Fathers 4 Justice landen in USA

Arne Hoffmann, Saturday, 21.05.2005, 18:51 (vor 7509 Tagen)

Wendy McElroy von den individual/liberal feminists erörtert die Frage, wie wohl die durch den 11.9. veränderten USA mit einer Bewegung zivilen Widerstandes wie den britischen Väterrechtlern zurechtkommen werden:

---> Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) -- a pressure group that originated in Britain to crusade for father's rights, especially child custody and access rights in divorce -- has just landed on American shores with the creation of F4J-US. What happens next may tell us as much about society's post-9/11 attitude toward social reform as it does about father's rights. (...) F4J advocates "peaceful non-violent direct action based on the Greenpeace model with a dash of humour thrown in for good measure." In Britain, the group is famous for high-profile stunts that taunt and disrupt authority.

(...) But the same article quotes Matt O'Connor, F4J's founder, as declaring, "We are planning a massive stunt in New York which will catch everyone by surprise…It will be more spectacular than anything we've done in the UK so far and if all goes well we will hopefully be catapulted into infamy." Given past action in the UK, that's quite a statement. Last May, for example, two F4Jers threw condoms full of unidentified powder at Tony Blair, hitting the Prime Minister as he addressed the House of Commons. The substance was later identified as flour that had been dyed purple; the men were charged with the relatively mild offence of "using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour". They were fined but served no time in prison. In the U.S., the two might have been shot on the spot.

Not just the American authorities but the American public is likely to respond more harshly as well. It is not likely that New Yorkers would tolerate a re-run of the London publicity stunt by which 'Spiderman' occupied a crane that 'caused' police to stop traffic flowing across the heavily-traveled Tower Bridge from early October 31st to November 4th. A British court later cleared Spiderman of charges because the closing had resulted from police decisions and not his actions. In the U.S., outraged New Yorkers might not let a Spiderman who closed the Brooklyn Bridge reach the court system at all.

(...) It is an open question: will civil disobedience and non-violent resistance be allowed to shape American society as it has in the past? Or will such strategies be forced to operate within narrower and less effective limits? F4J-US may provide the answer. (...) <---

Es handelt sich um dieselben Väterrechtler, die Arte-Journalistinnen in diesem propagandistischen Beitrag damals als Beleg für die "Gewalttätigkeit der Männerbewegung" anführten. Offenbar schwelt bei der deutsch-französischen Feministinnen derselbe freiheitsfeindliche Ungeist, den McElroy in der Regierung Bush wahrnimmt. ("Es ist ziviler Ungehorsam! Es zerstört die herrschende Ordnung und ist potentiell bedrohlich! Es muss unterbunden werden!") Man darf wohl in der Tat gespannt sein, zu welchen Konfrontationen es da noch kommen wird.

McElroys vollständiger Beitrag: http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0518.html