VigilanceVoice

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Wednesday--December 12, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 456
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Vigilance Attacks On Disney & The Ku Klux Klan--Yield Terrorism's Sores Of The Soul
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by
Cliff McKenzie
   Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News

GROUND ZERO, New York City, Dec. 12 -- Terrorism leaves sad sores on the soul of nations and peoples.    They never seem to heal, despite all attempts to medicate them.
       In the midst of impending war with Iraq, a troubled economy, a threatened transportation strike in America's biggest city, and a major battle between the power of the United Nations versus the power of the United States to act decisively against Terrorism, the pox of Terrorism erupts daily, driving its emergency response teams mad trying to keep them all treated with antibiotics

      A big sore is facing the U.S. Supreme Court--the legality of burning a cross.   Some say the burning of a cross is protected under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment's guarantee of Free Speech.   Others argue it is a Terrorist attack, as flagrant as waving a gun in the face of citizens and therefore stands outside the First Amendment as a "clear and present danger."
       Speaking out in favor of upholding the Virginia law making it illegal to burn the cross, Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black Supreme Court Justice condemned the burning of crosses as part of a "reign of terror" by the Ku Klux Klan during a century of American history.  "It is unlike any symbol in our society," said Thomas.  "It was intended to cause fear, terrorism."
        California is one of thirteen states with similar laws banning cross burning for the purpose of "terrorizing" others.   The difference, the court says, between burning a U.S. Flag and a cross is the intent.   Protesting a symbol of government is different from a specific design to "terrorize."   

        In another attack of Vigilance last night, protestors gathered in a torrential downpour in New York City's wealthiest shopping sector, Fifth Ave, to protest Disney's use of child labor to produce many of its products.  The protestors, young and old, stood behind police barricades with signs and vigil candles, shouting out anti-Disney slogans, protesting the harsh and cruel treatment of utilizing child labor in many underdeveloped countries that manufacture products for the Disney store.
       According to a flyer distributed by the protestors, the National Labor Committee alleges that workers are paid just 5 cents for each $17.99 Disney Winnie the Pooh shirt they sew, and that the contractors Disney use treat their employees--mostly women and children--like slaves with mandatory daily hours ranging from 14-15 hours a day and earning as little as 12 to 19 cents a hour or $5.67 a week.
       While I couldn't make the Supreme Court discussion over the "burning flag" issue, I did wrap myself in layers of rain gear to capture the protest of the anti-Disney protestors in 'my backyard.'

      An expected crowd of 1,000 protestors was reduced to a few hundred due to the pelting rain.   I huddled in an eave in front of the Disney store, between two female NYPD officers, two of more than a hundred on the scene, and captured pictures of protestors dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse holding signs protesting Michael Eisner's continued use of child labor.   One of the flyers noted that Eisner pays himself $667 million a year, about $63,000 an hour, and cited that it would take a worker being paid 12 cents an hour 210 years to earn the same hourly wage Eisner does.
       I followed the protestors down Fifth Avenue, past hundreds of well-dressed, high-income people who work and shop in the exclusive Fifth Avenue location where retail icons like Fendi and Tiffany are located.   Their chants and diatribes were met with stares and some grumps for blocking a major section of the sidewalk, but for the most part, the protest was peaceful.   There were no crosses burned.
       I thought about the difference between burning a cross and protesting Disney.
       The Supreme Court, it appeared, was on the verge of upholding the law making it a crime to burn a cross for the purpose of "terrorizing others," and I wondered why all the accusations that Michael Eisner was a "child terrorist" who tacitly abused children around the world by contracting with companies outside the United States, stood outside the "terrorism law."
       Obviously, there is a difference between opening your door and seeing a cross burning in your front yard, and buying a Winnie The Pooh doll made by the bloodied fingers of a young child thousands of miles away.  The blood from the child's fingers can't be seen because it is hidden in the stuffing of the doll.
       But it did bring up the issue not of the "degrees of Terrorism" that separates a cross burning or a doll made by child labor slaves, but rather the source of Terrorism.

       I wondered why the Supreme Court didn't make it illegal to raise a child to burn crosses rather to invoke a law about a grown child burning one.   It seemed that if law's purpose was to make the world safer, it would reach down to the seeds of the crime and try to snuff the bad ones out before they grew rather than wait for them to grow into tumors.
       The Disney protest I thought was far more fundamental than the issue before the Supreme Court.   In the Ku Klux Klan cross burning issue, the "act of Terrorism" was on trial.   In the Disney protest case, the "source of Terrorism" was on trial.
        Disney protestors wanted to change the fundamental way children are treated when they work for American companies.  They were seeking to remove the "clear and present danger" of child abuse.
        When someone thinks about the two issues, a burning cross in their front lawn or supporting the continued abuse of children in other lands by companies who do not monitor or manage the conditions of their workers, and accept products manufactured by virtual "slave labor conditions," it makes one wonder if fighting Terrorism ultimately comes to how close it is to our noses.
        It makes little sense to imagine someone walking out of his or her home to meet a burning cross in his or her yard and screaming:  "I want to know the names of the parents of the people who lit this burning cross on my yard so I can seek justice against them for being Terroristic parents and allowing their children to grow up thinking they have a right to Terrorize others in the name of their cause."
        Unfortunately, the Supreme Court Justices weren't asking those kinds of questions as they pondered the constitutionality of a cross burning law.
        The word "constitution" means the "composition of something's structure, its makeup."   The implication of the word is more than something's physical attributes, and suggests there is a source, a core of the "thing's composition" that comprises the "constitution" of it.
        The "constitution" of a cross burner, therefore, is far more than the hand of the man or woman igniting the cross.   It is composed of the entirety of the person, his or her whole being, including the source of his or her existence, the parents, guardians, society in which he or she lives.

      I often want to vomit when I think of the Supreme Court having the power to make people think they can judge law, when the word "law" itself means something is immutable, unchangeable.  A "law" is a fixed thing in nature, not subject to interpretation, not open for discussion.  The law of gravity cannot be altered--"what goes up must come down."
       Yet we as human beings mask law.  We dress it up in robes and judiciary, and we pompously assign faulty human beings to administer it and to judge it.   It is oxymoronic to say "he or she is a lawmaker."  There are no "law makers."  Laws exist without the need for human beings to create them.  Those who believe they do or can, or who believe they can alter them, are only trying to play "God."  They are Terrorizing the law by assuming it is a toy for them to mould as they might a piece of clay.
     

        Terrorism isn't measure by the degrees of law, but by the screams and pain of the children it attacks.   A burning cross means nothing to one who recognizes that those who set it on fire are nothing more than twisted children who have grown up chewing on the seeds of hate and bigotry, and seek to diminish other human beings for not believing in what they believe, or looking like they look, or thinking what they think.   The great crime in cross burning is to give cross burning the power to "terrorize," by making it illegal to burn a cross as though the burners of the cross did indeed have "power" to intimidate, to strike fear into people, to force others to run and hide as though they were mice and the cross burners feral cats hunting them down.
       The problem with cross burning is the idea those who look at a burning cross let it strike Fear, Intimidation and Complacency in them.   Banning cross burning only gives the Terrorists of Cross burning more power.   It legitimizes the Terror.
        The real law in cross burning should be to make it illegal for parents to raise children who think they can Terrorize others.  That's the real crime.    If there were a Supreme Court of Vigilance, it would not rule against cross burning, but against the Parents of Terror who raised cross burners.  It would go the source, for the law of human beings it to evolve above Fear, Intimidation and Complacency, not to live in legislation of it.
        That's why the Disney protest last night had ten times more power to it than the Supreme Court's pious undertaking to uphold or strike down the constitutionality of cross burning.

       The couple of hundred protestors last night braving the pelting rain and chanting for a change in the "constitutionality" of American companies and child labor, was far more vast and far reaching than anything happening in Washington D.C.
         The Sentinels of Vigilance, those souls who hover above Ground Zero, were at the Disney protest last night.  They weren't up in the Supreme Court chambers.
          They were marching with the drenched protestors down Fifth Avenue, urging their small Voices to be heard not only by Eisner, but by any company that believes their products can be manufactured without violating the "laws of child terrorism."
           And if there are true "constitutional heroes" at play in this nation, they aren't the black-robbed nine who think they rule the laws of America, or have some righteous wisdom over what is good for this country.   No, the real "constitutional jurists" of America were out in the streets last night, asking the Supreme Court of Vigilance for mercy.  They were healing the sores on the soul of Terrorism by going to the source of the flame of Terrorism's fuel, not just trying to snuff out its wick.