Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
There's always one in every crowd ... and, today, that's me.
I'm not impressed. Voting to recommend against installing AIT scanners, in the long run, may not amount to anything. Unless there's a squad of Texas Rangers standing at AUS, forbidding the TSA folks from taking the AIT machines off the moving truck, TSA may feel completely free to do as it wishes and start installing the AIT machines anyways.
I would, of course, be happy to be proven wrong.
I agree that this is mostly symbolic. There are two very definite (potential) positives that I see here though:
1. There is actual
organized opposition to the TSA on the local level. Once you have local organization in numbers those people can show up en masse at the local airport to picket and hand out literature for a day. Once you do this, they can go from having 10 opt-outs a day to 1000, and the number of calls and letters to the local congressman will increase likewise.
2. Having the support of the local government and the airport authority means that when people do show up to picket outside of the airport, they will be welcomed and defended by local law enforcement authorities (who largely control what happens outside of the sterile area), instead of being shooed away and threatened by them.
The battle for the hearts and minds of the people begins at the local level. It starts with a few people, then it grows. It is heartening to imagine what can happen if the people of Austin take the support they have gotten and build upon it, taking the protest of the TSA policies to the next level - signs, pickets, leaflets, drivers honking their horns outside the airport in support of the protesters...it can all happen, if they continue to organize and make it happen.
I can only hope that they do. Once it happens in one city, that city can serve as a model for others. Airport by airport, the fight against the TSA can be won. Not with lawsuits and certainly not with violence, but by spreading that which is most toxic to the TSA: the idea that we can speak out against them...the idea that grunts in blue shirts shouldn't control our bodies...the idea that security can be something other than what big sis tells us it is...the idea that we do not have to sacrifice every ounce of freedom, dignity and money we have in order to be safe...the idea that we have a choice. Once this idea takes hold in an airport lobby and in the local media and it displaces the current TSA propaganda the idea cannot be stopped.
This may just be just a dream that I have. But the people have the power to make it real.