Spotted at Occupy Tampa.
If you think this tank is big, you should see the Rescue 1.
Posts tagged police
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.”
«Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
This is what happened. You are responsible for it.
»
— from a fantastic letter from A Critical Theory Teacher at UC Davis to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Video of police officers pepper spraying students who are peacefully sitting, waiting to be arrested. Then the cops realize they will have to push their arrestees through the very crowd that has watched just watched their despicable action. Oops.
The crowd chants to shame them and the police back down!
WE CAN WIN THIS.
If you have any thoughts you want to share with the UC Davis Police Department, they can be reached at (530) 752-1727.
Meet Dorli Rainey, the 84-Year-Old Woman Pepper Sprayed at Occupy Seattle
Broadly, Rainey has been active in politics and Seattle public life since the 1950s. A former schoolteacher, she ran for a seat on the King County Council in the 1970s and lost. During the same period, she was a school board member in Issaquah, a nearby city. Last year, she ran for mayor but eventually withdrew from the race saying, “I am old and should learn to be old, stay home, watch TV and sit still.” But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a good rapport with the current mayor. Read more.
Playing guitar in a sea of mud—where Occupy Oakland used to be. Or I should say, where the tents used to be. There were plenty of Occupiers around the plaza, but it remained to be seen who would stay and face the mayor’s promise of arrest.
Why Occupy Oakland Claimed That Building—And Why the Cops Took It Back
Reposting this in its entirety. The original post is on Indy media at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/03/18697018.php
Last night, after one of the most remarkable days of resistance in recent history, some of us within Occupy Oakland took an important next step: we extended the occupation to an unused building near Oscar Grant Plaza. We did this, first off, in order to secure the shelter and space from which to continue organizing during the coming winter months. But we also hoped to use the national spotlight on Oakland to encourage other occupations in colder, more northern climates to consider claiming spaces and moving indoors in order to resist the repressive force of the weather, after so bravely resisting the police and the political establishment. We want this movement to be here next Spring, and claiming unused space is, in our view, the most plausible way forward for us at this point. We had plans to start using this space today as a library, a place for classes and workshops, as well as a dormitory for those with health conditions. We had already begun to move in books from the library.
The building we chose was perfect: not only was it a mere block from Oscar Grant Plaza, but it formerly housed the Traveler’s Aid Society, a not-for-profit organization that provided services to the homeless but, due to cuts in government funding, lost its lease Given that Occupy Oakland feeds hundreds of people every day, provides them with places to sleep and equipment for doing so, involves them in the maintenance of the camp (if they so choose), we believe this makes us the ideal tenants of this space, despite our unwillingness to pay for it. None of this should be that surprising, in any case, as talk of such an action has percolated through the movement for months now, and the Oakland GA recently voted to support such occupations materially and otherwise. Business Insider discussed this decision in an article entitled “The Inevitable Has Happened.”
We are well aware that such an action is illegal, just as it is illegal to camp, cook, and live in Oscar Grant Plaza as we have done. We are aware that property law means that what we did last night counts as trespassing, if not burglary. Still, the ferocity of the police response surprised us. Once again, they mobilized hundreds of police officers, armed to the hilt with bean bag guns, tear gas and flashbang grenades, despite the fact that these so-called “less-than-lethal” weapons nearly killed someone last week. The city spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect one landlord’s right to earn a few thousand every month. Why is this? Whereas the blockade of the port – an action which caused millions of dollars of losses – met with no resistance, the attempt to take one single building, a building that was unused, met with the most brutal and swift response.
The answer: they fear this logical next step from the movement more than anything else. They fear it because they know how much appeal it will have. All across the US thousands upon thousands of commercial and residential spaces sit empty while more and more people are forced to sleep in the streets, or driven deep into poverty while trying to pay their rent despite unemployment or poverty wages. We understand that capitalism is a system that has no care for human needs. It is a system which produces hundreds of thousands of empty houses at the same time as it produces hundreds of thousands of homeless people. The police are the line between these people and these houses. They say: you can stay in your rat-infested park. You can camp out here as long as we want. But the moment that you threaten property rights, we will come at you with everything we have.
It is no longer clear who calls the shots in Oakland anymore. At the same time as OPD and the Alameda County Sheriffs were suiting up and getting ready to smash heads and gas people on 16th St, Mayor Quan was issuing a statement that she wished to speak to us about returning the building to the Traverler’s Aid Society. It is clear that the enmity between the Mayor and the Police has grown so intense that the police force is now an autonomous force, making its own decisions, irrespective of City Hall. This gives us even less reason to listen to them or respect the authority now.
We understand that much of the conversation about last night will revolve around the question of violence (though mostly they mean violence to “property,” which is somehow strangely equated with harming human beings). We know that there are many perspectives on these questions, and we should make the space for talking about them. But let us say this to the cops and to the mayor: things got “violent” after the police came. The riot cops marched down Telegraph and then the barricades were lit on fire. The riots cops marched down Telegraph and then bottles got thrown and windows smashed. The riot cops marched down Telegraph and graffiti appeared everywhere.
The point here is obvious: if the police don’t want violence, they should stay the hell away.
The police had slashed our tents; thrown away clothes, food, medical supplies; and arrested the protesters and the reinforcements that were ready to replace us. The police had thrown noxious chemicals and burning gas at us and shot us with rubber bullets. The police had showed their might and erected a flimsy fence to reinforce it. And as they were lying to the media about who did what and when, this sign went up.
Though their numbers had dwindled after Tuesday night’s police brutality, this sign captured the sentiment. The remaining occupiers stood in the street with a banner. They thanked me for coming. Everyone was angry. No one was daunted.
That was on Tuesday. By Wednesday at six the fences were torn down and the camp reestablished. Enough food was donated to feed everyone. A day later there was a library, school tent, and an agreement to have a general strike. My friend got six medical volunteers in a three-hour shift. Not hobos, not teenagers—People who know how to insert a catheter. Constantly there were meetings.
I have never in my life seen such a group of people so diverse, so motivated, so organized and so relentlessly determined. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, we are not quitting. We have been waiting. The time is now.
I say “us” and “we” though it’s unfair to say for I’m not among the campers. My tent wasn’t shredded. My laptop wasn’t “confiscated.” I didn’t have to sleep on the floor in a jail.
I say “us” because Occupy Oakland knows that the movement is much bigger than the campers. It is the farmers that provide the food, the bloggers and publicists that share the news, the artists that make the t-shirts and photos, the designers and developers who build the website, the thousands who clashed with police on Tuesday. The campers represent us. They are our proxies.
Politicians count active constituents as representative of larger numbers of lazy voters. One email counts for a handful of miffed voters, a letter even more, a phone call counts for many, and you can bet if people are sleeping on your fucking lawn you can count on a crowd with torches and forks.
The campers sit for me. Tomorrow I stand for the protesters. Tomorrow there is no work. Tomorrow there is no shopping. Tomorrow, I strike.
Police Dismantle Protest Camp In Richmond, Virginia ! http://newish.info/162830-police-dismantle-protest-camp-in-richmond-virginia
