May 1 General Strike Is A Unifying Challenge To Global Police State

As the May 1 General Strike sweeps the world, drawing thousands of protesters out of their cubicles and into the streets, they are marching in solidarity with the world's economically aggrieved. But many folks around the world are unable, or unwilling, to find common ground with the movement, and with Occupy Wall Street as a whole.

The physical appearance of many OWS members, combined with their portrayal in mainstream media may have tainted these folks and turned them against the protesters currently holding the world at rapt attention as they make their views known through the use of nonviolent protest methods.

They may be turned off by the Occupiers' rhetoric pitting the 99 percent against the 1 percent, or they may just subscribe to a different view about the fairness of the current state of economic affairs and politics.

The people who are unable to find common cause with the thousands of marchers taking off work and school today to contribute their voices to the massive May 1 General Strike (M1GS) movement are the ones who must be moved by the ancillary goal of today's protests.

Whether they know it or not, the marchers are playing a lead role in another important drama that will have wide-ranging implications beyond the M1GS.

The less-recognized purpose of the May 1 General Strike rests in the fact that it is a unique challenge to the global police state.

Over the past year, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Anonymous hacktivist collective, WikiLeaks and other movements have presented unique challenges to the rule of law and authorities tasked with both protecting the citizenry and ensuring they respect basic rights and privacy.

And time and again, law enforcement has failed, responding to non-threats with violence and mass arrests, overkill tactics and what can only be described as illegal encroachments on human rights.

These small- to moderate-scale actions which have popped up periodically around the world have illustrated repeatedly that there are hyper-militarized police states that are willing to step on freedoms in order to quash dissent and speech they disagree with.

But the reason the May 1 General Strike is such a unique opportunity is because it is a worldwide movement that will test all the world's governments and law enforcement agencies at once.

And even before the protests had begun, police departments had already begun to use questionable and sneaky tactics to intimidate those who planned to participate today in the M1GS.

Gawker reports that the NYPD raided a number of OWS organizers' homes with shaky ground for initiating searches on the day before the protests were set to begin.

And reports of similar actions have been filed around the world, as the police seek to do everything in their power to tamp down the protests before they can accomplish anything or get out of hand.

Agencies including the NYPD and the Seattle mayor's office have warned that violence is to be anticipated at M1GS protests in their municipalities, which allows them to authorize the introduction of highly-militarized riot squads in advance of any need for such force.

The fact is that the world's law enforcement regimes have been let loose recklessly on a nonviolent protest movement, and they continue to do so today in the face of a direct challenge to their assumed authorization to break laws and trample rights in the pursuit in security.

As such, even those humans around the world who do not find themselves to be members of the economic underclass, or whose politics don't jibe with those of the OWS movement, should be able to suspend their judgement of those who are being targeted by this global crackdown and see the threats it poses to all citizens' rights.

The May 1 General Strike's political goals and economic message are not for everyone. But their oppression at the hands of the world's ruthless and ubiquitous police states should worry every man, woman and child, as they could be next, if the authorities so chose.