[CIMC-work] Re: [Imc-chicago] you may post this story if you wish

[Chris Kaihatsu]

Dear Mr. Becker,

Thank you for choosing Chicago Indymedia as the destination for your
independently produced article. While we have a group of dedicated
volunteers who compile story blocks for the site's center panel, we do not
have an editor in the traditional sense of the position and its related
duties.

We invite all who have original content to post to our open newswire. You
may go to the site, chicago.indymedia.org, and click on the Publish button
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If you require further assistance, please do not hesitate to email us as
before.


Chris Kaihatsu, volunteer
Chicago Independent Media Center






on 5/12/03 8:59 AM, scott becker at artscb@interaccess.com wrote:

> Dear Editor,
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> The following is a short article based on my actual experience of this
> last Friday night (May 9th) on Berkshire just off of Harlem in Oak Park.
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> You may print it if you wish with the apporopriate author attribution
> (Scott Becker).
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> THE RULE OF THE GUN AND THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE.
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> Several nights ago in a better heeled street of the prosaic little
> bedroom Oak Park, a community supposedly pacified by a twenty year
> statutory outlaw of the personal possession of firearms, I was briefly
> held at gunpoint and given the most classic of options. "Gimme all your
> money!" [or your life]. And due to an incredible number of lucky
> circumstances, I was left in possession of not only the ability to
> continue to draw breath in an unventilated state but with a certain
> amount of my own sense of dignity and humanity left intact. My wallet
> bound public identity was now ceded into albeit unknown and malicious
> hands but I was now in possession of a certain kind of special
> knowledge. One that though it may be viewed upon primetime every night
> of the week equally cannot be intelligibly transmitted by spoken word
> but only by the gritty realm of solitary individual experience. I had
> without prior warning been stripped of my ability to control the fate of
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> my own life and death before the indifferent mercy of a hostile power.
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> Now at this point, one could speculate as to the motives of someone in
> our obsessive control based society prefacing his thoughts with such a
> premise. It isn=92t my intention to rail about a possible failure of the
> law enforcement or debate the possibility of it being a fundamentally
> flawed mentality to cede over the fundamental issue of one=92s
> self-protection to a system that is guided increasingly more by the
> science of cold statistics. The police officers did their jobs and were
> not to blame and I am sure that their modus operandi, though
> unsuccessful that particular night is reasonably adequate to the overall
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> task of maintaining public safety for this community. No, I find my
> speculations as to the other possibilities of outcome in my own
> situation leading me to some other fertile fields of mental repose. What
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> sort of safety can any of us expect in our own neighborhoods when the
> common everyday popular mentality of this land has been subverted by our
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> own system?
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> The aggressive approach of my assailant seemed fully in keeping with the
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> present ideology of our land, come running up on your victim from a
> point they least expect and display an overwhelming amount of force to
> someone who does not have requisite means to offer the same in return.
> The instability of the quivering tone of that young ethnic voice
> conveying that the outcome has not been thought out in advance but whose
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> conclusion can only be a toss of the dice at best. Sort of like that of
> the reigning escapades of aggressive conquest upon the world stage
> currently lead by our executive branch but tacitly backed up by the
> relative indifference of a perpetually silent majority of most Americans
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> catatonically freeze dried before their television sets. Our society is
> run before the point of a gun. How else could one expect it to be given
> the effluence of same proffered by the entertainment media and the
> compulsively conservative minded rule of our land?
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> Those in perpetual exile at the lowest rung encouraged by its larger
> example in the ever more questionable actions of the present custodians
> of the public trust. If your son or daughter has no possibility of
> growing be President some day then why not teach them the arts of
> deception, thievery and demonstrably employable threat of wholesale
> murder? If you cannot safely winnow your way into the larger system by a
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> privileged protection of a misapplication of time honored rules of
> commerce then attempt to make a withdrawal from the most likely
> representative of that same narrow class. My assailant was merely
> exercising one powerfully suggested alternative as suggested by his
> vassal section of the popular underclass subculture. A self-motivated
> man makes his own opportunities in this life despite the odds stacked up
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> against him. The ultimate question being that like any the other more
> famous varieties of contemporary CEO, should he not only be
> congratulated by society as a whole if he finds a way to not get caught
> in the pursuance of such ventures. But also fundamentally, should he not
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> be equally rewarded for his initiative and boosted up the chain of
> command? Historically speaking, is it not this application of the
> American Way that has brought us as a nation from another small and
> tiresome frontier republic to the dominant actor upon the world stage
> today?
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> Perhaps whatever this anonymous unsung cultural hero has proved to me is
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> that the moral lessons of our society do indeed trickle down. My only
> hope beyond the impossible hope for the return of my wallet with all its
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> contents intact is that I never have to be under the power and influence
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> of that sort of disturbed mentality again in this lifetime.
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> (806 words w/o title)
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> or text is also upon
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> http://homepage.interaccess.com/~artscb/decl35.html
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> (you don't need to post this site!)
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> Sincerely,
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> Scott Becker
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