EVENT
OAKLAND, Calif. — A clash between Oakland police and Occupy Wall Street protesters left an Iraq War veteran hospitalized Wednesday after a projectile struck him in a conflict that came as tensions grew over demonstration encampments across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull Tuesday in a march with other protesters toward City Hall. The demonstrators had been making an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of a disbanded protesters’ camp when they were met by officers in riot gear. Deeply disturbing video
VENT
The aforementioned event could be considered an accident, an isolated incident. Unfortunately, while it’s the most obviously egregious, it’s just part of a bigger pattern of the “authorities” doing everything in their power to stop peaceful citizens from protesting against corporate control of our government. Seems freedom of speech is only fine for some people like corporations. We the people are not being represented by the government and the “authorities” don’t want us to complain. Hence, we the people are also not being served nor protected by the police. It seems we need protection from them. A common chant I’ve heard from the protesters to the police was “Who are you protecting?” A good question indeed. Another chant was “Cops are the 99%.” That may be true but they are the part of the 99% with the guns and they want to keep their jobs in this economy. That’s also true of of the politicians passing laws that help the 1% and rob the rest of us from a fair opportunity of achieving the American dream. Only we get to vote those politicians (and the mayors responsible for their police) into those jobs. All we have to do is threaten to kick the mayors out of office and their police forces will stop being so … forceful. The cops themselves aren’t such a bad lot. After all, when I participated in the OWS events in NY, I found the police officers to be reasonable and somewhat empathetic overall. They were just people following orders and doing their jobs. Of course the same could also be said of Nazi SS officers.