Sep
9
“And what are the broader social implications for believing that there is just some power in this world that you shall remain completely passive in front of?” – brownfemipower
I would just like to give an ode to my wonderful blog feed. Lately whenever I feel like I’m really losing it, or just want to read something interesting I go to my reader and there is an endless amount of important/interesting/”this makes me feel sort of sane” stuff to keep me going.
The past few days have been no exception, though this post is meant to highlight the more disturbing things that have shown up. I still haven’t found a good way to quote a lot of material at once so it’ll probably be a little confusing.
Basically, while those at the RNC were crowing about freedom, civil rights and liberty the police were arresting activists preemptively and engaging in the brutal and unwarranted (illegal?) arrests of protesters. I’ve been reading a number of things about this and it’s basically going to be one huge list of entries with quotes. AS WELL, I’ve noticed a lot of comments from people that “these were just troublemaking democrats/liberals/leftists/anarchists who got what they deserved. L0lZ!!!@@#@”
I am quoting what brownfemipower quotes of Amy Goodman in her entry:
“There was a photographer right next to me who was also taken down pretty violently. He was screaming he was press, as well. He had credentials. He kept saying he was a photographer for the New York Post. And quite funnily, he said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s a Republican paper!” But that didn’t seem to matter.”
In that same entry are a compiled a bunch of videos on the matter I’m embedding Amy Goodman’s here:
Brownfemipower on Why All That Police Brutality Stuff Matters:
She didn’t do anything to deserve it.
And then I went back and thought of all the other dismissals about the police brutality we’ve seen.
What were those protesters expecting?
What did they think was going to happen?
Why were they even there?
Who cares, it’s their own fault for causing trouble!
It’s just a bunch of old hippies and troublemakers looking for attention!I’ve heard all this before. I’ve heard all this before over and over and over again.
What was she thinking?
What was she expecting was going to happen?
Why was she even there?
Who cares, it’s her own fault for causing trouble!
It’s just some fat bitch looking for some attention!
and a video – Police Brutality at the DNC – Cop slamming woman in the chest and then arresting her – brownfemipower
Nezua of The Unapologetic Mexican The Front Line is Everywhere – RNC 08:
The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.
Chale. I am not sorry that I refuse to cheer for that army. I refuse to belittle those with enough heart to throw themselves at the symbols of encroaching police state and behind them, those who are responsible for all this hell and horror that our nation has entangled itself in and has unleashed upon other nations and thus, is becoming, morally and actually.
If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. I just don’t think this is going to go away. I think as class divisions increase and resources become more scarce and the elitist politicians and CEOs and related kinds horde more treasure and starve the rest of both food, honest government, and truth, they will need more and more force to keep the illusion of a fair society in place.
and on his arrest at RNC 04 as part of the 1800 people that iWitness mentions in the next quote – Overlords in Name and Deed
PREEMPTIVE ARRESTS of the iWitness team – this is the blog entry that Eileen Clancy wrote as they were in a house that was surrounded by police:
This is Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of I-Witness Video, a NYC-based video collective that’s in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests around this week’s Republican National Convention.
The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.
We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.
We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross intimidation by police officers, and the detention of media activists and reporters.
This doesn’t seem to be the half of it. There also seems to have been REPEATED RAIDS ON BOTH THEM AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN ACTIVISM DOWN THERE. THAT IS A LIST OF ARTICLES.
During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over the efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate protesters. On August 21, The Washington Post fretted:
Six Americans detained by police this week could be held for 10 days, according to Chinese authorities, who appear to be intensifying their efforts to shut down any public demonstrations during the final days of the Olympic Games. . . .
Chinese Olympic officials announced last month that Beijing would set up zones where people could protest during the Games, as long as they had received permission. None of the 77 applications submitted was approved, however, and several other would-be protesters were stopped from even applying.
On August 2, The Post gravely warned:
Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.
Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.
Would The Washington Post ever use such dark and accusatory tones to describe what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn’t. Yet how is our own Government’s behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation’s establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly the same motives?
Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from people’s homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.
A fine time to be reading The Shock Doctrine.
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