I found this video to be a great example of what empowered citizens can do when faced with intimidation by the state. Police officers know for a fact that they are an intimidating presence and they use this presence to their advantage all the time. They expect your fear and compliance, even when it goes against your constitutional rights. Our schools and religious institutions teach us that obedience is better than free thinking. We are nation conditioned to obey and not question.
Conservatives will tell us that the man in this video is just “making a fuss for nothing.” They would tell us that we should all respect and obey law enforcement, that they are just “doing their jobs.” If you just keep your head down, then nothing bad will happen to you. These are not the kind of people who fought England during the revolution that made America. People who believe that had red coats in their hearts.
We have all grown accustomed to meekly following orders, talking to the police when we don’t need to, and letting them have their way out of fear of loosing our freedom. What people don’t realize is that we have already lost our freedoms when we succumb to that way of thinking. In order to remind the police that they serve us, we must take stands like this. We must not back down and we must record.
The man in this video shows us what the founding fathers of this country meant by “Don’t tread on me,” and he does it with a snake no less! He schools this Los Angeles Police officer on the law, while this officer and the other officers in the video may have found this one incident amusing. Imagine if they had to deal with this on a regular basis from the citizens they detain? This man should be the norm, not the exception. That is when we see the system change.
Watch this video.
