, told to sit quietly in their seats like the naughty little kids they are.

Even with all the pleas of politicians encouraging citizens to register and vote that we’ve witnessed lately, there still seems to be an underlying message of, “Vote, but then go home and leave it to us. We know best.”

“The people are not to be heard…”

At least once a year I feel obligated to remind readers that voting cannot save us from the abuses of authority we suffer daily at the hands of the politician-puppets of the oligarchy. It was never meant to, particularly not in the US. Voting is a method of pacification used by the powers-that-be to placate the masses into thinking they live in a “democracy” so they don’t get any ideas above their station in life.

You know the kind of ideas I’m talking about if you’ve read this blog regularly. Ideas like:

“All humans are created equal and deserve to live in peace.”

And dangerous ideas like...

 

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