Ken Krayeske

Edward Snowden is the man who last week told his bosses at Booz Allen Hamilton he had to take a vacation to treat his epilepsy, and instead flew to Hong Kong to meet with civil rights activist Glenn Greenwald.

In a hotel room, Snowden gave Greenwald top-secret classified documents outlining how the National Security Administration mines and stores e-data on all Americans online.

Snowden didn’t even tell his girlfriend of three years what he was doing, He is dead to her now, as it is unlikely he will ever freely step foot in American soil again. As a worker at Booz Allen, his conscience would not let him help build the architecture of oppression.

Upon understanding this edifice of electronic control and surveillance will only grow during the next generations, Snowden said “you realize you might be willing to accept any risk and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is so long as the public gets to make their own decisions about how that’s applied.”

Of course, the New York Times cut off the quote, ending at “what the outcome is”, changing Snowden from a conscientious objector to a potential thrill-seeking radical. But we expect the shoot the messenger mentality.

One wonders if the modern media would have said Crispus Attucks was asking for it. On a cold, March evening in 1770, Crispus Attucks, a man who either was freed from or fled from slavery, was standing in the Boston Common with a stick or a club. He apparently joined in taunting of some British soldiers.

Within moments, Attucks was dead of a bullet to the chest, a martyr for liberty in what would soon be known as the Boston Massacre. Of course, a later criminal inquiry cleared the British soldiers of all wrongdoing.

Attucks’ death was one of many sparks on the inexorable path to the Revolutionary War. While the first shots weren’t fired until later, Paul Revere’s woodcut of the Boston Massacre captured the popular imagination of colonials.

In hindsight, ten years from now, will we see Snowden’s revelations of massive spying on Americans as part of a march towards revolution here? Will we see Snowden’s whistleblowing on activities the Obama administration has alternately denied and also sworn as legal and allowed by Congress and courts as part of an inexorable march to a second American revolution?

We can’t trust Congress or the courts always. Remember that these same institutions rubber stamped slavery, segregation, and any number of other reprehensible moral outrages. And continue to do so today with things like austerity budgeting.

Those moments which spark revolutions often surprise, and are unpredictable. Who could have predicted that a fruit vendor setting himself on fire in Tunis, Tunisia would spark the Arab Spring that toppled American client dictators in Tunisia and Egypt?

Who would’ve imagined the Syrian Army’s massacre of four teenagers writing anti-government graffiti in Dara, south of Damascus, would ignite the Syrian Civil War?

(If you’re wondering why the rebels there haven’t been successful, consider that while the United States maintains more than 700 military bases globally, the former Soviet Union, i.e. Russia, maintains one: a naval base on the Mediterranean in Latakia, Syria.)

In Turkey right now, a motley band of soccer fans, leftists and environmentalists has shut down parts of Istanbul over plans to turn Turkey’s main park into a shopping mall.

The hard right government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan skipped the planning process entirely to confiscate this park. Istanbul is densely populated, with 1.5 percent of its land as green space. Istanbul has the same population as New York City, which has more than 12 percent of its land dedicated to parks.

Again, no one would have supposed that a normal corrupt development deal would lead to police barricades, tear gas, riots and dead protestors. But it did. We never know what the tipping point will be.

Occupy Wall Street was a mass movement attempting to alter the status quo. The Obama administration appears to have coordinated a massive, violent national crackdown on this leftist movement for income equality.

Will we eventually look at the data point of Occupy Wall Street as we now see the revolt against King George III’s Stamp Act?

I’m not optimistic about the ability of Americans to change the inertia of their own government. As much as I want to believe in the power of non-violent protest on a mass scale, I am not sure of their effectiveness against the power of the federal government.

Non-violent rebellion remains vulnerable to infiltration and the use of agents provocateur  by the government. Additionally, non-violent sit-ins and marches are routinely ignored.

For example, the North Carolina NAACP – apparently a much stronger organization than its Connecticut counterpart – for the past six weeks has organized a sit-in at the state capitol called Moral Mondays.

More than 150 people were arrested this past week protesting the austerity budget cutting law making by North Carolina’s GOP government. Google “Moral Mondays”: the only hits are from NPR and the Guardian, the same newspaper that Edward Snowden went to, because national media in the United States is, as a former CIA head said, owned by the CIA.

The Republicans in North Carolina laugh at the arrests now. People like myself who have long believed in non-violence will quote Gandhi, first they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. I don’t see it as that simple.

Now, when they fight you, it is with quasi-military forces the likes of which saw engage in the direct repression against Occupy Wall Street. That the public at large shrugged this off demonstrates the government knows what it can do to maintain power.

I do not see violent rebellion as a viable avenue to change, because the current American power structure will say violent rebellion justifies the use of dramatic force, like we saw at Waco or Ruby Ridge.

Nor am I fully convinced that change can come through the ballot box. I work as hard as I can at reforming the electoral system, because I see it as our last best hope.

At the same time, I keep wondering when the great upheaval will come to the United States. This income inequality, combined with the war on terror’s restrictions of civil liberties, makes the United States an undemocratic nation. How long will we allow it to persist?

What will be the sparks that send us back on a course to a just, peaceful, equitable and verdant society? Is Edward Snowden Crispus Attucks?

As a freshman at Syracuse University, I failed to understand the depth of depravity lurking in Division I athletics. I knew college sports meant big money, but I underestimated the entitlement and rape culture that went along with it.

Syracuse University never had the great soccer teams of its Big East rivals UConn or St. Johns. But its players nonetheless felt they owned the world because they were big time athletes. This became evident to me one night in February 1991.

A woman I was dating went to a frat party, and when she returned to our dorm, she sought solace in my arms. She wept as we hugged, and I knew something was wrong.

After some prying and arguing, I learned she had been cornered in a closet by a soccer player and he raped her. She did not want to report this to the police. She did not want to seek medical help.

I told her that if she was not going to do anything, I could not help her either. I did not report it. I didn’t know the guy. She wouldn’t cooperate. I regretted it then, and though I can try to forgive my callousness, it makes me feel small now. My own shame  compels me to speak in concert with UConn undergrad Carolyn Luby.

Luby recently wrote a letter to UConn president Susan Herbst decrying UConn’s new aggressive, angry Husky dog cartoon logo as a symbol of rape culture. Luby’s words:

“What terrifies me about the admiration of such traits is that I know what it feels like to have a real life Husky look straight through you and to feel powerless, and to wonder if even the administration cannot ‘mess with them.’ And I know I am not alone.”

UConn ignored Luby. UConn and the entire state of Connecticut refuses to mess with the athletic department, despite the stench of ethical decay wafting from Gampel Pavilion.

Even the former Governor of Connecticut herself, M. Jodi Rell, did not mess with Jim Calhoun when he was an aggressive, mean “big dog” to this very columnist.

I once hoped UConn President Susan Herbst would be more than a corporate caretaker of the state’s flagship university. I hoped Herbst would fight for students, and use her pulpit to argue for free tuition, if not that, then reducing student loan burdens.

Instead, Herbst has shown herself unfit to protect students, and she has positioned herself atop an institution bent on mining its student body for profit and reaping the benefits of capitalist excess.

Last week, the mailman gave me a glossy, four-color magazine from UConn. I am a 2010 graduate of its law school. UConn likely sent this magazine to every graduate of every school, at no small expense, explaining the new logo and look and shortened name (from the University of Connecticut to “UConn”).

The UConn communications department, which boasts 31 employees working in six different sub-departments, needed Nike’s help to not just redesign the logo, but to explain why the redesign benefits everyone.

Surely, these 31 communications personnel provide essential services to the educational mission of the University and keep tuition costs low and insure student loan rates below prime, right? Of course.

Kenneth Best, who more than a decade ago covered UConn basketball for a radio station, now is the Special Projects Editor for the University News and Information Department. If memory serves me, Best was always a PR guy in another field, and the radio gig was a hobby.

And the destruction of journalism has seen good reporters like Stephanie Reitz, once an AP staffer who I worked with at the Waterbury Republican back in the mid-1990s, and Colin Poitras, formerly with the Hartford Courant, flock to the public relations game.

Anyways, Best scribed “Husky Evolution”, a three-page story explaining the new logo. How he didn’t puke when writing the piece is beyond me, but hey, everybody’s gotta eat and pay rent, right?

Best’s propaganda traced the decades-long history of UConn’s cartoon mascot to today’s new mean dog logo.  Emulating legit journalism, Best quoted two sources: UConn’s Kyle Muncy and Nike’s Clint Shaner, the graphic designer who helped create the logo.

When UConn examined its sports programs, Muncy said “we saw that only five of the 24 were using the Husky dog logo on their current uniform…We had become an athletic department and a university that had so many different marks, it was difficult to determine what the brand was.”

Now remember, participating in college sports is about becoming a more well-rounded person, someone whose competition in intercollegiate athletics aids in self-discovery and team building and helps equip them for the challenges of citizenship and life.

So why do we care about brand imaging? It can’t be for Kyle Muncy’s paycheck. Or for the NBA and the NFL’s need for trained bodies from UConn’s minor league teams. Or because Nike needs to sell uniforms.

Shaner is the senior graphic designer for Nike’s Graphic Identity Group, and he can be found online discussing the redesign of the Arizona State University Sun Devils uniforms and logos.

Lisa Love was the vice president for athletics at Arizona, and her quote from an April 12, 2011 press release heralding the new ASU logo and specially created font (by Nike!) sounds like the vomit from Muncy and Best now:

“When I arrived at ASU six years ago I noticed we were an athletics program which featured different shades of maroon and gold, different logos, multiple fonts and uniforms…There was a lack of real consistency with regard to our brand.”

Nike drives the collegiate athletic ship.  Nothing like creating a need for new product and selling it. I wonder what Carolyn Luby would think of ASU’s new logo: a very sharp lined, aggressive, militaristic trident. It is not the smiley little Sun Devil of days of yore.

A trident is an ancient phallic symbol, wielded by the mythological King Neptune. But ASU would tell you this isn’t about emphasizing male domination. In 2009, ASU paid $850,000 to a woman raped by a Sun Devil football player.

But UConn and Nike will tell you it’s wrong to think of rape culture, putting athletes on a pedestal or selling merchandise. They want you to forget Nate Miles and his violence against women. UConn wants to you to believe the consistent brand image allows college athletes to wear uniforms reflecting who they truly are, so they can be educated to become better citizens.

UConn’s new logo is about “athleticism, determination, and aggressiveness in competition,” said Muncy, adding that student-athletes contributed to the design. “They didn’t feel the existing mark reflected who they are and didn’t adequately embody the characteristics of a Husky,” he said. I say horse manure.

Explain to me again why I didn’t receive a four-color glossy magazine from Susan Herbst explaining why UConn was organizing all its students on all its campuses to support Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal that student loans get the same interest rates that banks do, less than one percent? Because Herbst’s a fraud?

Explain to me again why there isn’t a whole glossy magazine from UConn decrying the Obama administration’s $51 billion profit from student loans this year? Because UConn’s corporate class depends on this disgusting practice for its existence?

Capitalism demands exploitation. Capitalism demands meat to grind into profit. Capitalism demands complicity from winners and defeat from losers.

Anoint as victors the Muncys, the Nikes, the Herbsts, the Calhouns. Silence as vanquished the Lubys scorned, the violated restraining orders, the students in debt, the women sewing in sweatshops, the raped weeping and thirsting for justice.