Pepperspray Nation Chapter 7: Occupy Oakland
I want to say this in opening. What I am about to say will be considered highly controversial by many and downright inflammatory by a few. So DON'T take my word for it. And don't take the word of anyone on Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, or right wing talk radio. Instead, throw down some money on a college or University level American History Textbook that covers everything up to Clinton, and learn the truth for yourself.
Ronald Reagan was a false prophet who's words and ideology are leading this nation to perdition and have been since the day he took office over 30 years ago.
Educate yourselves children; for if you do not, we will never survive.
Most egregious is the history and law enforcement response to Occupy Oakland. Where the Occupy Movement in New York is an ideological siege against the Temple of Mammon to which the entire nation's economy was almost sacrificed, and the Occupy Seattle had veterans in protests against globalization; Oakland most invokes the warnings found in the Civil Disturbance Maneuver Army Field Manual:
intensity of violence through the use of brutish enforcement tactics should be
avoided. Publicity can be detrimental to authorities and beneficial to crowds
because it can further their causes....
Community unrest results in urban conflicts that arise from highly
emotional social and economic issues. Economically deprived inner city
residents may feel that they are treated unjustly or ignored by people in power
and authority. Tensions can build quickly in a community over a variety of
issues, such as hunger, poor employment opportunities, inadequate
community services, poor housing, and labor issues. Tension in these areas
creates the potential for violence. When tensions are high, it takes a small
(seemingly minor) incident, rumor, or act of injustice to ignite groups within a
crowd to riot and act violently. This is particularly true if community relations
with authorities are part of the problem.
As demonstrated by the L.A. riots in response to the officers being found not guilty in the beating of Rodney King.
1-5. Significant ethnic differences in a community can create an atmosphere
of distrust, even hatred. Unrest among ethnic groups competing for jobs,
living areas, and sparse essentials can cause an eruption of civil disorder and/
or riots. As emotions run high, violence becomes likely.
Let's read this one more time:
Community unrest results in urban conflicts that arise from highly
emotional social and economic issues. Economically deprived inner city
residents may feel that they are treated unjustly or ignored by people in power
and authority. Tensions can build quickly in a community over a variety of
issues, such as hunger, poor employment opportunities, inadequate
community services, poor housing, and labor issues. Tension in these areas
creates the potential for violence. When tensions are high, it takes a small
(seemingly minor) incident, rumor, or act of injustice to ignite groups within a
crowd to riot and act violently. This is particularly true if community relations
with authorities are part of the problem.
It could well have been written describing this picture. Bad enough.
However, people are not content or inclined to quietly starve to death. There could be a parallel found in the mass extinction of the dinosaurs:
The earth was struck by an asteroid that caused, among other multitudinous disruptions, a quasi nuclear winter which killed off all the growing plants at the time. Plants form the basis of the food chain. When the plants died out, the herbivores - plant eaters - followed. When the herbivores died out, the carnivores followed.
-Without factory jobs or even public assistance, all businesses died because nobody had money for goods or services. A situation being replicated in many ways today by the Great Recession.
But not all life on earth is dependent on plants or meat. Insects survive on any form of organic matter and survive in nearly every environment. Animals that thrive on insects, though marginal, are very durable. Cockroach vitality, hardy as a rat. Insects became the new base for the food chain. And those creatures that survived as insectivores were later able to diversify and fill the roles of mega fauna herbivores and carnivores left vacant by the destruction of the dinosaurs.
-When legitimate commerce died in the inner city, the economies of last resort...criminal enterprises; drug dealing, prostitution, other peoples' property, and violence...stepped in to take its place out of necessity. People don't quietly starve.
Unfortunately, right at this time, a new product appeared.
A product that could make people wealthy, but at the cost of living their lives in dog years and almost guaranteeing either a violent death, or spending the rest of their lives in prison and the weight of knowing they were poisoning their own communities. Who wouldn't jump at that when the alternative is grinding poverty and degradation? You don't even need a high school diploma!
What product was this? It was crack cocaine.
The Reagan ad Morning in America would have been accurate only if it included the screams of crack babies and the sound of machine gun fire from the drive-bys of competing gangs.
Everything here, from the exportation of jobs to the shredding of the social safety net to the appearance of the crack cocaine economy and the gang warfare it fostered were all the products of classic Reagan era. These were the triumphs of Reagan economic and social policy.
Later triumphs included multi-trillion dollar federal deficits, a crashed stock market in 1987, and saving and loan bailouts fueled by "junk bonds." Truly a precursor to the wonders of the Bush/Cheney White House.
That Reagan was the cause of the social decay in the inner city is, as demonstrated, a straight line computation. There are allegations that his Administration may have also had a more direct hand in the the appearance of Crack as a way to help fund his adventures in Central America, in ADDITION to selling weapons to the very same Iranians who had held Americans hostage and released on the same day he was inaugurated. Great PR that was. However, people are not content or inclined to quietly starve to death. There could be a parallel found in the mass extinction of the dinosaurs:
The earth was struck by an asteroid that caused, among other multitudinous disruptions, a quasi nuclear winter which killed off all the growing plants at the time. Plants form the basis of the food chain. When the plants died out, the herbivores - plant eaters - followed. When the herbivores died out, the carnivores followed.
-Without factory jobs or even public assistance, all businesses died because nobody had money for goods or services. A situation being replicated in many ways today by the Great Recession.
But not all life on earth is dependent on plants or meat. Insects survive on any form of organic matter and survive in nearly every environment. Animals that thrive on insects, though marginal, are very durable. Cockroach vitality, hardy as a rat. Insects became the new base for the food chain. And those creatures that survived as insectivores were later able to diversify and fill the roles of mega fauna herbivores and carnivores left vacant by the destruction of the dinosaurs.
-When legitimate commerce died in the inner city, the economies of last resort...criminal enterprises; drug dealing, prostitution, other peoples' property, and violence...stepped in to take its place out of necessity. People don't quietly starve.
Unfortunately, right at this time, a new product appeared.
A product that could make people wealthy, but at the cost of living their lives in dog years and almost guaranteeing either a violent death, or spending the rest of their lives in prison and the weight of knowing they were poisoning their own communities. Who wouldn't jump at that when the alternative is grinding poverty and degradation? You don't even need a high school diploma!
What product was this? It was crack cocaine.
The Reagan ad Morning in America would have been accurate only if it included the screams of crack babies and the sound of machine gun fire from the drive-bys of competing gangs.
Everything here, from the exportation of jobs to the shredding of the social safety net to the appearance of the crack cocaine economy and the gang warfare it fostered were all the products of classic Reagan era. These were the triumphs of Reagan economic and social policy.
Later triumphs included multi-trillion dollar federal deficits, a crashed stock market in 1987, and saving and loan bailouts fueled by "junk bonds." Truly a precursor to the wonders of the Bush/Cheney White House.
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
CIA and Contra cocaine trafficking
Further information: CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US
A lawsuit filed in 1986 by two journalists represented by the Christic Institute showed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other parties were engaged in criminal acts, including financing the purchase of arms with the proceeds of cocaine sales.[96]Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concludes that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras are involved in drug trafficking... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly receive financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."[97] The report further states that "the Contra drug links include... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies."
In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News,[98] and later in his book Dark Alliance,[99] detailing how Contras, with the assistance of the U.S. government had distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons purchases.
Webb's premise regarding the US Government connection was initially attacked at the time by the corporate media. It is now widely accepted that Webb's main assertion of government "knowledge of drug operations, and collaboration with and protection of known drug traffickers" was correct.[100] In 1998, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz published a two-volume report[101] that while seemingly refuting Webb's claims of knowledge and collaboration in its conclusions did not deny them in its body.[102] Hitz went on to admit CIA improprieties in the affair in testimony to a House congressional committee. Mainstream media has since reversed its position on Webb's work acknowledging his contribution to exposing a scandal it had ignored.
[Don't need to tell me, Wikipedia is neither the most reputable nor reliable place to look; but it does provide a good starting point.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
Federal and state policies also impose collateral consequences on those convicted of drug offenses, such as denial of public benefits or licenses, that are not applicable to those convicted of other types of crime.[59]
...
In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed laws that created a 100 to 1 sentencing disparity for the possession or trafficking of crack when compared to penalties for trafficking of powder cocaine,[61][62][63][64] which had been widely criticized as discriminatory against minorities, mostly blacks, who were more likely to use crack than powder cocaine.[65] This 100:1 ratio had been required under federal law since 1986.[66] Persons convicted in federal court of possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine received a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in federal prison. On the other hand, possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine carries the same sentence.[62][63] In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act cut the sentencing disparity to 18:1.[65]
Crime statistics show that in 1999 the United States blacks were far more likely to be targeted by law enforcement for drug crimes, and received much stiffer penalties and sentences than non-minorities.[67] Those same statistics also show that such events were far more likely to take place in areas with high minority crime: low income housing neighborhoods, city projects etc. [underlying causes]
Statistics from 1998 show that there were wide racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and deaths. African-American drug users made up for 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes.[62] Nationwide African-Americans were sent to state prisons for drug offenses 13 times more often than other races,[68] even though they only supposedly comprised 13% of regular drug users.[62]
...
On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of the government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S. which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his drug trafficking activities, which they had known about since the 1960s.[71][72] When the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so.[71] The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America.,[71] When CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of allowing his drug operations to proceed unchecked.[71] Operation Just Cause, whose purpose was to capture Noriega, killed numerous Panamanian civilians; Noriega found temporary asylum in the Papal Nuncio, and surrendered to U.S. soldiers on January 3, 1990.[73] He was sentenced by a court in Miami to 45 years in prison.[71]
Gates earned notoriety for his controversial rhetoric on many occasions. Some of the most notable examples of this were:
- His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that infrequent or casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot" because "we're in a war" and even casual drug use is "treason."[14] He later said the testimony was calculated hyperbole.[15]
- His dismissive response to concerns about excessive force by police employing "choke holds." Gates attributed several deaths of people held in choke holds to the theory that "blacks might be more likely to die from choke holds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do on 'normal people.'"[16] (In his autobiography, Gates explained that he had been misquoted, saying that black people were more predisposed to vascular conditions and therefore less likely to have normally-functioning arteries.)
To be black or brown in America, thanks to the continued War on Drugs, is to live in a police state. Ask any black or brown man or woman who has been the subject of a sidewalk shakedown, or who has been pulled over for driving while black or brown. If as many whites were randomly stopped and given similar treatment, roughly the same proportion would be caught with things they'd rather not. Jails and prisons would be filled with representation of races far more in keeping with what you actually see on the street.
A post-script. The economic disruption of the inner city caused by Reagan policies was neither total, nor complete. The prosaic upward mobility of a factory job leading to security upon retirement with money to send the kids to college died with a stake in its heart, and not just for those in the inner city. It is THIS coincidentally, that has lead to the death of the Middle Class for ALL America.
And while the resulting early deaths and hardships brought on by the Crack Epidemic should never allow anyone to rest comfortably...like mege fauna descended from insectivores, giants were born from this tragedy.
Many crack dealers escaped or survived addiction, gang violence and incarceration by commoditizing their exploits in gangster rap and hip hop - following in the proud tradition of their Delta and Chicago Blues Forefathers in the testimonial and honest portrayal of a dystopian Horatio Alger-style American Dream. One with bitches and hos and the popping of caps in asses and killing cops.
Many took their money selling crack and music and invested in record labels and studios; ultimately becoming top tier entrepreneurs and media magnates and tycoons.
People Do NOT starve to death quietly.
It was is the War on Drugs that the police state against minorities, now prosecuted as Az 1070 Papers Please law and clones, first got its footing. And it was is the prosecution of this War that the police became militarized. As posted elsewhere: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/police-militarization-use-of-force-swat-raids_b_1123848.html?ref=tw
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/06/1042835/-Why-is-the-Federal-Government-Militarizing-our-Police-Departments?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
Tue Dec 06, 2011 at 12:14 PM PST
Why is the Federal Government Militarizing our Police Departments?
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Hello? Mr. Commander-in-Chief? Why is the Pentagon giving $500 million of military equipment to police departments? $500 million in 2011 alone, that is. And that doesn't take into account the federal grants given to them by Homeland Security to buy even more. Why is the federal government militarizing our police departments?
The Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The USThe U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will.
We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens.
1033 was passed by Congress in 1997 to help law-enforcement fight terrorism and drugs, but despite a 40-year low in violent crime, police are snapping up hardware like never before. While this year's staggering take topped the charts, next year's orders are up 400 percent over the same period.
The 1033 Program has given more than $500 million in equipment to police departments this year alone, more than double what they gave them in 2010.
Have a look at this gallery of photos of militarized NYPD officers.
And police departments are public servants, there to help and protect us, right? I mean, they'd never just use overwhelming force just to scare the shit out of us or adopt Israeli tactics for suppressing speech and assembly, or train with the Bahraini military, right?
Why do our police need military equipment from the Pentagon? And we are not just talking about our largest cities, small towns get military equipment too. As Sgt. Thomas said, when he was appalled at the equipment and tactics used by NYPD: "These people don't have guns!... This is not a war!"
Yes, it's only a matter of time. As the lawyer interviewed at the end of The Daily article surmised, if we keep equipping and training police officers like soldiers, aren't they going to develop the mindset of a soldier who is tasked with killing enemies rather than protecting and serving citizens?
When you place all of this in the context of our very real detainee policies, the implications are even worse.
Even if we put the issue of brutality and rights aside, I don't know about you but I'm thrilled to be paying for military equipment that might be used against me or my kids while supporting OWS or marching in solidarity with them.
That was sarcasm, but this is deadly serious business.
Isn't it obvious that we have a Big F'ing Problem already?
What isn't obvious is whether or not the Commander-in-Chief realizes we have a Big F'ing Problem because he hasn't said a word about the outrageous use of force against peaceful protesters. He and Secretary Clinton have had plenty to say about the way that Arab Spring protesters have been treated, but nothing to say about what is happening in their own backyard.It is so bad that a UN envoy has spoken out about it.
Hello? Mr. President? Congress?
The 1033 Program
The 1033 Program (formerly the 1208 Program) permits the Secretary of Defense to transfer, without charge, excess U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) personal property (supplies and equipment) to state and local law enforcement agencies (LEAs).The 1033 Program has allowed law enforcement agencies to acquire vehicles (land, air and sea), weapons, computer equipment, body armor, fingerprint equipment, night vision equipment, radios and televisions, first aid equipment, tents and sleeping bags, photographic equipment and more.
BATTLEFIELD MAIN STREETMeanwhile, Homeland Security gives them federal grants to buy things like "BearCats". Others have been purchased with confiscated drug money. The name BearCat stands for Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck.
In today’s Mayberry, Andy Griffith and Barney Fife could be using grenade launchers and a tank to keep the peace. A rapidly expanding Pentagon program that distributes used military equipment to local police departments — many of them small-town forces — puts battlefield-grade weaponry in the hands of cops at an unprecedented rate.[ ... ]
Passed by Congress in 1997, the 1033 program was created to provide law-enforcement agencies with tools to fight drugs and terrorism. Since then, more than 17,000 agencies have taken in $2.6 billion worth of equipment for nearly free, paying only the cost of delivery.
[ ... ]
Thanks to it, cops in Cobb County, Ga. — one of the wealthiest and most educated counties in the U.S. — now have an amphibious tank. The sheriff of Richland County, S.C., proudly acquired a machine-gun-equipped armored personnel carrier that he nicknamed “The Peacemaker.”
[ ... ]
When asked why they need equipment that might seem better suited to Fallujah than Florida, many police point to safety concerns, even as violent crime nationwide has fallen to 40-year lows.
Lenco Armored Vehicles is the Nation's leading designer and manufacturer of tactical armored security vehicles. Lenco Armored Trucks meet the needs of S.W.A.T., Homeland Security, Counter-Terrorism, Force Protection, Military Police, HAZMAT Team and Dignitary Protection applications. A growing number of high-profile U.S. agencies around the globe are using our armored vehicles for dangerous law enforcement and military operations such as close quarter battle engagements, citizen rescue and personnel/cargo delivery missions.Our product line includes the Lenco BearCat®; the Lenco B.E.A.R.®; and the Lenco ProCat® Crew Armored Transporter. These Ballistic Engineered Armored Response vehicles are constructed of certified hardened steel armor plate and approved multi-hit ballistic glass. Detailed ballistic specifications are available upon request. Vehicles are also equipped with blast fragmentation resistant floors, specially designed gun ports, roof hatches with rotating turrets, gun mount platforms, gear storage and much more.http://www.swattrucks.com/...
Pasco SWAT's security weapon: Lenco BearCat
Members of the Pasco Sheriff’s Office SWAT team demonstrate maneuvers in front of their new $249,000 BearCat vehicle. Photos by SKIP O’ROURKE | Times"This is perfect to take back neighborhoods," Sheriff Chris Nocco said at a news conference Wednesday to unveil the BearCat. SWAT members in full gear posed in front of it as television cameras shot footage.
[ ... ]
The BearCat has been in service about a month and already has been used in several situations. The most recent involved a suicidal man in Odessa who locked himself in a shed. But the most important tool that night in diffusing the situation wasn't the BearCat.
It turned out to be Facebook — and a resourceful sheriff's deputy who used it to communicate with the man.
I'm not sure if it has a stereo system so they can blast music while they rumble off on one of their missions.
Local Police Departments' Favorite War MachinesLast month, a Minnesota county sheriff used $237,000 in federal grant money to buy a BearCat and recently used it "to retrieve a kidnapping victim. "We negotiated the release of the victim, who went immediately into the BearCat and they were able to retrieve her safely," the sheriff told The Daily. "Previously, we would have pulled up in a van, which would not have protected anybody or anything." More than basic protection, however, some local officers suggest that the use of tank-like armored vehicles make for a good intimidation tactic. "If somebody looks out and sees a Ford Crown Victoria sitting out there, they may not take you very seriously, but if they look out the window and see this thing sitting there, they're going to know you're serious," a Virginia county sheriff told his local paper in October. It is pretty scary-looking. "But it’s actually become a community relations tool," said the SWAT commander in Erie, Pennsylvania. "It's an ice breaker, like a firetruck when they take it to parades.”Oh, but our friendly neighborhood police would never actually use these types of things against, let's say, peaceful protesting citizens, would they?
[ ... ]
The colloquial name "grenade launcher" can be a little bit misleading. The Pentagon's given away a lot of these weapons to local police departments, but the most common use is not to hurl hand grenades but to launch less-than-lethal objects. It was this kind of projectile that fractured the skull of Scott Olsen (emphasis mine)[ ... ] A Cedar Rapids Special Response team recently justified the purchase of five grenade launchers with a story about using a Vietnam War-era "gas gun" to drive a burglary suspect out of a house. Cedar Rapids police captain Steve O'Konek told the local newspaper that the military tools just work. "Some of the technology the military has used has proven to be very successful and great tools for us," O’Konek said. "Anytime we can avert a confrontation with somebody, we’d just as soon do that."
Have a look at this gallery of photos of militarized NYPD officers.
And police departments are public servants, there to help and protect us, right? I mean, they'd never just use overwhelming force just to scare the shit out of us or adopt Israeli tactics for suppressing speech and assembly, or train with the Bahraini military, right?
Oakland Police Trained Alongside Bahrain Military and Israeli Forces Prior to Violent Occupy Oakland RaidI know that the NYPD's motto is "Courtesy Professionalism Respect" because I have seen it myself. It's on all of their vehicles.
A month before Occupy Oakland was violently raided by riot police using chemical weapons, rubber bullets and flash grenades – a raid which critically injured Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen – the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department trained alongside a military unit from Bahrain and an Israeli Border Police unit.The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual training competition which gathers heavily militarized police from the United States and across the globe to explore the latest in tactical responses and to promote collaboration. It’s a training that northern California police departments credited for their “effective teamwork” in dealing repressively with Occupy Oakland.
Why do our police need military equipment from the Pentagon? And we are not just talking about our largest cities, small towns get military equipment too. As Sgt. Thomas said, when he was appalled at the equipment and tactics used by NYPD: "These people don't have guns!... This is not a war!"
Yes, it's only a matter of time. As the lawyer interviewed at the end of The Daily article surmised, if we keep equipping and training police officers like soldiers, aren't they going to develop the mindset of a soldier who is tasked with killing enemies rather than protecting and serving citizens?
When you place all of this in the context of our very real detainee policies, the implications are even worse.
Do Cops Need Tanks and M-16s to Protect and Serve?Maybe they are just getting ready to protect us from the terrorists. I remember when Bill Clinton gave that infamous speech many times on campaign stumps in 2006 where he mocked the Republicans for seeing a terrorist on every street corner. Now who is acting like the paranoid Republicans that Clinton spoke of?
Last week, the United States Senate passed its unwieldy, $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act, including a provision that grants the United States military powers of “worldwide detention without charge or trial” against suspected terrorists, even if those suspects are United States citizens apprehended on United States soil.When local police departments are riding around in the U.S. military’s impenetrable wheeled fortresses, firing mounted machine guns, answering domestic disturbances with M-16s drawn, it’s only a matter of time before sheriffs and police chiefs petition for the same powers as the military—to pick up citizens on mere suspicion, to hold them indefinitely without bail or charge, to incarcerate them with a closed hearing rather than an open trial, and to do this all without a lawyer present to protest.
Even if we put the issue of brutality and rights aside, I don't know about you but I'm thrilled to be paying for military equipment that might be used against me or my kids while supporting OWS or marching in solidarity with them.
That was sarcasm, but this is deadly serious business.
Isn't it obvious that we have a Big F'ing Problem already?
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U.N. Envoy: U.S. Isn't Protecting Occupy Protesters' Rights
WASHINGTON -- The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.
UN Envoy Speaks Out Against US Brutality Towards Occupy ProtestersWhen you have police officers or sheriffs shooting at Iraq War veterans in the streets, sending them to intensive care and brain surgery, maybe you want to rethink how much weaponry you want to supply them? When you have a UN envoy saying that police departments across the nation are violating human rights of our citizens, maybe it's not a good idea to give them even more military equipment from the Pentagon and Homeland Security? Maybe you want to think about taking it away.
La Rue, a human rights activist who's been at the UN for three years, essentially agrees with the National Lawyers Guild—that forcible, violent raids on Occupy encampments in New York, Los Angeles, Oakland and other cities, infringe upon citizens' First and Fourth Amendment rights and are a violation of moral decency to boot. "The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," said NLG co-chair Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."
Hello? Mr. President? Congress?
The Reagan Administration's social and economic policies planted many of the seed that has, about thirty years, later produced fertile ground for the Occupy Movement. It was in Oakland and in LA that the heel of the boot of Reagan policy ground hardest. It was from here that the social decay that his policies created had spread.
Our work will not be done until his ideology and their fruits - tax breaks for the wealthy, off-shoring of American manufacturing, union-busting, deregulation of every kind, the shredding of the safety net and public assistance, the sustained attack on universal high quality public education, the War on Drugs, the expansion of the prison industrial complex as well as the military industrial complex - have all been pulled up by the roots, burned and the ashes consigned to the dust bin of history.
The significance of Occupy Oakland can not be understated. It was here that the first Occupy hero was made in the person of Scott Olsen, who will forever be an icon of the movement.
And as it was Seattle that the tools and methods and ideology were first forged for the Occupy Movement during N30 in 1999.
It was in LA and the Bay Area that the militarization of law enforcement response was born during the age of Reagan's War on Drugs.
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