When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.
Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. As she told the Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly paper, “Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd . . . If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled.”
When Philip Kennicott wrote in 2005 about the lack of iconic images from the Iraq war, he spoke to the qualities that make a photograph emblematic of a movement or era in history. Until now, many of the photos of Occupy focused on the signs carried by protesters, rather than the clashes with police. This is partially due to access — by many accounts, press were shut out from Monday night’s eviction of protesters from Zucottti Park. Yet, even though Occupy Wall Street and its branches across the country are not analogous to the war, the visual language of iconic imagery is the same.
Too often, Kennicott writes, photographers of conflict focus on objects — a sign, a tent, a mangled car — as a stand-in for people: “The sum total of these substitutions feels, at times, like a theater without actors, a set of props and costumes and extras milling about, without hint of what the real drama is meant to be.”
Rainey has now been unwittingly thrust into that starring role. Protest images that become iconic show us faces in anguish, such as John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning image of the shooting at Kent State. Thankfully, no image or incident quite as violent has emerged from Occupy. Nevertheless, wrote one commenter on the Stranger, “This is exactly the sort of picture that changes things.”
Anyone who thinks attacking citizens like this is justifiable is, literally, a traitor to the United States of America. And, in my opinion, human scum whose passing, while I would not celebrate, I would neither mourn...
It's a damn damn that these hippies are using this poor woman to spin their "agenda". Look at them holding up that poor ladies' head for a photo instead of getting her help. I bet the police wouldn't have been that cruel. They are just men doing their job. Many of these police were heroes on 9/11. Shame on these children for taking their teen angst out on them.
John Boehner’s lobbyist pals are so afraid of Occupy Wall Street that they are pitching a million dollar hit job to bring OWS down.
The memo admits both that Occupy Wall Street is political force, and Democrats are tougher on Wall Street than Republicans:
In short, they are going to run a smear campaign that would use the same Fox News talking points that haven’t worked so far. They are going to claim that George Soros is funding Occupy Wall Street, and that the movement is being run by the Democratic Party. Most troubling is their plan to carry surveillance on social media. They are going to monitor the social media used by OWS and what they intend to do that the memo didn’t directly state was spam social media with anti-Occupy Wall Street propaganda.
They won’t only use social media to monitor the message and tactics of Occupy Wall Street. They will try to infiltrate these social networks to disrupt the movement and plant smears against OWS. This is a favorite GOP tactic that goes right in line with their use of paid commenters to spam websites with pro-GOP messages.
By obtaining this memo and reporting on it, Chris Hayes and MSNBC made it likely that this campaign will never see the light of day. The memo does expose a very troubling development. The one percent is so worried about Occupy Wall Street that they are preparing to merge their financial, political and media resources into a giant propaganda campaign in order to halt this movement.
This memo is the most concrete evidence yet that Occupy Wall Street is winning and the one percent is terrified that the movement’s message is powerfully resonating with the American people. The greatest irony of all is that the OWS message would have never been this effective if the Republican Party wouldn’t have spent the last three years trying to sabotage the American economy.
The economic despair that they worked so hard to maintain may be the very thing that defeats them in 2012. Occupy Wall Street is their way to changing America, and there seems to be little that the one percent and their paid political puppets can do about it.
You're SUCH a fucking idiot, Pro.
This is some liberal blog, which makes MSNBC look like the Washington Post.
They have a T-shirt ad that reads: 'You say "Commie" like it's bad.' This is a site that could be William Ayers' blog.
No need for me to further comment. You've blown your own credibility by connecting yourself to these wackos.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Occupy Wall Street scumbags hold a moment of silence "in solidarity" with Obama's would-be assassin. (I'm sure there's a band in the background singing another reprise of "fuck the USA" )
But hey, in all fairness, I'm sure they'd voice greater solidarity if the person shot at were George W. Bush. Or Rupert Murdoch.
I'm sorry, but that is the biggest load of spin bullshit I've heard about the OWSers yet. Is the guy really bad at public speaking? Yeah. But, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the guy's intent wasn't to praise the assassin in any way.
"I think we should have a moment in silence and solidarity for the person who was part of the Washington DC Occupy ...a moment of silence for the White House, and the guy who shot at the White House... "
He said it several times. And no one stepped forward to object or correct him.
Followed by some girl yelling "occupy the police department!" And another saying "Let's march back all stoked n' stuff, okay?"
I concede that the message was pretty confused. But no one there seemed to have a problem with "solidarity" for the shooter, whatever the context.
Here is the full quote in a really big font size.
“I think we should have a moment of silence in solidarity for the person they said was from the Washington, D.C. Occupy. Maybe, why did he feel the need to shoot the White House window today? So I think we should have a moment in solidarity for the White House, and for the guy that shot at the White House today. I don’t know if you heard, but someone shot at the White House window today.”
That "Maybe, why did he..." line really clears up the confusion that your resourceful use of ellipsis creates.
Zucottti Park is a ghost town now that these children can no longer sleep in tents until two in the after noon, and sneak off to the tents to do some drugs. Now good hard working men and women have to clean that park up in danger of accidentally bringing god knows what back to their family. Bedbugs and Zucottti Lung.
Tough tactics and intolerance favor the rich and flout the rule of law
Quote:
In early stages of Occupy Wall Street, I sometimes encountered people who harbored a legitimate concern: Wouldn’t prolonged media attention to altercations between police and demonstrators distract from the movement’s message?
This apprehension always struck me as misguided. What could be more central to Occupy’s guiding philosophy than the idea that the rule of law has been subverted by corporate interests? In collusion with government functionaries and beyond meaningful accountability from the public, these interests have created a separate realm of law for themselves — one that orients the financial and political systems in their favor, to the detriment of everyone else. If this is indeed true, and the law itself is marred by a systemic corruption, then law enforcement — manifested physically in the form of police officers — is an appropriate focus for a social movement seeking redress of grievances.
As Occupy Wall Street grew, the New York Police Department’s “crowd control” tactics became increasingly bizarre and aggressive: historic mass arrests, motor scooter attacks, destruction of books, ramming horses into demonstrators, putting New York Post reporters in choke holds – to name only a few. And following Tuesday’s brazen raid of Zuccotti Park, carried out in the dead of night, the NYPD indicated that de-escalation is not on the horizon. Quite the opposite, in fact. Police officials at the highest ranks, under the direction of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, have taken to simply making up the rules as they go along.
In the same way that financial elites rig the political system, law enforcement elites like Bloomberg and Kelly have rigged the criminal justice system. Occupy Wall Street is hardly the only victim. The NYPD is on pace to make 700,000 extralegal “stop-and-frisks” this year alone, while its own officers skirt accountability for their misconduct. Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, who was sanctioned by NYPD Internal Affairs for pepper-spraying at least four demonstrators without provocation, received a maximum punishment of 10 lost vacation days on account of his actions.
If you’re an ordinary citizen, and you get caught on video dousing people with noxious gas like Bologna did, you get summarily locked up. And if you’re young and black, expect to receive the law’s full wrath. But when you’re an NYPD commanding officer responsible for all of Manhattan below 59th street, like Bologna was at the time of his attack, you get essentially a free pass.
Additionally, throughout my coverage of OWS, various police officials in plainclothes have refused to identify themselves upon request — a violation of NYPD patrol guide procedure 203-09, effective June 27, 2003, which states that all “members of the service” are required to “courteously and clearly state [their] rank, name, shield number and command, or otherwise provide them, to anyone who requests [they] do so. [They also must] allow the person ample time to note this information.”
Among the men who violated this directive are Lt. Daniel J. Albano, described in a 2009 court document as a “Lieutenant in the NYPD legal bureau and a high-level policy-making official for the NYPD.” When I asked Albano whether he was even with the NYPD, he replied, “I’m the plumber.”
Another is Sgt. Arthur Smarsch. On Tuesday morning, demonstrators were allowed back in post-powerwashed Zuccotti Park for a short time. Within what seemed like a half hour, officers began to force people out again. There was much confusion. Someone finally prodded Sgt. Arthur Smarsch to explain what was going on, and I heard him say that there was a “suspicious package” in the park. He then told an NBC4 reporter his last name upon request.
Smarsch was misinformed, because no other official ever mentioned anything about a “suspicious package,” nor was any search of the park ordered.
I recalled first seeing Smarsch at an early-morning march on Oct. 14, when he was unusually violent with demonstrators — even by NYPD standards — for no real discernible reason. He would not provide me (or several others who asked, including members of the National Lawyers Guild) with his name. I later retrieved it by other means. Smarsch is the director of Manhattan South Borough.
During the Zuccotti Park eviction, the NYPD enforced a strict no-public-access policy in both the park and its surrounding area, ensuring reporters would be virtually prohibited from observing the raid. Press, credentialed or not, were repeatedly barred from proceeding past the newly formed police line. Journalists associated with the Associated Press, the New York Times, the New York Daily News and other outlets were arrested.
At one point that morning, I got stuck in a chaotic mass of people, and was nearly battered with a baton while attempting to record video. Some NYPD officers seemed to enjoy all this immensely, especially Police Officer Toussaint — one of the several who laughed as they pummeled everyone in their path. I saw one man get smashed in the face with a riot shield; another was knocked over the hood of a taxi.
When I asked one officer why it had suddenly become unlawful to stand on that portion of the sidewalk, she answered, “You’re blocking pedestrian traffic.”
Someone called out, “We are pedestrian traffic!” The officer responded, “So are we.”
The officer’s remark, of course, was senseless. Taken at face value, it would presumably mean that those of us being impeded from standing on this normally open sidewalk were ourselves responsible for the ensuing obstruction of pedestrian traffic. As if the hundreds of amassed riot cops or newly erected metal barricades had nothing to do with the blockage that she so dryly referenced.
It is not good that NYPD officers now live in a world where coherency of argument is no longer even an aspiration. Having spoken to over a hundred police officers throughout Occupy Wall Street, about 70 percent respond to queries by saying nothing at all, another 15 percent grunt or mutter something inaudible, 10 percent make some kind of dismissive remark, and the remaining 5 percent are willing to have a human conversation.
If this is the reality of police behavior at a political demonstration in downtown New York City, what has happened to the reality of policing? The NYPD, ostensibly tasked with maintaining public order, has proven that it cannot handle political dissent without exerting anything less than military-style force. For two months, it has continuously abridged the rights of citizens to peaceably assemble, and of journalists to document these assemblies. It has lost its claim to legitimacy.
Michael Tracey is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in The Nation, Mother Jones, Reason, The American Conservative, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @mtracey More Michael Tracey
Salon.com! A far-left site for the liberal-indoctrinated!
Oh. And: "Michael Tracey is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in The Nation, Mother Jones, Reason, The American Conservative..."
I'm surprised to see the last one listed. But the rest show a clear far-left trend.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Occupy Wall Street scumbags hold a moment of silence "in solidarity" with Obama's would-be assassin. (I'm sure there's a band in the background singing another reprise of "fuck the USA" )
But hey, in all fairness, I'm sure they'd voice greater solidarity if the person shot at were George W. Bush. Or Rupert Murdoch.
I'm sorry, but that is the biggest load of spin bullshit I've heard about the OWSers yet. Is the guy really bad at public speaking? Yeah. But, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the guy's intent wasn't to praise the assassin in any way.
"I think we should have a moment in silence and solidarity for the person who was part of the Washington DC Occupy ...a moment of silence for the White House, and the guy who shot at the White House... "
He said it several times. And no one stepped forward to object or correct him.
Followed by some girl yelling "occupy the police department!" And another saying "Let's march back all stoked n' stuff, okay?"
I concede that the message was pretty confused. But no one there seemed to have a problem with "solidarity" for the shooter, whatever the context.
Here is the full quote in a really big font size.
“I think we should have a moment of silence in solidarity for the person they said was from the Washington, D.C. Occupy. Maybe, why did he feel the need to shoot the White House window today? So I think we should have a moment in solidarity for the White House, and for the guy that shot at the White House today. I don’t know if you heard, but someone shot at the White House window today.”
That "Maybe, why did he..." line really clears up the confusion that your resourceful use of ellipsis creates.
No, it really doesn't.
As you just said above, the guy is not a good public speaker. And the message was confused at best, even given the full transcript. Solidarity. For the guy who shot at the White House. Who is part of Occupy Washington DC.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.
Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. As she told the Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly paper, “Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd . . . If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled.”
When Philip Kennicott wrote in 2005 about the lack of iconic images from the Iraq war, he spoke to the qualities that make a photograph emblematic of a movement or era in history. Until now, many of the photos of Occupy focused on the signs carried by protesters, rather than the clashes with police. This is partially due to access — by many accounts, press were shut out from Monday night’s eviction of protesters from Zucottti Park. Yet, even though Occupy Wall Street and its branches across the country are not analogous to the war, the visual language of iconic imagery is the same.
Too often, Kennicott writes, photographers of conflict focus on objects — a sign, a tent, a mangled car — as a stand-in for people: “The sum total of these substitutions feels, at times, like a theater without actors, a set of props and costumes and extras milling about, without hint of what the real drama is meant to be.”
Rainey has now been unwittingly thrust into that starring role. Protest images that become iconic show us faces in anguish, such as John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning image of the shooting at Kent State. Thankfully, no image or incident quite as violent has emerged from Occupy. Nevertheless, wrote one commenter on the Stranger, “This is exactly the sort of picture that changes things.”
Anyone who thinks attacking citizens like this is justifiable is, literally, a traitor to the United States of America. And, in my opinion, human scum whose passing, while I would not celebrate, I would neither mourn...
It's a damn [shame] that these hippies are using this poor woman to spin their "agenda". Look at them holding up that poor ladies' head for a photo instead of getting her help. I bet the police wouldn't have been that cruel. They are just men doing their job. Many of these police were heroes on 9/11. Shame on these children for taking their teen angst out on them.
Sorry to bury your post, Jaburg. A point well made.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Says the guy whose partisan blinders are on so tight that he is now calling Reason magazine far left.
While the message is terribly incoherent, the question clears up the fact that he is not championing Ortega's actions and wonders what would drive a guy to do something like that. I feel more sorry for this guy who is getting slandered as a would-be assassin's supporter than I do for Rick Perry not being able to keep his own talking points in check.
I think you linked it here once. From what I could see it makes an effort to be independent.
There's a guy from that site that appears on Redeye a lot, Ed Gillespie, I think. I saw some left stuff on Reason, but I'd agree it's overstating it to say it's a left-site, though. I was just talking about the far-left magazines that head the writer's bio, and that only American Conservative stands out as a boldly non-left site.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Says the guy whose partisan blinders are on so tight that he is now calling Reason magazine far left.
While the message is terribly incoherent, the question clears up the fact that he is not championing Ortega's actions and wonders what would drive a guy to do something like that. I feel more sorry for this guy who is getting slandered as a would-be assassin's supporter than I do for Rick Perry not being able to keep his own talking points in check.
You do see that, short of replaying the video clip multiple times, and even after, it is difficult to discern what this guy is calling his "moment of silence" for. He clearly says "a moment of silence in solidarity for the person they said was from the Washington, D.C. Occupy. Maybe, why did he feel the need to shoot the White House window today? So I think we should have a moment in solidarity for the White House, and for the guy that shot at the White House today".
But it is still a vague message, they still voice solidarity with the guy, and every last OWS person bows their head, no one objects to what is said. Only after repeated plays of the video does it become clearer (maybe) that they are bowing in silence (maybe) for his tormented soul, that would motivate him to shoot at the White House. They are all bowing "in solidarity". Precisely what that "solidarity" is for is open to interpretation. Given some additional complexity by the next comment that immediately follows the silence: "Occupy the Police Department." Ohh, I'm quite sure that was meant in the most pacifist and non-violent way.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
This is just something we'll have to agree to disagree about. To me, it was just a bad attempt at public speaking. As for others not speaking out, I think there are signs of confusion towards him but they probably picked up on some of the same things I did and just accepted that the guy really wasn't very good at speaking.
Reason is very vocal in it's libertarianism. For example, here is a great article they posted recently on Rachel Maddow.
I read the article. Pretty insightful, thanks for posting it.
Peter Schiff and Timothy Carney make similar points in the books I've mentioned repeatedly, about government orchestrated pushes on private industry being inherently inefficient, and allows government (i.e., "crony capitalism") to select a few corporate allies who benefit greatly by an alliance with federal power, at the expense of the ability of mid-size and smaller companies to compete, thus resulting in higher prices and smaller selection for individual consumers, who have less choices as a result of state control.
Quoting Mussolini, and holding back from using the "F-word" (fascism) to avoid coming across as melodramatic was funny, but the point was still sharply made. Also the comparison of liberal statism to Neoconservatism. Up until 2006, I would have comfortably allowed myself to be described as neo-conservative. But after reading Pat Buchanan's books, I see the exertion of global power beyond what is necessary for our own defense to be both imperial and a waste of national resources. So I guess i've moved toward the libertarian stance, or at least toward George Washington's warning to "avoid foreign entanglements". Buchanan makes the point that up through W W II we made an effort to avoid foreign entanglements, and were late in entering both wars. Since then we have frivolously hosed away trillions on wars not in our interest.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
These shit heads say the big bad evil corporations are controlling them because the shit heads are letting them. They are all weak lemmings that lack the basic ability to think for themselves. They join the mobs of angry occutards because they don't know what else to do. They're scared of living in the real world where employment and paying back loans they promised to is too frightening for them.
They yell and scream what they feel is their rights because they feel that yelling something loud enough makes it true. They're rioting against evil corporations while using the tools of those corporations to send their messages of hate.
They are the scum of society. Their parents and teachers all told them that they are special and unique when they are neither. This is the result of giving kids ninth place trophies. This is what happens when you "empower" kids. They grow up thinking shitting on sidewalks and violently attacking those who are meant to protect them is the right thing to do.
Its one big hissy fit. I wish the media kept ignoring them. That way this all would have ended weeks ago. They all want attention and they think acting violently and angrily is the best way to get that attention.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
pro, I understand you're probably going to keep quoting yourself. okay, that's cool, go nuts. but would you kindly stop quoting the one huge fucking image? it's fucking up the page. thanks.
Ret. police captain: To be arrested in solidarity ‘was the proudest moment of my life’ By David Edwards Sunday, November 20, 2011
Topics: Lewis ♦ police captain ♦ Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis
Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, who was arrested last week alongside others in the Occupy movement, calls the ordeal “the proudest moment of my life.”
“I saw all of you sleeping out here,” Lewis recalled to a videographer in New York City’s Zuccotti Park. “The cause, you were for justice. It’s not like you guys were putting up with this so you could get jobs on Wall Street. You were doing this for justice. All over the world, in fact. And that inspired me. I had to come down here an join you.”
“That day, I had no intention of being arrested. None whatsoever. But when I saw a lot of you sitting down and being drug off, I’m saying, they’re losing their freedom for justice, for other people. And that inspired me again to be arrested.”
Lewis added: “I’m going to tell you a very important thing here. I’ve had a lot of proud moments in my life, a lot of proud moments in my career. But when I had those handcuffs on and was being marched over there with the other protesters in solidarity, that was the proudest moment of my life.”
Watch these videos, uploaded to YouTube over the weekend.
Because there's nothing prouder than being arrested in solidarity with rapists and guys pooping on police cars, guys boasting what it'll be like to throw a molotov cocktail into Macy's, guys shooting I.V. drugs, guys shouting at, harassing and scaring little kids. What a proud moment, to be arrested with the likes of these.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Big Corporations Have More Free Speech than REAL People
Robert Reich sums up the 1%’s hypocrisy towards the First Amendment:
A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.
Of course, the Constitution is supposed to provide the right to free speech no matter what type of threatwe’re supposedly under. That was the whole idea.
And the Founding Fathers hated big corporations. See this, this and this. They were as suspicious of big corporations as they were the monarchy. So they only allowed corporate charters for a very brief duration, in order to carry out a specific, time-limited project.
As James Madison noted:
There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by…corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.
Later presidents had a similar view. For example, Grover Cleveland said:
As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.
And conservatives as well as liberals are war loudly warning against American corporations becoming overly powerful in relation to the people.
For example, as I noted last month:
The Oathkeepers announcement zeroes in on this issue in a way that both conservatives and liberals can agree on:
When a corporation becomes larger than is useful, and seeks to concentrate financial power into the political and governmental spheres, its likeness is no longer the King Snake, but instead is more like a Rattlesnake. At a point we call such corps “Monopoly Capitalists”. By the time a grouping of such Monopoly Capitalist corps are setting U.S. foreign policy, which the arms industry certainly does nowadays, the problem becomes unbearably apparent. Bechtel comes to mind, along with Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Monsanto, General Electric, et al.
Monopoly Capitalism is un-Constitutional and must be opposed.
When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.
Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. As she told the Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly paper, “Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd . . . If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled.”
When Philip Kennicott wrote in 2005 about the lack of iconic images from the Iraq war, he spoke to the qualities that make a photograph emblematic of a movement or era in history. Until now, many of the photos of Occupy focused on the signs carried by protesters, rather than the clashes with police. This is partially due to access — by many accounts, press were shut out from Monday night’s eviction of protesters from Zucottti Park. Yet, even though Occupy Wall Street and its branches across the country are not analogous to the war, the visual language of iconic imagery is the same.
Too often, Kennicott writes, photographers of conflict focus on objects — a sign, a tent, a mangled car — as a stand-in for people: “The sum total of these substitutions feels, at times, like a theater without actors, a set of props and costumes and extras milling about, without hint of what the real drama is meant to be.”
Rainey has now been unwittingly thrust into that starring role. Protest images that become iconic show us faces in anguish, such as John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning image of the shooting at Kent State. Thankfully, no image or incident quite as violent has emerged from Occupy. Nevertheless, wrote one commenter on the Stranger, “This is exactly the sort of picture that changes things.”
Anyone who thinks attacking citizens like this is justifiable is, literally, a traitor to the United States of America. And, in my opinion, human scum whose passing, while I would not celebrate, I would neither mourn...
At the University of California at Davis this afternoon, police tore down down the tents of students inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, and arrested those who stood in their way. Others peacefully demanded that police release the arrested.
In the video above, you see a police officer [Update: UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike] walk down a line of those young people seated quietly on the ground in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, and spray them all with pepper spray at very close range. He is clearing a path for fellow officers to walk through and arrest more students, but it's as if he's dousing a row of bugs with insecticide.
Wayne Tilcock of the Davis-Enterprise newspaper has a gallery of photographs from the incident, including the image thumbnailed above (larger size at davisenterprise.com). Ten people in this scene were arrested, nine of whom were current UC Davis students. At least one woman is reported to have been taken away in an ambulance with chemical burns.
This 8-minute video was uploaded just a few hours ago, and has already become something of an iconic, viral emblem accross the web. We're flooded with eyewitness footage from OWS protests right now, but this one certainly feels like an important one, in part because of what the crowd does after the kids are pepper-sprayed.
Originally Posted By: The G-Shills
They were sitting peacefully?! That's what dirty hippie Liberal Marxists do! SOROS!!!
John Boehner’s lobbyist pals are so afraid of Occupy Wall Street that they are pitching a million dollar hit job to bring OWS down.
The memo admits both that Occupy Wall Street is political force, and Democrats are tougher on Wall Street than Republicans:
In short, they are going to run a smear campaign that would use the same Fox News talking points that haven’t worked so far. They are going to claim that George Soros is funding Occupy Wall Street, and that the movement is being run by the Democratic Party. Most troubling is their plan to carry surveillance on social media. They are going to monitor the social media used by OWS and what they intend to do that the memo didn’t directly state was spam social media with anti-Occupy Wall Street propaganda.
They won’t only use social media to monitor the message and tactics of Occupy Wall Street. They will try to infiltrate these social networks to disrupt the movement and plant smears against OWS. This is a favorite GOP tactic that goes right in line with their use of paid commenters to spam websites with pro-GOP messages.
By obtaining this memo and reporting on it, Chris Hayes and MSNBC made it likely that this campaign will never see the light of day. The memo does expose a very troubling development. The one percent is so worried about Occupy Wall Street that they are preparing to merge their financial, political and media resources into a giant propaganda campaign in order to halt this movement.
This memo is the most concrete evidence yet that Occupy Wall Street is winning and the one percent is terrified that the movement’s message is powerfully resonating with the American people. The greatest irony of all is that the OWS message would have never been this effective if the Republican Party wouldn’t have spent the last three years trying to sabotage the American economy.
The economic despair that they worked so hard to maintain may be the very thing that defeats them in 2012. Occupy Wall Street is their way to changing America, and there seems to be little that the one percent and their paid political puppets can do about it.
Occupy Oakland: Iraq war veteran Kayvan Sabehgi beaten by police - video
Protester and three-tour American veteran Kayvan Sabehgi was beaten by Oakland police during the Occupy protest's general strike on 2 November. Sabehgi, who was 'completely peaceful', according to witnesses, was left with a lacerated spleen
Originally Posted By: The Shill Apologists
Liberal! Hippie! Failed pseudo-intellectual stab at sly commentary! Soros! G-Spin!!
If that is a small dose then I'd hate to see what a large one looks like.
DIRTY LIBERAL SCUM!! THE WAY THEY WERE SITTING THERE PEACEFULLY, EXERCISING THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS! WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? REPUBLICANS?? THEY DESERVE TO BE TREATED LIKE ANIMALS FOR THEIR PEACEFUL, NON-VIOLENT BELIEFS!!
You're a hateful, racist moron David. Please don't breed.
Good thing that cop Pepper-Sprayed her right in the face. Her words might have gotten through the Kevlar-riot-gear.
Corporate Police, at their finest.
You don't know what was happening here.
Yes I do, because there's a picture of FACT right in front of you.
Quote:
The police are always heavily outnumbers, and sources say these hippies are making improvised weapons.
Your "sources" sound like David the Traitor's fairytale wishes. You let me know when peaceful protestors invent an "improvised weapon" that can penetrate police riot gear. Spin it RIGHT however you like ("I'm not a Right I just have an opinion!" he will say). You've already tried to repeatedly argue with me about the facts on Twitter. About this very picture. And now, because I didn't continue to debate with you, you've decided to try and keep pecking at it here. Be my guest if that makes you feel informed and part of the conversation. But, I've no time to waste on holding your hand. You don't believe there's anything wrong with a battalion of kevlar-suited, armed, militarized Policeman attacking unarmed American citizens for exercising their Constitutionally-protected Rights? That's your call. I'm going to oppose it. Pick a side.
Quote:
I'm sure the police are the best judge of when force is needed.
Here's the part where I PRAY you are joking. Because if you're not, we have nothing left to discuss...
When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.
Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. As she told the Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly paper, “Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd . . . If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled.”
When Philip Kennicott wrote in 2005 about the lack of iconic images from the Iraq war, he spoke to the qualities that make a photograph emblematic of a movement or era in history. Until now, many of the photos of Occupy focused on the signs carried by protesters, rather than the clashes with police. This is partially due to access — by many accounts, press were shut out from Monday night’s eviction of protesters from Zucottti Park. Yet, even though Occupy Wall Street and its branches across the country are not analogous to the war, the visual language of iconic imagery is the same.
Too often, Kennicott writes, photographers of conflict focus on objects — a sign, a tent, a mangled car — as a stand-in for people: “The sum total of these substitutions feels, at times, like a theater without actors, a set of props and costumes and extras milling about, without hint of what the real drama is meant to be.”
Rainey has now been unwittingly thrust into that starring role. Protest images that become iconic show us faces in anguish, such as John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning image of the shooting at Kent State. Thankfully, no image or incident quite as violent has emerged from Occupy. Nevertheless, wrote one commenter on the Stranger, “This is exactly the sort of picture that changes things.”
Anyone who thinks attacking citizens like this is justifiable is, literally, a traitor to the United States of America. And, in my opinion, human scum whose passing, while I would not celebrate, I would neither mourn...
It's a damn damn that these hippies are using this poor woman to spin their "agenda". Look at them holding up that poor ladies' head for a photo instead of getting her help. I bet the police wouldn't have been that cruel. They are just men doing their job. Many of these police were heroes on 9/11. Shame on these children for taking their teen angst out on them.
If you're being serious here, then you're an uninformed fool and we have nothing left to talk about. Enjoy ignorance.
John Boehner’s lobbyist pals are so afraid of Occupy Wall Street that they are pitching a million dollar hit job to bring OWS down.
The memo admits both that Occupy Wall Street is political force, and Democrats are tougher on Wall Street than Republicans:
In short, they are going to run a smear campaign that would use the same Fox News talking points that haven’t worked so far. They are going to claim that George Soros is funding Occupy Wall Street, and that the movement is being run by the Democratic Party. Most troubling is their plan to carry surveillance on social media. They are going to monitor the social media used by OWS and what they intend to do that the memo didn’t directly state was spam social media with anti-Occupy Wall Street propaganda.
They won’t only use social media to monitor the message and tactics of Occupy Wall Street. They will try to infiltrate these social networks to disrupt the movement and plant smears against OWS. This is a favorite GOP tactic that goes right in line with their use of paid commenters to spam websites with pro-GOP messages.
By obtaining this memo and reporting on it, Chris Hayes and MSNBC made it likely that this campaign will never see the light of day. The memo does expose a very troubling development. The one percent is so worried about Occupy Wall Street that they are preparing to merge their financial, political and media resources into a giant propaganda campaign in order to halt this movement.
This memo is the most concrete evidence yet that Occupy Wall Street is winning and the one percent is terrified that the movement’s message is powerfully resonating with the American people. The greatest irony of all is that the OWS message would have never been this effective if the Republican Party wouldn’t have spent the last three years trying to sabotage the American economy.
The economic despair that they worked so hard to maintain may be the very thing that defeats them in 2012. Occupy Wall Street is their way to changing America, and there seems to be little that the one percent and their paid political puppets can do about it.
NOOOOOO!!!! DIRTY LIBERAL SCUM MUST BE FOUGHT AND ONLY REPUBLICANS CAN DO IT!!!
How does it feel to have reality crash around you, David? First, OWS are "dirty Liberal scum". But, oh wait! There's Tea Party members and US vets, and retired police officers joining in. Uh-oh! Spin it! Now they're a Marxist, Soros-sponsored attack on 'MERICA. But wait! Turns out, that's a completely proven lie. So, wait....spin it! FOXNews is "fair & balanced" and the "bestest source of TRUTH in the world!!" Oh wait, turns out that's been proven statistically wrong, as well! Oh no! Spin it!
You're so predictable. Everytime life offers the fact that you're wrong, you just spin-&-deny. How sad. I feel kind of sorry for you, really. But, only a little bit. Because you embrace your ignorance. You're unwilling to open your mind to anything. So, in that instance, you really just deserve what you get.
Oh, silly man, you are not debating, you are spamming the thread.
These poor police are just trying to do their jobs and get back to their families with their heads still intact. I'm sure the last thing on their mind is violence.
Ten years ago these were heroes to these same people who shit on them now.
If god forbid there is another terrorist attack these same police would put their lives on the line again to save the very children throwing garbage at them.
Ret. police captain: To be arrested in solidarity ‘was the proudest moment of my life’ By David Edwards Sunday, November 20, 2011
Topics: Lewis ♦ police captain ♦ Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis
Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, who was arrested last week alongside others in the Occupy movement, calls the ordeal “the proudest moment of my life.”
“I saw all of you sleeping out here,” Lewis recalled to a videographer in New York City’s Zuccotti Park. “The cause, you were for justice. It’s not like you guys were putting up with this so you could get jobs on Wall Street. You were doing this for justice. All over the world, in fact. And that inspired me. I had to come down here an join you.”
“That day, I had no intention of being arrested. None whatsoever. But when I saw a lot of you sitting down and being drug off, I’m saying, they’re losing their freedom for justice, for other people. And that inspired me again to be arrested.”
Lewis added: “I’m going to tell you a very important thing here. I’ve had a lot of proud moments in my life, a lot of proud moments in my career. But when I had those handcuffs on and was being marched over there with the other protesters in solidarity, that was the proudest moment of my life.”
Watch these videos, uploaded to YouTube over the weekend.
When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.
Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. As she told the Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly paper, “Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd . . . If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled.”
When Philip Kennicott wrote in 2005 about the lack of iconic images from the Iraq war, he spoke to the qualities that make a photograph emblematic of a movement or era in history. Until now, many of the photos of Occupy focused on the signs carried by protesters, rather than the clashes with police. This is partially due to access — by many accounts, press were shut out from Monday night’s eviction of protesters from Zucottti Park. Yet, even though Occupy Wall Street and its branches across the country are not analogous to the war, the visual language of iconic imagery is the same.
Too often, Kennicott writes, photographers of conflict focus on objects — a sign, a tent, a mangled car — as a stand-in for people: “The sum total of these substitutions feels, at times, like a theater without actors, a set of props and costumes and extras milling about, without hint of what the real drama is meant to be.”
Rainey has now been unwittingly thrust into that starring role. Protest images that become iconic show us faces in anguish, such as John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning image of the shooting at Kent State. Thankfully, no image or incident quite as violent has emerged from Occupy. Nevertheless, wrote one commenter on the Stranger, “This is exactly the sort of picture that changes things.”
Anyone who thinks attacking citizens like this is justifiable is, literally, a traitor to the United States of America. And, in my opinion, human scum whose passing, while I would not celebrate, I would neither mourn...
It's a damn damn that these hippies are using this poor woman to spin their "agenda". Look at them holding up that poor ladies' head for a photo instead of getting her help. I bet the police wouldn't have been that cruel. They are just men doing their job. Many of these police were heroes on 9/11. Shame on these children for taking their teen angst out on them.
If you're being serious here, then you're an uninformed fool and we have nothing left to talk about. Enjoy ignorance.
You have yet to respond to anything with talk. You just spam and ignore peoples messages.
That picture was taken as a promotional tool for these children to use against the very police who in fact are protecting them.
All you do is copy and paste and try to be "louder" instead of having a discussion.
When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.
Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle. As she told the Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly paper, “Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd . . . If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled.”
When Philip Kennicott wrote in 2005 about the lack of iconic images from the Iraq war, he spoke to the qualities that make a photograph emblematic of a movement or era in history. Until now, many of the photos of Occupy focused on the signs carried by protesters, rather than the clashes with police. This is partially due to access — by many accounts, press were shut out from Monday night’s eviction of protesters from Zucottti Park. Yet, even though Occupy Wall Street and its branches across the country are not analogous to the war, the visual language of iconic imagery is the same.
Too often, Kennicott writes, photographers of conflict focus on objects — a sign, a tent, a mangled car — as a stand-in for people: “The sum total of these substitutions feels, at times, like a theater without actors, a set of props and costumes and extras milling about, without hint of what the real drama is meant to be.”
Rainey has now been unwittingly thrust into that starring role. Protest images that become iconic show us faces in anguish, such as John Filo’s Pulitzer-winning image of the shooting at Kent State. Thankfully, no image or incident quite as violent has emerged from Occupy. Nevertheless, wrote one commenter on the Stranger, “This is exactly the sort of picture that changes things.”
Anyone who thinks attacking citizens like this is justifiable is, literally, a traitor to the United States of America. And, in my opinion, human scum whose passing, while I would not celebrate, I would neither mourn...
It's a damn damn that these hippies are using this poor woman to spin their "agenda". Look at them holding up that poor ladies' head for a photo instead of getting her help. I bet the police wouldn't have been that cruel. They are just men doing their job. Many of these police were heroes on 9/11. Shame on these children for taking their teen angst out on them.
If you're being serious here, then you're an uninformed fool and we have nothing left to talk about. Enjoy ignorance.
You have yet to respond to anything with talk. You just spam and ignore peoples messages.
No Jake, I have actually. Unfortunately, no one here is willing to talk. They only want to scramble and try and find some fantasy way of discrediting The Movement. Therefore, I'm not going to waste my time on The Pussy and The Shills. They've already made their mind up before it even started.
Quote:
That picture was taken as a promotional tool for these children to use against the very police who in fact are protecting them.
That's a laughable opinion, at best. The facts are obvious and presented. Like I said, don't believe the truth? Fine. Be a member of the opposition, spin everything you can to talk The Movement down, and I will ignore you like the rest of the sheep.
Quote:
All you do is copy and paste and try to be "louder" instead of having a discussion.
I copy & paste to maintain the points on page. Opponents like The Shills will do their best to ignore anything that doesn't fall within their pre-existing belief system, and thus spam what they can to try and bury any points made. I respond in kind.
BTW, when you add something more than "I don't like it" I'll take notice and have a conversation with you. But, like I said, you're not interested in that. I tried that with you, and you just deny any point made, factual or not. So, again, I don't have time to walk you through the entire thing. You want to actually learn the truth? Do your own research. I do my own. I protest downtown almost every day, and support the other Movements online whenever possible. Guys like you crying from your computer screen because you happen to arbitrarily dislike The Movement, you don't understand it and are just going by whatever media tells you, or you're simply incapable of understanding the concept of the Movement......I don't know. All I know is, the facts are presented as they happen. Truth is truth. Spin it how you like, in whatever fashion makes you feel good about your life.
