http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaviIoy4rg
Occupy Oakland January 28, 2012 - Police Brutality
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ouse-lock-down-after-Washington-DC-march.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...kland-Is-Occupy-movement-back-or-broken-video
Weekend violence in Oakland: Is Occupy movement back, or broken? (+video)
we are getting scary close to civil war. protesters are using masks and shields now. Throwing shit back. Making multiple pushes. Trying to take over government buildings multiple times in one day. Forced adaption to police violence. The people of Oakland are fucking resilient when they are angry. As the police step up their actions so will the protesters. Eventually these cops are gonna kill someone, probably a black kid, or a gay kid, or a gay black kid. why? Because that is who the pigs aim for first........ and then the shit will hit the fan. Will bacon will be served?
Did you notice half the signs had peace symbols and the other half had Anarchy symbols? This is getting crazy. By next summer when it is warm again and very close to elections there is going to be national uproar.
REMAIN PEACEFUL. getting violent is only playing into their game. They are trying to sucker you into a game that they think the citizens can not win. they can win but that is not the point. the point is the rest of the world is watching and is rooting for the U.S. citizens to get their government back from the corporatist. Leading by example here is important. The rest of the world will join in on the fight for their countries too. If the U.S. shows them that this can be done peacefully then maybe they will stay peaceful too preventing hundreds of unneeded deaths.
Occupy Oakland January 28, 2012 - Police Brutality
My camera was continuously rolling, I missed some things but got a lot. I edited it down to try and show all that is necessary to see. The action to take the Henry J Kaiser building started peaceful. The police diverted our route but the march continued toward the building. A fence was torn down in an attempt to take the building and the police fired tear gas. I did not leave out parts where protesters threw things (including the tear gas canisters that were fired upon them). The point was that the police responded with violence to the destruction of a fence. The protesters naturally reacted to this. Since the ability to take the building was stopped by the police, the march moved on (there was chatter of taking other buildings or approaching the building from the other side. I am not clear as to what the plan was). The police stopped the march in its tracks. I was filming the two sides in between them and had the first flash bang grenade shot at me which can be seen exploding at my feet in the video. It put me into a state of shock basically and I was pretty jumpy filming the rest (not to mention all of the tear gas I was breathing). The police responded with violence first in this standoff again. Rubber bullets, tear gas, smoke bombs and flash bang grenades were shot, the protesters retreated. Then the protesters approached again and the process basically repeated itself. During the second approach a young woman was being protected by the crowd and more flash bang grenades were shot at the protesters. From there, the march moved (maybe more accurately forced by the police. I missed another standoff involving clubbing with batons and more tear gas) to Oscar Grant Plaza. A lot more happened at night but since I was not there, you can consult other sources to get the rest of the story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ouse-lock-down-after-Washington-DC-march.html
Occupy protesters force White House lock-down after Washington DC march
"Occupy DC" protesters demonstrating against income inequality gathered at the Capitol building in Washington DC before marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, with a brief stop at the Supreme Court before arriving at the White House.
More than 1,000 protesters then held a rally outside the White House where a smoke bomb was propelled over a fence on the north side of the building.
George Ogilvie, a spokesman for the US Secret Service, said the suspected smoke bomb was thrown after the majority of demonstrators had left.
A small amount of smoke is believed to have been dispersed and police pushed protesters back so they could perform a thorough sweep of the area.
People inside the White House were initially prevented from leaving but were later released through a side exit.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...kland-Is-Occupy-movement-back-or-broken-video
Weekend violence in Oakland: Is Occupy movement back, or broken? (+video)
As Oakland, Calif., puts the Occupy movement back in the national spotlight with TV images of flag-burning and violent police clashes, a media war is under war to define the very nature of the Occupy movement itself, with Oakland as its potential flag-bearer.
Competing narratives as to what transpired over the weekend have been emerging in the digisphere and on YouTube. Depending on whose press releases or tweets you believe – which alternately portray the police or protesters as the violent instigators – this weekend could either be the black eye that becomes the Waterloo of the four-month-old global protest movement or the signal bell of its reawakening.
The struggle to define the group’s actions is already playing out in an escalating rhetorical war. On Monday, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan told the local CBS affiliate she planned to call “some of the national leadership of Occupy this week to say that the Oakland group is not nonviolent,” with the hope that the larger group will distance itself.
IN PICTURES: Occupy Wall Street protests
At the same time, Occupy Oakland media team member Shake Anderson dismisses Mayor Quan’s charge, saying simply, “We did not attack the police, they attacked us.”
On Saturday, according to an Occupy Oakland statement, protesters began a series of actions attempting to put “a vacant building to better use,” which Mr. Anderson acknowledges can be seen as trespassing. The site in question has been vacant for six years, according to the statement, which asserts that the Occupy group had voted to mount a nonviolent action to turn the space into a social center and headquarters of Occupy Oakland.
The crowd was met with an overwhelming police force, says Anderson, a force buttressed by mutual aid from 13 surrounding cities.
“We did not throw anything," says Anderson.
However, the Oakland Police Department (OPD), which describes the events in its own release, said that as activists began to march, “the first dispersal order was given as the crowd began destroying construction equipment and fencing.”
“Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares,” the OPD release said, adding that police “deployed smoke and tear gas.”
Anderson says simply, “This is a lie.” By the end of the evening, some 400 protesters had been arrested and several police officers treated for injuries. The OPD has not returned calls for comment. Its official statements say the protesters initiated the violent actions.
Reports from others on the ground paint a very different picture. Dan Miskulin, a contractor from San Francisco, describes a situation that many caught up in the action tweeted, texted, and blogged – saying that the police created an impossible situation for the protesters. According to these reports, police in riot gear surrounded the protesters, repeatedly funneling them into first a park and then an area by the YMCA from which they had no exit.
“I watched people go up to the officers and ask how they could leave, and the officers told them to go to another spot where the officers would pass them on. People were panicking after the tear gas,” Mr. Miskulin says.
[Editor's note: The original versionof this article reported that Mr. Miskulin said, "People were panicking after the tear gas and rubber bullets."]
As for projectiles being hurled at the police, notes Drexel University political scientist George Ciccareillo-Maher, who has been following the events closely, “protesters tossed back the tear gas canisters that were being shot at them by the police.”
Perhaps one of the most incendiary images from the weekend’s skirmishes is the American flag in flames. But, points out Scott Kimball, secretary for the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which has worked with Occupy protesters, “burning the flag is a protected form of political speech.”
But images can take on a life of their own, says Wojtek Zarzycki, managing director and strategist for Optimal Investing, a boutique financial services firm in New York that specializes in high-net-worth individuals.
“The vandalism and arrests will be more than just a black eye for the movement as now these acts are associated with its protesting,” he says via e-mail. “The influence of its actions is now lessened and the possibility of it regaining its status as the movement of the 99 percent is less likely.”
Most of the 99 percent whom the Occupy movement claims to represent, he adds, “have nothing to do with violence, nothing to do with vandalism, and only want fairness and equality.”
Prognosticators need to be careful about glib interpretations of media images, says Ted Morgan, author of “What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy.”
“Millions of Americans will see images that they find anywhere from stimulating to frightening to repugnant,” he says via e-mail. Powerful backlash forces will do what they have been doing for 48 years now, he says, “using these images to foist on the wider public a distorted reality about the movements and their meanings.”
Professor Ciccariello-Maher suggests another scenario – that Oakland may be the start of the Occupy movement’s next phase as the election season picks up. Whatever interpretation prevails in Oakland may not matter. The weekend’s events may be just the flashpoint the movement needs to emerge from a somewhat quiet winter, he adds.
we are getting scary close to civil war. protesters are using masks and shields now. Throwing shit back. Making multiple pushes. Trying to take over government buildings multiple times in one day. Forced adaption to police violence. The people of Oakland are fucking resilient when they are angry. As the police step up their actions so will the protesters. Eventually these cops are gonna kill someone, probably a black kid, or a gay kid, or a gay black kid. why? Because that is who the pigs aim for first........ and then the shit will hit the fan. Will bacon will be served?
Did you notice half the signs had peace symbols and the other half had Anarchy symbols? This is getting crazy. By next summer when it is warm again and very close to elections there is going to be national uproar.
REMAIN PEACEFUL. getting violent is only playing into their game. They are trying to sucker you into a game that they think the citizens can not win. they can win but that is not the point. the point is the rest of the world is watching and is rooting for the U.S. citizens to get their government back from the corporatist. Leading by example here is important. The rest of the world will join in on the fight for their countries too. If the U.S. shows them that this can be done peacefully then maybe they will stay peaceful too preventing hundreds of unneeded deaths.
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