In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of California, Davis on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. Photo: Thomas K. Fowler / AP
The image above is one of many showing police officers, once again strapped down like Dawg-the-Bounty Hunter, needlessly macing a handful of peaceful students. Their crime? Protesting income inequality and student debt as part of the Occupy movement by sitting down in an open mall area on campus specifically created for students and faculty to stroll, chat, and sit:
(Seattle PI — As the images were circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on Saturday, the university’s faculty association called on Katehi to resign, saying in a letter there had been a “gross failure of leadership.” At a news conference, Katehi said what the video shows is, “sad and really very inappropriate” but defended her leadership and said she had no plans to resign.
Gross failure of leadership is a nice way to say it. No one needs a task force to determine this is sick and everyone involved in that decision or defending should not be running loose at one of the premier public universities in America. And if the cops or deans or whoever did this becuase they are working directly or indirectly for the 0.1%, they should be fired by their Kochwhore masters; this stupidity attracted more bandwidth than the usual Tosh clip of cats wearing cute hats or people setting themselves on fire with birthday candles.
This made me sick and angry when i saw it yesterday. My wife and i watched the video a few times.
Our 5 year old saw, started crying, and asking why the police was being mean to the people who were just sitting…
Its hard to explain things like occupy to a 5 year old, so i told him that the sitting people were protesting unfairness and just like there are good and bad people, there are good and bad police because police are people too.
I don’t think occupy is going away anytime soon. Hope things remain peaceful.
So… Things to bring to an Occupy protest:
1. sleeping bag or a couple blankets (it’s not a tent)
2. gas mask (tear gas sucks)
3. goggles (for when I’m not wearing the gas mask because pepper spray sucks worse)
4. washcloth or three (protests may be relatively clean but look at all the crap police are spraying around… they’re a messy menace)
5. snackfood and water in sealed containers
6. phone & camera also with baggies for storage (if I get maced, someone’s going on youtube, no exceptions)