Dear President-Elect Obama

11.11.08

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on your recent victory. It is such a relief to see that you will be the next President of the United States. I campaigned for you tirelessly, like many others, and I am glad to see that the voice of the people was finally heard.

Every time I am feeling a little down, I turn on the news and I see you and your family preparing for life in the White House, and it puts a big smile on my face. To be honest, I literally cried tears of joy when you gave your acceptance speech. What can I say, you are a really inspiring guy.

However, I have also been seeing very disturbing things on the news lately. For instance, I caught a glimpse of the news last night, November 10, 2008, at about 11 pm on KCOP 13 in Los Angeles.

A man was being pursued by the police, and the pursuit was being covered from a helicopter. The driver pulled over promptly, emerged from his car, and raised his hands in surrender. However, instead of cuffing him, the cops kept their guns trained on him for about 10 minutes as 5 more cop cars pulled up. Ultimately, about a dozen cops showed up on the scene, even though the man had already surrendered and was showing no signs of resistance.

Meanwhile, the man knelt on the ground, with his hands behind his head and his back to the police, presumably because he was instructed to do so.

The man knelt in the road with his hands behind his head for at least 10 minutes. It felt like an eternity. It looked like there were at least 10 guns trained on him from a distance, but none of the officers approached the man or attempted to detain him.

It seemed almost cruel, the way they were making him wait like that in such an uncomfortable position. Why didn't they just cuff him already? To his credit, the man didn't budge.

Eventually, three officers approached the man. As they approached, one of them drew a weapon and fired on the man, despite the fact that the man was showing every sign of cooperation and submission, and hadn't moved at all. The man reeled and crumpled face-forward on the pavement. It was shocking.

The helicopter camera stopped rolling and the news returned to the anchors. The anchors were concerned, but were trying to play it down. I, for one, was outraged. For one, it was ridiculous that so many officers continued to show up to detain one man who was unarmed, had pulled over, and was obviously surrendering. Secondly, they shot the guy! He didn't resist at all, and they shot him for no reason, without provocation!

American citizens should not be gunned down in the streets by their own government, especially when they are displaying every sign of cooperation.

Even more disturbingly, I have been combing the internet looking for coverage of the incident today and I have been unable to find anything. It's as if this event has already been swept under the rug. I watched this appalling footage live on television last night, and yet this afternoon it is nowhere to be found.

There is no freedom in a police state.

The news soon switched to a new story. The DEA were busting marijuana growers across the state of California, a state where marijuana is provisionally legal. It showed them dragging huge bushels into custody, and destroying acres and acres of foliage. Not only is this a violation of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights, the environmental consequences of such slash and burn recklessness are unsavory to say the least.

Is this what my tax dollars are spent on? Sending twelve cops to shoot one guy who has already surrendered? Sending the DEA to thwart the will of the people of California and clear cut a crop that has been proven to have medicinal properties and negligible toxicity?

I am disgusted at the veritable fortune that is being spent by we, the people, on our own oppression. The government is literally extorting money from us, and then using this capital to uphold a quasi-fascist police state that is violating our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our tax dollars should be healing and educating our great nation, not shooting civilians, clear cutting forests, and violating our personal freedoms. Things have gotten way out of hand, and need to be rectified immediately.

Police brutality and abuse of power needs to be stopped posthaste, as does the criminalization of marijuana. Both are evidence of a tyrannical government that doesn't represent the people, but rather represses them.

Though many would try to trivialize these issues, they are anything but trivial. They are examples of the very freedoms that we Americans are supposed to have without question, the very same freedoms that have been stripped from us without discussion.

I realize that you are not yet the President of the United States, and that these draconian abuses of power have nothing to do with you or your policies. However, I beseech you to remedy this situation as soon as you possibly can.

We, the people, need you to protect us from the government that is supposed to be protecting us. We need you to let the LAPD and the DEA know that this bullshit has gone on for too long, and will no longer be tolerated. We need you to restore the government to what it should be: an institution that protects the rights of the people, not an institution that violates the rights of the people. Above all, we need you to restore true freedom to this nation.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration, and congratulations once again on a noble and honorable campaign. If I can be of any service to you or your administration, feel free to let me know.

Regards,

Seamus R. Ryan