tiananmen, tiller, and guantanamo
Tiananmen Square was my first CNN moment, the first time I stayed glued to the TV all night long, following events in close to real time. It was a defining moment for the global media regime, but we still haven’t resolved the question of what this new ability means. If all we can do is bear witness to atrocities in ever-greater detail, it doesn’t take us anywhere. We (meaning me and most of my readers) have a combination of information and privelege that no one in the world has ever had before. What do we do with it?
It’s easy to think of the assassination of George Tiller in abstract terms of policy and power, but listen to Surreal Estate, who was a patient of his:
I walked through a metal detector through a double set of privacy doors. A security guard checked me and Brian in- I thought it excessive at the time, but it obviously wasn’t excessive enough. Smack in the middle of Kansas, this clinic has been the recipient of vandalism, gunfire, and bombs. There was an orientation, some doctor visits, packets of information, numbers, and advice, etc. I got to meet several other girls and hear heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story. No one, not a single person there deserves any wrath of any kind. Several stories literally brought me to tears- a woman with a braindead baby growing in her womb, an autistic girl who had been raped, a homeless woman who had been abandoned by her husband, and another very young girl from South America whose stepfather had abused her.
I remember how kind he was. He walked up to our group and asked us what we thought the pro-life movement was about. He said his answer was CONTROL. Other people wanted to control our lives, men wanted to control our decisions, and religion wanted to control our laws.
And after years of isolation, here’s the first (sort of) public protest by prisoners in Guantanamo:
