We will not be silenced.
We will not be moved.
Details are still emerging, and we don’t have all the facts yet, but we need to address what’s happening on Facebook today. It would appear that the Peacekeepers Facebook page that thousands of people liked and followed as of yesterday has been caught up in a massive purge. Black Lives Matter associated pages, live streamers, and even just personal social media accounts are being shut down today in a massive attempt to silence people. It won’t work. The Peacekeepers are more than just a Facebook page. We don’t know if or for how long this current incarnation of our Facebook presence will be allowed to stand, but it doesn’t matter. The vast majority of our content was already archived on our website. It was a very minor inconvenience this morning for us to re-upload that content for you here, but please know that it will always be saved across multiple outlets (including our website, but also on multiple devices offline). If one day you can’t find us on Facebook, know that we will always reappear. We will find a way to be present on this platform, on Instagram, on Twitter, Youtube, other social media outlets, and on our own website. If they shut us down by text, we’ll switch entirely to podcast form. If they shut down our podcasts, we’ve got contingency plans to reappear in entirely new ways. If it comes to it, we’ll go low tech and do what our forebears in activism did and we’ll just distribute hard copy print media as ‘zines and pamphlets. We will not be silenced. YOU will not be silenced. This movement didn’t start with the protests following the murder of George Floyd. The enemies of decency think that it did, but it’s roots run far deeper than that. It did not start then, and it will not end now. There are those who think the discomfort has gone on long enough. There are those who want to go back to a time when they didn’t have to hear about systemic racism and endemic injustice. They thought this movement would last a few days or weeks, and then die out. They think that by shutting down a few Facebook pages they can stop the momentum that has built up this summer. But I think you, our loyal readers, already know what we’re going to say to that! You’ve heard us say it a hundred or a thousand times before. We are ALL Peacekeepers! If you stood with us in Prineville against the nationalist gangs and the crooked cops...then you are a Peacekeeper.
If you stood with us in front of the ICE buses...then you are a Peacekeeper. If you made the phones ring at the Sheriff’s office until somebody finally came out to talk to Luke...then you are a Peacekeeper. If you did the same to City Hall until City Manager Eric King returned Luke’s phone calls...then you are a Peacekeeper. If you brought food, water, blankets and other needed supplies to put on our truck to take out to fire evacuees...then you are a Peacekeeper. The nationalist gangs, the racists, the police, the feds, and everybody who serves the racist status quo are all tired of hearing from you. They think that by shutting down some pages and briefly interrupting the flow of information that they can win. What they don’t realize (and what they historically always fail to realize) is that panic moves to silence the voices of the people are always moves made in weakness. If they have to try and make us be silent, it only serves to show that what we’ve been saying was having an impact. There is an old spiritual song. It’s roots go back to slave spirituals, and it’s influence has reached across centuries and even expressed itself in as unlikely a place as comic books.
“We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's standing by the water
We shall not be moved.”
Not only will the Peacekeepers not be moved, today we’re feeling our internal Captain America. The writers for that character once took the old spiritual and walked it forward one step.
“When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world --”
"No, YOU move.”