Category: OWS

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So Much for That First Amendment Thing…

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi thinks this is the appropriate response to a peaceful sit-in.

The cops say they feared for their lives because of the crowd that was gathering around them. Seriously? Look at that photo. Look at this one:

What do you see? A dozen students on the ground looking at their feet, and some onlookers all holding up cameras at a respectable distance – you'll note the other cops aren't looking terribly worried. The cop casually saunters over and pepper sprays the people sitting down, which is odd since supposedly they were afraid of the people who were standing up.

It's obvious they weren't afraid of the crowd.  I mean, look at them!

But for the sake of their argument, let's say they were deathly afraid of all the cell phone cameras behind them, recording this brutality from 20 feet away. If they feared for their safety from the crowd surrounding them, then why didn't you pepper spray the crowd? Why would they turn around and spray a bunch of kids sitting on the ground, doing nothing except looking at their feet?

Here's another shot, taken right before the kids get pepper-sprayed. Notice how the cops are in fear for their lives from the very dangerous children sitting down quietly on the cement, doing absolutely nothing.

And here's another photo. These are the same kids who are being pepper sprayed in the photos above. Look at these kids. This is the scene that caused the police to "fear for their lives" and attack these kids. (Not the terrorist fist jabs.)

These are cops. They're trained in how to use their weapon with precision, and only when necessary. And we're to believe that these cops, in the heat of what appears to not be a very scary moment, accidentally attacked the people who weren't even threatening them? They used their weapon on the wrong crowd of people. This could have been their guns they were using. We've got cops who don't even know how to pick the right crowd of people to fire at. If they're this bad as cops, they should all be fired on the spot.

"If you look at the video you are going to see that there were 200 people in that quad," said UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza. "Hindsight is 20-20 and based on the situation we were sitting in, ultimately that was the decision that was made."

Spicuzza is a liar and should be fired. And 20/20 is just hindsight, it's about fifteen multi-million dollar lawsuits. And her job.

It is not a happy day at the UC Davis Facebook page.

The cop doing the pepper spraying has been identified:
Lieutenant John Pike
530-752-3989
japikeiii@ucdavis.edu

Feel free to let this neanderthal know how you feel. Twitter is alight with it.

There is clearly no justification for that this uniformed thug did. I wonder how the parents of those students feel after seeing this? Their children were holding a peaceful sit-in and they got pepper-sprayed. How do alumni feel? He's a university cop. UC Davis owns Pike's actions.

I'm sorry, but this has gone too far. This has happened in police department after police department across this country without repercussion. Our police look like the goons in Russia, China, and countries throughout the middle east—you know, the ones we're so intent on bringing democracy capitalism to.

UC Davis staff and administrators reportedly watched and did nothing while the police attacked. They didn't even offer to get medical help for the students afterwards. Take note kids, when you're trying to decide which school to attend, UC Davis probably isn't a good choice. And it's probably not a good place for alumni to donate money to, since money (or the withholding of same) seems to be the only thing that effects change in the world.

UCD paramedics later treated with saline the eyes of 11 protesters; two were taken to Sutter Davis Hospital. Nearby, one young woman sat on her knees, crying with her eyes shut and pink streaks of Pepto-Bismol and water running down her cheeks.

Kristin Koster, a post-doctoral lecturer, used a scarf dipped in another home remedy, Maalox and water, to help Dominic Gutierrez, who was barely able to open his eyes.

He was sprayed, he said, when he tried to shield others with his jacket.

Koster said that she was "horrified" by both the actions of police and the inaction of staff and administrators standing nearby who did not seek medical assistance for those hurt until asked.

UC Davis faculty members are now calling on university Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to resign. Here's a brief except of the letter (read the entire thing here) that was submitted to the Chancellor by Nathan Brown, Associate Professor of English at UC Davis:

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and Police Chief Annette Spicuzza. You are responsible for it. Lt. John Pike should be summarily fired and you should resign immediately.

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Our Fuck-You System of Government

From Ted Rall:

Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services

Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn't pretend to try.

Sick? Too bad.

Can't find a job? Tough.

Broke? Can't afford rent? We don't give a crap.

Forget "e pluribus unum." We need a more accurate motto.

We live under a fuck you system.

Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: fuck you.

During the '80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge.

It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn't provide any.

So I did what all taxi drivers did. What they still do. I found a side street and a spot between two parked cars. It went OK until a cop caught me peeing under the old elevated West Side Highway, which later collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Perhaps decades of taxi driver urine corroded the support beams.

"You can't do that here," said the policeman.

"Where am I supposed to go?" I asked him. "There's aren't any restrooms anywhere in town."

"I know," he replied before going to get his summons book from his cruiser.

The old "fuck you." We create the problem, then blame you for the results.

I ran away.

In recent days American mayors have been ordering heavily armed riot police to attack and rob peaceful members of encampments allied with Occupy Wall Street.

Like NYC, which won't provide public restrooms but arrests public urinators, government officials and their media allies use their own refusal to provide basic public services to justify raids against Occupations.

In the middle of the night on November 15th NYPD goons stormed into Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They beat and pepper-sprayed members of Occupy Wall Street and destroyed the books in their library. Citing "unsanitary conditions," New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, then told reporters: "I have become increasingly concerned…that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community."

Four days before the police attack The New York Times had quoted a city health department statement worrying about the possible spread of norovirus, vomiting, diarrhea and tuberculosis: "It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone's health."

So why don't they give the homeless some of the thousands of abandoned apartment units in New York?

Anyway, according to the Times: "Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at [the few] public restrooms."

Of course, there's an obvious solution: provide adequate bathroom facilities—not just for Occupy but for all New Yorkers. But that's off the table under New York's Fuck you system of government.

Doctors noted a new phenomenon called "Zuccotti cough." Symptoms are similar to those of "Ground Zero cough" suffered by 9/11 first responders.

Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero.

Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months?

We'll never know. As under Bush, Obama's EPA still won't conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study.

Sick? Wanna know why? Fuck you.

One of the authorities' most ironic complaints about the Occupations is that they attract the mentally ill, drug users and habitually homeless.

To listen to the mayors of Portland, Denver and New York, you'd think the Occupiers beamed in bums and nutcases from outer space.

When mentally disabled people seek help from their government, they get the usual answer: Fuck you.

When people addicted to drugs—drugs imported into the U.S. under the watchful eyes of corrupt border enforcement officers—ask their government for help, they are turned away. Fuck you again.

When people who lost their homes because their government said "fuck you" to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: "Fuck you."

And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility to provide us with such staples of human survival as places to urinate and defecate and sleep, and food, and medical care, our "fuck you" government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up.

Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say "fuck you" to them.

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This…

…is pretty much my story, ca. 2003.

I am the 99%.

I still find it ironic that years later I ended up working for the AHCCCS provider that literally saved my life.