Occupy: An Arrest in Los Angeles

Take good note of this first-person account of being arrested at an Occupy Movement event in Los Angeles. Note that the brave, dedicated men in blue did what they could to inflict violence and pain and humiliation on unarmed, peaceful people whose crime was sitting down and exercising their First Amendment rights.

Three points:

1) The men and women who nearly collapsed the global economy are still at it, still employed by organizations deemed too big to fail, still receiving enormous paychecks and bonuses.

2) Those who peacefully protest against the oligarchy are brutalized and given the maximum sentences possible for misdemeanors. The protestors are dangerous to the economic elites, and what the elites order the police to do is a direct measure of their fear.

3) That the police commit such acts of barbarity shows us that they are no longer members of the communities they are sworn to serve and protect; they are militarized in mind and body, and all they care about is taking down the enemy. By which they mean us.

Occupy: And Then They Fight You

Remember the saying: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

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A Timeline of Force Used Against the Occupy Movement

September

1: First day of OWS
4: First arrests using 1845 law banning masks at demonstrations
24: 80 arrests; police use tasers and mace on peaceful crowd; police officer caught on video macing a young woman (he lost 10 vacation days as punishment)

October

1, 2: Police arrest demonstrators on Brooklyn Bridge
8: Police pepper spray protestors in Washington, D.C.
10: Boston police arrest 140 protestors
15: Police across the nation arrest peaceful protestors
25: Oakland, CA, police attack peaceful protestors en masse with teargas, beanbag grenades, rubber bullets; Marine veteran of Iraq War shot in head with rubber bullet, hospitalized in critical condition
29: Denver, CO, police attack Occupy demonstration, fire pellets filled with pepper spray
30: Portland,OR, police arrest two dozen peaceful demonstrators

November

3: Riot police attack peaceful Occupy Oakland protest with teargas, flash-bang grenades; more than 100 arrested, another Iraq War veteran seriously injured by police
14: Police clear out Occupy Oakland protest site, arrest 20 peaceful protestors
15: Beginning at 1 a.m., NYPD officers carry out surprise raid, cordon off OWS site, keep residents of area inside, prevent journalists from observing, arrest more than 70 people. Journalists barred from area even hours later, including CBS helicopter prevented from entering airspace above protest site; NY’s billionaire mayor ignored court order to let OWS protestors back on site; NYPD continued to arrest protestors, journalists; NY mayor says if he has to choose between people’s rights and safety, safety wins. Another judge sides with city to remove protestors. Oakland mayor says attacks on Occupy Movement in 18 cities coordinated. Seattle police use pepper spray on peaceful protestors, including a pregnant woman and a blind woman, make arrests.

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Continue reading “Occupy: And Then They Fight You”

Quotable 29

Ours is a useful trade, a worthy calling; that with all its lightness and frivolity it has one serious purpose, one aim, one specialty, and it is constant to it — the deriding of shams, the exposure of pretentious falsities, the laughing of stupid superstitions out of existence; and that whoso is by instinct engaged in this sort of warfare is the natural enemy of royalties, nobilities, privileges and all kindred swindles, and the natural friend of human rights and human liberties.
– Samuel L. Clemens