Update on Twitter: @northoaklandnow: #OccupyOakland events heating up: protesters are trying to take down the Broadway and 14th Street barricade!
Update on Twitter: RT @occupyoakland: The plaza is open now, people are starting gather. The grass is fenced off. Everyone com… (cont) http://deck.ly/~wAZQ4
I got word of the Oakland tragedy via Greg Laden, and then found this clip below which I had to watch several times to believe. It clearly shows a police officer throwing a concussion grenade into a small group which gathered to help get a critically injured man slumped on the pavement to the emergency room. How is this motherfucker still free on the street, let alone allowed to wear a police uniform and carry a loaded weapon?
It’s puke-sick on so many levels I hardly know where to start. I sure don’t remember Tea Party rallies being tear-gassed and shot at, even though some of them showed up to demonstrate strapped down with assault rifles.
We progressives have spent the last six months working our asses off to preserve pay and benefits for public employees including police officers in the face of concerted efforts to raid pensions and insurance for the benefit of the super rich and corporations. The idiot that threw that grenade might as well put on a pig mask and horse-whip brown kids in front of a news crew for the damage he’s done to that effort and his force.
Easy. They’re cops, they can do no wrong…
*barf*
A) Many off duty cops at a tea party rally.
B) They had fucking assault rifles.
C) Both of the above.
It strikes me as odd that this stuff didn’t start happening until those polls were released that showed Americans approving the OWS protests and disapproving the Tea Party.
Oakland PD: Seriously? To protect the protesters’ security and health, you have to beat them up and throw explosives at them? How does that work?
I think it is directly because police rely on the protection of the herd to remain safe while they brutalize away. Once people start showing up with weapons, ready to fight back, they cower away because they don’t want to be hurt in return. They only feel powerful because they are the most heavily armed and most organized gang around.
This i learned from grand theft auto.
Unfortunately, there are a few too many cops out there that thrive on the power to be cruel. And, as with nearly every group, members of his group (i.e. fellow cops) will defend the cruel cop to the end because he is one of them. The video is definitive that the cop did it…and the response by Oakland police will (and has) been definitive in denying wrongdoing.
Sadly, OWS has to continue to grow and grow for things like this to change.
“Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable: (1) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments, wherein the will of everyone has a just influence, as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one; (3) under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics.
To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too, the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
How much more of this before people start killing each other?
@unbound That Jefferson quote is awesome… a beautiful defense of liberalism as opposed to tyranny and libertarianism. Thank you.