Friday, November 11, 2011
The very definition of the non-violent protest in response to aggression by the police on the Berkeley campus.
Courtesy of Digital Journal:
More then 30 students were arrested Wednesday on the campus of UC Berkeley after UCPD moved to take control of an area where students were trying to set up an encampment, reports Associated Press.
The students were part of a group of hundreds of protesters who began gathering in "Sproul Plaza on Bancroft Street and Telegraph Avenue chanting “No cuts, no fees, education must be free,” and “The people, united, will never be divided,” while holding signs bearing slogans such as “Defend public education now,” according to the Daily Californian, who live-blogged the event.
Campus police, assisted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and the Oakland Police Department, responded to the attempted take-over by the students in riot gear. Armed with batons and carrying zip-tie handcuffs the police attempted to establish a perimeter around the encampment. Dispersal orders were issued to protesters who responded with "will not be moved."
Students, who were in violation of an order by vice chancellor for student affairs, Harry Le Grande, that said demonstrators could stay overnight in the plaza and could have canopies, but were not permitted to have tents or sleeping bags, refused to leave when ordered. Le Grange had also banned cooking, make fires and sleeping during the Occupy protest.
Police responded to the refusal to disperse in a violent skirmish with demonstrators. Student's were struck with batons while camera's caught the disturbing scene on film.
Watching this video is incredibly disturbing and, though I understand that the police were following orders, I have no idea how that level of aggression can be justified against an unarmed, peaceful gathering of students.
Something about this taking place on the UC Berkeley campus, a campus made famous for protesting the Vietnam war, makes it seem even more egregious to me.
And this is not the only place in California that is doing an extremely poor job of dealing with the protests.
In Oakland there was a shooting fatality, which inspired the Mayor to issue the following statement:
"Tragically, a young man was shot at 14th and Broadway tonight. But whether a murder occurs here or at 98th and International, I call on all Oaklanders to demand peace and reject violence anywhere.
Whether this incident is related to the encampment, or is an unrelated act, it is unacceptable. "We heard that fights early in the day were broken up by people on Frank Ogawa Plaza.
"Tonight’s incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end."
Even though according to a spokesperson for the protestors the shooting had absolutely nothing to do with the protests, and just happened to have taken place in close proximity to the camp. The protestors even went so far as to blame its occurrence on the fact that the city has been turning off the lights at night around the downtown plaza where the protestors are gathered which is encouraging criminal behavior.
In my opinion these types of aggressive tactics are going to do nothing for the officials in charge, except garner more sympathy for the protestors and become a public relations nightmare for the law enforcement professionals and city government responsible.
Sometimes when I see these images it almost feels like we have all been transported back 50 years to the Martin Luther King Jr. led protests for civil rights and the sit ins to protest against the Vietnam war. Only this time those who wore flowers in their hair and marched on Washington seem to be the ones behind the beating of somebody's child with a police baton.
Ironic, don't you think?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
F**k! The police violence started with no provocation or even movement from the students!!! I didn't understand the violence and arrests during the sit-in in the 60s and still don't. It does feel like the clocks been set back. What do I do with my outrage?
ReplyDeleteIt's also ironic that Pres. Obama called on Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran to allow peaceful protests and yet we have police violence at home.
If the students were in riot gear there was a violent aspect to the protest.
ReplyDeleteLet us never forget that the original Viet Nam war protests started off on a small scale, were ignore, then ridiculed, then branded as commies. When they hit a certain mass then the cops came and started the beat downs generating news and mobilizing even more people to come out. This will prove to be the same thing. People, sadly, will start suffering serious damage and even some may die as the police response spirals further out of control
ReplyDeleteI fear that by next spring and summer there will be more clashes.
ReplyDeleteThe people doing the Occupy protests are truly brave.
Unfortunately many police officers do not have the best self-control, and in addition there is a mob mentality and Brotherhood thing that sets in in these situations.
Isn't it haunting thinking about the very same types of clashes during other eras? History can repeat itself.
Again, these protesters are very courageous, and I am grateful to them.
I cannot parse at such a distance to figure out who is right or wrong. I attended Berkeley in the 70s and lived in the community in the 80s and 90s, there was no better prepared or educated or talented police force at the time, following the lessons learned at People's Park, for community control or preservation of civil rights. Berkeley Police were the best. Very effective, thoughtful, sensitive to history.
ReplyDeleteSo, I have to ring in, with prejudice that there may have been other factors as yet unknown, that precipitated this event.
On the other hand, perhaps Berkeley Police force has changed since my departure. Still, the department benefited greatly from the info and experience of the 60s and 70s and they cannot call the "naive" card, after the solid tradition and accomplishments of the force in the 70sm 80s and 90s.
MicMAc
Tne irony is palpable, do the police and campus police not realize these protesters are in the very same 99 percent they belong to?
ReplyDeleteI'm so proud of how well these people have been behaving, protesting peacefully, and going the extra steps to not break any laws. They've taken the initiative to clean up the areas they protest and have made it clear they are here for the endurance.
Our local "occupy" in Philadelphia have gotten permits to occupy certain areas, and have swept, mopped and cleared trash. They've been out there in the elements, not allowed to put up tarps, tents, canopies, nor use any type of power or fire to keep warm, and yet they've adapted to comply.
Seeing the determination and peaceful protests those in oakland have shown saddens me that the authorities feel violence is the only acceptable response.
Support your local protesters.
Off Topic
ReplyDeleteHappy Veterans Day to all out there who served and their families for their sacrifice and struggles. Welcome Home! I appreciate you had the courage and for a job well done!
waded in the sea o' pee again. Yeah, I stop to look at car wrecks, too.
ReplyDeleteBu this was too funny. They were all glued to Fox because Brett Baier was interviewing Klondike Kardashian. Turns out Fox just teased with the TeabaggerTEASE, and used old footage in a presidential hopeful panorama revue.
Now they're all wailing - same as when they found out Milli Vanilli lipsynced their songs on stage.
I remember the Chicago police outfitted in exactly the same gear, lined up in a huge ring around the Post Office building on Daley Plaza, when we were involved in an anti-Iraq War protest years ago. They were definitely intimidating. We had to march around the building with hundreds of them looking on, just feet from us, completely surrounded. They kept their cool, but it felt very uncomfortable. (I remember out protest made it on to NPR and I could hear myself and my family chanting...weird).
ReplyDeleteAll it would have taken, however, would have been one protester getting confrontational, or one professional agitator doing the same in order to set off a skirmish.
It's scary. The issue of police brutality, more often looked at in the context of race relations, is something we need to deal with in this country. I feel like the training is just very poor, or they recruit people who have a drive to demonstrate power over others more than anything else.
Found this short description of police officers' mentality:
http://www.dwetendorf.com/Culture_Brotherhood.htm
Disgusting. Not one of the students ever lifted a hand to one of the police. The police should go home and hang their heads in shame.
ReplyDeleteSorry, police, in this clip I do not see any tents, sleeping bags, cooking or open fires (students followed the Berkeley officials' guidelines). What I DO see are you BEATING students with batons. Good freakin grief...
ReplyDeleteThe Free Speech Protests in 1964 had nothing to do with Vietnam. It was about the rights of students who had been in the South that summer working to implement the Civil Rights Act to be able to talk about their experience at tables on campus in Sproul Plaza. At that time, the school had a no politics policy.
ReplyDeleteIt really was a fight for Freedom of Speech on campus. Of course, it was twisted by the RW of the time and helped get Reagan elected Gov in 1966 because he vowed to "crack" down on those hippies who wanted to speak.
That was horrific. The police should be ashamed.
ReplyDeleteThe Chief of The Alameda Sheriff has claimed that the students' locking arms together was an act of violence and a provocation. Good luck getting re-elected, idiot.
ReplyDeleteWatching this video I was reminded of the Salt Works protest in Ghandi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XarpddX1BI
Its obvious to me that they were trying their best to create a violent response from the students.Its good that the students maintained their cool,I am positive that I could not have done that.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for the repeat of Kent State University. I can feel it's coming.
ReplyDeleteOther than the fact that these students are chanting in English, it doesn't take much imagination to look at this video and draw parallels to the Iranian uprising in June 2009. There was no justification for that sort of brutality in the face of the protests there, and there is certainly no justification for it here.
ReplyDeleteI cannot help but think of the horrific and sorrowful death of the young Iranian woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, in Tehran, cut down as her life full of hope and promise, was just reaching its full flowering. I also can’t help but be afraid that it’s just a matter of time before the OWS movement has a tragic martyr of its own, given the wildly disproportionate response to these protests by the police in New York City, Oakland, and now in Berkeley. What we’ve witnessed is only the beginning, and no-one should fool themselves by underestimating the extremes to which the powers OWS is fighting will go to protect their wealth, power and influence.
We hold up our democracy and freedom as models for the entire world and I always thought we did so with justifiable pride. Despite the twin stains of slavery and the genocide of native peoples on our history, we do have mechanisms built into our system to enable us to strive for real justice and equality for all our citizens, however lumbering and slow the process may seem at times. One of these is of course the right to peaceful assembly and protest. Is this, then, how we want the exercise of that constitutionally guaranteed freedom to be seen on the world stage? My God, I hope not. We are better than this. We had damn well better be.
What I sent in an email to info@barackobama.com
ReplyDeletein response to an email to me from
James Kvaal
Policy Director
Obama for America
I have a quote that hopefully must apply to the Occupy Wall St. Protests:
"...What I will repeat and what I said yesterday is that when I see violence directed at peaceful protestors, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it's of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people...I stand strongly with the universal principle that people's voices should be heard and not suppressed." Barack Obama
(From a book about Obama's first two years. From a speech he gave on the protests in Iran after the "elections" there.)
Very disturbing, but note that the protestors remained determined even though they were unarmed...and note how the chant "Stop beating students" seemed to make the police stop hitting them. I thought that was very instructive in that it showed unarmed resistance overcoming armed violence.
ReplyDeleteWhen I learned about Kent State in my history classes, I was horrified.
ReplyDeleteThe right to assemble and peaceable protest was a right I would certainly appreciate and not take for granted, but what happened on that campus showed us the dangers of State over citizens instead of the other way around.
Tea Party bloviating that the "government" is our enemy pale in comparison to what the Ohio National Guard did to unarmed students that day.
Police/military action against American youth helped turned the tide of the peoples sentiment about the Vietnam War.
May actions in Oakland and Berkeley Campus signify OWS trumping poor U.S. economic policies and righting the course to level the playing field for the American Dream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Dinty @ 9:27
ReplyDeleteStudents locking arms isn't the same as "lock" and loading their arms.
Maybe the Sheriff couldn't distinguish between the two.
Having been very active in the Vietnam protests, I just want everyone to be careful.
ReplyDeleteOne thing we learned is that they will shot you, if they feel too threatened or if they just feel like it.
Notice the difference the way the media has portrayed the Occupy movements as compared to the armed Tea Party movement? The corporate sponsored Tea Party movement has nothing to worry about from the police departments.
ReplyDeleteHoly ****!!! I'm an almunus and went to protests, but we were NEVER treated like that. Even when students locked themselves inside the Hall they negotiated. WTF? Our Prez needs to step up and say something about this and call for calm and for police to exercise restraint. It won't win him and supporters on the R but they already hate him for his skin color anyway. We are rapidly becoming a police state.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I was SO PISSED after the Occupy Oakland protests that I was going to go join them and my 9 yr old FREAKED OUT. It's a sad day when your young children think the police are dangerous to their mommy.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHey MicMac, Berkeley Pd is great, still is for the most part. This i believe is UCPD, a step up from rent-a-cops.
ReplyDelete