Bil Lewis Letter to Newspapers

This went to Globe, Herald, Metro, Phoenix (all had articles).

-Bil ====

Dear Editor,

The firestorm that has erupted around the Pax Centurion's reply to my letter in their current newsletter is something that should have happened 20 years ago. But I am glad it's happening now and, judging from casual conversations with beat cops, they're pretty happy too. It seems the hatred spewing from Officer Carnell is not representative of the BPD at all.

My only disappointment is his refusal to meet with me. In my naivety, I imagined that a sincere conversation about fundamental values would force him to confront his biases. He's union! The reason his pay check is getting squeezed is that corporations aren't paying their taxes. (Wells Fargo paid NEGATIVE $680 million?!)

The point is not that individual officers can be nasty, but that our system pushes officers in that direction. In any reasonable world, 2/3 of the Fortune 500 CEOs would be in jail. But they're rich. So when we complain, they use their money to put the cops in between us and them. This makes the cops complicit in subverting the very rule of law they swore to uphold. It can't be easy.

The cops ARE the 99% and we should all be working together to force the 1% to obey the law like the rest of us. I figure the best thing we can do is to raise awareness of the issue and, by all means, talk to cops.

-Bil Lewis, Occupy Boston

(I would like to emphasize that all I did was write a letter. It was other people that made things happen.)