![anonmedics:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-police-strategy-in-new-york-sexual-assault-against-peaceful-protestors.html
A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”
“Again?” someone said.
We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.
“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”
Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3gpyfO6wO1r48m9ao1_1280.png)
Posts tagged "occupy"
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Notes: 28 / 7 hours ago
seriously. fuck the police.
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Notes: 1057 / 2 weeks ago from anonmedics
![anonmedics:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-police-strategy-in-new-york-sexual-assault-against-peaceful-protestors.html
A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”
“Again?” someone said.
We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.
“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”
Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3gpyfO6wO1r48m9ao1_500.png)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-police-strategy-in-new-york-sexual-assault-against-peaceful-protestors.html
A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”
“Again?” someone said.
We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.
“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”
Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”
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Notes: 628 / 2 weeks ago from anonmedics
An extremely disturbing report on the emerging police tactic of employing brutal sexual assault against Occupation protesters as an intimidation and provocation tactic. Police have engaged in rape and sexual assault against civilians since time immemorial, but the use of such tactics against Occupy may finally serve to bring some light to the intrinsic evil, exploitation, and misogyny of the United States law enforcement industrial complex.
Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.
For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department)
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Notes: 7 / 3 weeks ago
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Notes: 5 / 3 months ago from bookmarklet"Such actions may be undertaken for a variety of reasons: As a protest against a country’s foreign policy. To distance oneself from the foreign or domestic policies of one’s home country. As a protest at the very laws prohibiting the actions in question. As a protest against nationalism. As a protest against the government in power in the country, or against the country’s form of government. A symbolic insult to the people of that country. In common usage, the phrase ‘flag burning’ refers only to burning a flag as an act of protest."
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Notes: 83 / 3 months ago from ectoplasmosis
Extraordinary portraits of the human beings who make up Occupy Oakland by photographer JR, who says:
Let’s use art to turn OCCUPY OAKLAND inside out. The strength of Occupy lies in the fact that a professor, a laborer, a student, an immigrant, the unemployed, and a business owner can stand together demanding change. We will line the streets of Oakland with large scale portraits that highlight the diversity of Occupy.
I am particularly struck by the intensity of each subject’s personality, which is something I have noticed in other photographs from Occupations: it is as if these people are most truly themselves when gazing out from a principled position, which is really no surprise, I guess. I have to fight the urge to romanticize and fictionalize them—they are not concept art, nor are they plucky rebel fighters from a post-apocalyptic film. They are really doing it—they are really going out and breathing tear gas and catching rubber bullets, batons and grenades, and they’re doing it to prove a point.
It’s a good point, too.
Inside Out Project [Facebook]
Inside Occupy Oakland [Flickr | more photos here]
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Notes: 15 / 3 months ago from bookmarklet"There are people in this world who kill and torture innocent people, and they won’t listen to reason. They are the bad guys. The only thing they will listen to is a kick in the fucking teeth. Pacifists love to use Gandhi as an example of how nonviolent protest works, but they forget that Gandhi was effective because Britain was a civlized democracy with a lot of press access. If Gandhi had tried his approach under Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung - or even, yes, Saddam Hussein - then we never would have heard of him. He’d be buried deep in a ditch with a bullethole through one lens of his glasses."-
The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett’s Journal - A Love Letter To Those Who Kill
Yeah. Those people are called “the police”.
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Notes: 27 / 3 months ago"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."-
- Mohandas Gandhi
JUST YOUR FRIENDLY DAILY REMINDER THAT PACIFISM ALONE GETS YOU NOWHERE. THANKS FOR CHECKING IN WITH GANDHI, THE NONVIOLENCE EXPERT, ABOUT THIS IMPORTANT SUBJECT.
FETISHIZING NONVIOLENCE IS AS BAD AS FETISHIZING VIOLENCE.
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Notes: 77 / 3 months ago from mrdominos (originally from fuckyescalifornia)
Occupy Oakland Saturday movement update
Occupy Oakland protestors vandalize City Hall and burn an American flag. Nearly up to 400 people were arrested, at least three officers and one protestor were injured. Apparently the occupiers are planning more actions.
Info and photos from:
- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/oakland_leaders_assess_damage.html
- http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-738326?hpt=hp_bn1
- http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/30/us/california-occupy/?hpt=ibu_c2
(Sorry for the late update)
Your Occupy Oakland post is inaccurate and at best, a half-truth. OPD are on film agitating violence, beating unarmed protesters, firing rubber bullets, beanbags, CS gas and flashbangs. They arrested hundreds, after ordering them to disperse and then NOT ALLOWING THEM TO DO SO. They injured people, waited for medics to respond, then attacked the medics. Claims of police “injuries” are not backed up with records or evidence, while police-injured protesters number in the dozens, at least.
I saw this and all it said to me was:
“I’m an asshat who claims the original post is inaccurate despite them only stating recorded facts from respected news sources. Here is what really happened. Also, I am a hypocrite as I have no source.
Hahaha here’s your source, dipshit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaviIoy4rg
In this video you get graphic closeups of unarmed protesters being held down and beaten by police, screaming for help or to be released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNrCDDPrUcs
Also here: http://oakfosho.com/
And here: http://www.ustream.tv/occupysf
Note in the first video that the OPD injure a protester by shooting them unconscious with a headshot, wait for the medics to gather, then shoot the medics, just as they did with veteran Scott Olsen. This is OPD standard procedure now. Targeting medics, who are defined as non-combatants, is a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
The objects that you see the protesters throwing at police are grenade canisters that had been shot by police at the march. There are no records of police injury during the Occupy protests yet. Claims by the police departments to the contrary are never, ever backed up with records or evidence. Occupy, on the other hand, has dozens of photos from every event of police brutality injuries. Here are a few just from my own records. Hundreds of others can be found online (flickr, google images, picasa, etc).
Rubber bullet contusion on October 25th
Different rubber bullet contusion, same night.
CS gas (“tear gas”) victim, 10/25/11. OPD claimed they “did not use tear gas or rubber bullets” that night.
Flesh wound caused by baton to the face, 12/22/11, 1:57AM. This protester was injured, then lured into the Berkeley Police station with promises of medical treatment. They did not treat him, but instead detained him and attempted to book him, which ultimately they were unable to do. He was released without treatment and was treated on the street by Occupy medics.
1/28/12 - Serious burn to the hand, through protective gloves, by a tear gas canister. Why was this guy picking up a hot tear gas canister? Because the police had fired it into a crowd containing children and other vulnerable citizens, and this guy had the sack to toss it back where it belonged—with the people who’re wearing gas masks.The OPD told the press that protesters were “throwing flares and pipes” on Saturday, and also that several officers were “injured”. The police also claimed that they “did not use tear gas” and “did not use rubber bullets” and that “there were no injured protesters”. You can clearly see that they are lying, in both cases. The entire march, from start to finish, is on film from multiple angles and can be watched several times in its entirety on the live video channels of the streamers who were there, several of whom I linked to above.
The police also claimed that activists on Saturday were “throwing IEDs”, which echoes an earlier farcical claim that marchers in a different action were “arrested with sticks of dynamite”, dynamite which mysteriously vanished at the arraignment. Reminder that OPD has been under court supervision since 2003, when they were found to have planted evidence on a suspect.
Oh, and this happened:
One occupier known as Ali had become a clear target for repression due to his visibility, and even those arrested on the 30th had overheard officers discussing how the hoped to get their hands on him. On Wednesday the 4th, OPD seemed determined to do just that, chasing Ali across the street to arrest him. When they did so, he explained to me, officer Phan reached into his back pocket before feigning surprise and insisting that he was “going away for a long time” because they had found him to be in possession of ecstasy. Some in the Anti-Repression Committee believe that it was only the presence of the Livestream camera, and the fact that Ali immediately began to shout about the attempt to plant drugs, that prevented the charges from being successfully fabricated. Ali was later charged with misdemeanor obstruction.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/09/oakland%E2%80%99s-dirty-war/
As for your laughable little assertion that CNN—or any mainstream media outlet—only deals in “recorded facts”, I refer you to the sources of their “facts”: police press releases. All major media outlets are owned by the specific mega-corporations who are the target of these actions in the first place, mega-corporations that have every reason to paint Occupy as a bloodthirsty terrorist cell. There is also the little matter of the police refusing to play nice-nice with any mainstream news outlet that doesn’t make them look good to Joe Sixpacks like yourself.
Mainstream media also parroted—without investigation—the police claims that “Occupy camps had caused a severe increase in local crime”, an assertion that the police knew was false:
When Jordan received an update that crime was actually down 19 percent in the last week of October, he wrote an email to one of Mayor Jean Quan’s advisers. “Not sure how you want to share this good news,” he wrote. “It may be counter to our statement that the Occupy movement is negatively impacting crime in Oakland.”
[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/14/1054602/-No-Surprise-Oakland-Police-Chief-Lied-to-Discredit-Occupy-Oakland]
Additionally, Oakland Police Department has been under court monitoring since 2003 due to “a civil suit over the Riders case, in which several officers were accused of planting drugs on suspects in East Oakland. As a result of the settlement agreement, the department agreed to implement a series of misconduct-related reforms, including an overhaul of disciplinary procedures and use-of-force reporting. But two missed deadlines later, the department has yet to complete the tasks.”The court monitoring is due to brutality and corruption, in other words. Brutality and corruption which has so far gone totally unaddressed, to the extent that on the 24th of January this year (four days before the protest on Saturday), a federal judge stripped even more power from OPD, bringing them even closer to being taken over by feds entirely.
The real shitter of your whole riposte, though, is that you’re taking the word of the Oakland Police Department over unedited eyewitness video, photographs, and written accounts of what actually happened.
EDIT: But I’m not writing this to engage you, o shirtless cretin. I’m using your dumb post as an effigy to burn, just so I can address all the same dumb arguments I see over and over, being drooled out by doughy goons who think they’d recognize politics or logic if it backed over them in a brand spanking new, Alameda County Sheriff Department, taxpayer-purchased, armored APC.
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Notes: 77 / 3 months ago from fuckyescalifornia
Occupy Oakland Saturday movement update
Occupy Oakland protestors vandalize City Hall and burn an American flag. Nearly up to 400 people were arrested, at least three officers and one protestor were injured. Apparently the occupiers are planning more actions.
Info and photos from:
- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/oakland_leaders_assess_damage.html
- http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-738326?hpt=hp_bn1
- http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/30/us/california-occupy/?hpt=ibu_c2
(Sorry for the late update)
Your Occupy Oakland post is inaccurate and at best, a half-truth. OPD are on film agitating violence, beating unarmed protesters, firing rubber bullets, beanbags, CS gas and flashbangs. They arrested hundreds, after ordering them to disperse and then NOT ALLOWING THEM TO DO SO. They injured people, waited for medics to respond, then attacked the medics. Claims of police “injuries” are not backed up with records or evidence, while police-injured protesters number in the dozens, at least.
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Notes: 120 / 3 months ago from idealkomsomolet
(Source: idealkomsomolet)
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Notes: 15 / 4 months ago from anonmedics
Protest camps: Brian Haw
Protest camps are a longstanding institution, by no means invented by Occupy. It’s easy to lose sight of this fact amid recent events, but camps have been used as a means of petitioning a government or other entity for many decades before now.
A friend was kind enough to write up the story of one such camp, and one such camper: We present the story of Brian Haw.
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Notes: 18 / 4 months ago from anonmedics (originally from susie-c)
An Extrajudicial Execution
Fourteen Occupy Oakland protesters were arrested yesterday in a series of scuffles following police harassment at Occupy’s sustained vigil in Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant plaza. Most of those people remain in jail as of this writing on a variety of heavy charges, including in at least one case: 405a. “lynching.”
California’s 1933 anti-lynching law was largely aimed at preventing racist crowds from overtaking police attempting arrests of black people and enacting their own version of murderous “justice.”
405. Every person who participates in any riot is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
405a. The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer is a lynching.
405b. Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for two, three or four years.
Since 1933, the law has been used broadly against those seeking to stop what they perceive to be unjust arrests of all kinds.
It appears that the definition of “lynching” was further broadened in the First District Court of Appeal’s 1999 decision in the People v. Anthony J:
Under California law, “lynching” includes not only the notorious form of lynch mob behavior that aims to take vengeance on the victim, but also any participation in riotous conduct aimed at freeing a person from the custody of a peace officer. Accordingly, we conclude that a person who takes part in a riot leading to his escape from custody can be convicted of his own lynching.
This is how Gabe Meyers was charged following his arrest at a protest in San Francisco in 2005. (Update: Charges were later dropped.)
The arrests of occupiers at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant plaza Friday afternoon were not a mass arrest situation, but “surgical” arrests aimed at targeting individuals. The Oakland Police Department has been holding the lynching charge in their back pocket to deal with Occupy Oakland since planning for the first raid on October 25.
Logistically, the arrested occupier charged with lynching is relatively physically small; regardless of the legality of an alleged unarrest action, the arrestee was likely not capable of being effective against the physically large Oakland police officers they allegedly wronged. As in most of the national police actions against occupiers nationwide, this arrest seemed not to be aimed at maintaining the peace or diffusing a high-stakes and arguably violent situation, but at punishing individuals.
And as in most if not all of the national police actions against occupiers, the legality of these arrests and the resulting charges appears to rest on law enforcement’s own seemingly subjective definitions of “lawful.”
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Notes: 42 / 4 months ago from anonmedics"Documents recently released by OPD, coupled with news reports of the Campbell shooting, indicate that the department appears to have systematically assigned cops with histories of using deadly force to deal with Occupy Oakland protests."
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Notes: 41 / 5 months ago from idealkomsomolet
Some Occupy L.A. protesters may get a lesson in free speech
Many Occupy L.A. protesters arrested during demonstrations in recent months are being offered a unique chance to avoid court trials: pay $355 to a private company for a lesson in free speech.
Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter said the city won’t press charges against protesters who complete the educational program offered by American Justice Associates.
He said the program, which may include lectures by attorneys and retired judges, is being offered to people with no other criminal history and who were arrested on low-level misdemeanor offenses, such as failure to disperse.
***
Carter said the free-speech class will save the city money and teach protesters the nuances of the law.
“The 1st Amendment is not absolute,” he said, noting that theU.S. Supreme Court has ruled government can regulate when, where and how free speech can be exercised.
But a civil rights attorney who has worked closely with the protesters called the class “patronizing,” and said the demonstrators who were arrested are the last people needing free-speech training.
“There they were exercising their 1st Amendment, their lawful right to protest nonviolently,” said attorney Cynthia Anderson-Barker.
Several Occupy protesters, many of whom are fueled by anger at what they perceive as corporate greed and the increased privatization of public services, have noted the irony of being asked to pay a private contractor for the program. The tuition will go to the company, not the city, officials say.ahahahahahahahahahaha fuck everything
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
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