Mamamontezz's Mental Rumpus Room

Vandalism as Dissent?

I understand the necessity of political protest. I even embrace it as a tool for groups interested in producing a climate conducive to immense social and political change. Carrying a placard, marching, making speeches, writing and performing protest songs, and holding rallies have all had a place in this country for drawing attention to situations and initiating changes. Everything from Tom Paine's "Common Sense" to the Swiftboat Vets is protest.

Much political protest is civil, much is not. Chanting and conducting well organized marches and parades is civil. Pitching bricks through windows and throwing marbles under the hooves of police horses is not. Some protests can be extreme. Some is merely wanton vandalism disguised as dissent.

Vandals tried to put a damper on Ashland's Veterans' Day celebration by putting gravel and wet cement into 65 flag holders along the town's main street.

But Kiwanis Club members discovered the vandalism early enough that they were still able to put up more than 200 flags through the rest of the town to commemorate Veterans' Day.

Acts like this protest nothing less than our very existance as a nation. This isn't dissent. It is criminal act which makes real debate impossible.

The punks who perpetrate acts like this deserve it when the full weight of the law falls on them. Eventually it will.