I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested… As I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, ‘I need to get in. My daughter’s there. I want to know if she’s OK.’ And he said, ‘Move on, lady.’ And they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head,” says Smith. “I walk over, and I say, ‘Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, ‘Lady, do you want to get arrested?’ And I said, ‘Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer.’ He said, ‘You want to get arrested?’ And he pushed me up against the wall.

—Retired New York Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith, working as a legal observer after the raids on Zucotti Park this Tuesday, as quoted in this video.

I’ve talked to people—a fellow just last night on Reddit, even—who say protesters should step aside because police are authority figures who deserve respect. And if they don’t step aside, they should expect to be moved forcefully, by whatever means the officer sees fit.

Bookmark this quote in response to such arguments. I don’t agree that authority figures should be respected for their titles rather than their actions, but that seems to be a necessity for those in the military, so the argument is going to keep coming up. If it’s all about rank, shouldn’t a police officer defer to a retired state supreme court justice? This quote is evidence that this is not about respect at all, but about power: some cops feel they have a right to abuse these protesters. They not only think they are above the law, they believe the protesters are beneath the law. These cops are putting protesters into the same category they frequently put poor people and people of color. So this situation is nothing new, we have white, middle-class people getting a taste of the kind of treatment of our citizenry that leads to situations like the shooting of Amadou Diallo and Oscar Grant. Which only emboldens and radicalizes those who have been dehumanized by police. It’s like Judge Smith says in the interview, “But in the end, they were enforcing private property interests. And that’s really what—the message, I think, from the whole Occupy Wall Street’s about.”

“We are the 99 percent.”

I want to gif this.

(Source: occupyoakland.org)