"SHAME ON YOU! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHO DO YOU SERVE? WHO DO YOU PROTECT?"
Police use pepper spray against unarmed protesters in Davis, California
By Jack Hood
19 November 2011
Students protesting social inequality and tuition hikes at the University of California, Davis were surrounded by police and pepper sprayed on Friday, before police retreated in the face of increasing numbers of peaceful protesters. As of 5:00 pm, hundreds of students remained at the location of a planned encampment.
The police response in Davis followed violent attacks on unarmed protesters in Berkeley and Oakland, California, along with other cities throughout the country. A video of the police response and retreat can be viewed here.
Approximately 60 police officers, in full riot gear and with rubber bullet guns and pepper spray, participated in the crackdown. After hearing word of the confrontation, hundreds of students from the area poured onto the quad in support of their fellow students and forced police to retreat.
As posted video shows, the a police officer used pepper spray on students peacefully sitting on the walk-way, spraying the flank of students one time, and then going back to spray them with the chemical irritant once again. Police also pointed paintball guns at students' faces and threatened to hit them with truncheons.
Students chanted, "you use weapons, we use words" as police officers shook canisters of pepper spray and shot them from a six-inch distance into students' faces. At least one student was shot by a rubber bullet.
"It burns!" yelled one student with tears in her eyes.
Another student, Adam, said, "Feel like my forehead is blistering."
"We were sitting in a circle and we were attacked! We were sitting in our quad and students were sprayed in the eyes," said Carla, a UC Davis undergrad.
Police arrested ten students on charges of "illegal overnight camping" despite the fact that UC Davis Chancellor Katehi, who ordered the police attack, had explicitly allowed students to camp on the quad Wednesday night.
When approached by the police in riot gear, a group of students walked out to meet them holding the first amendment on a piece of paper.
As police made the arrests, several hundred students encircled the police and chanted "shame on you." As the crowd grew and the police were clearly outnumbered, the crowd, through a "human microphone," informed the police: "We are willing, to give you a brief moment, of peace, to take your weapons, and your friends, and go!"
About 100 students had formed an encampment of 40 tents on Thursday afternoon and planned to remain in the quad indefinitely. At 2:00 pm on Friday, students received word that Chancellor Katehi would no longer tolerate the protests and would permit an attack, beginning at 3:00 pm.
A police communiqué delivered to the encampment at 2:30 tricked the protesters into thinking that they would be not face police violence.
"I know that you have received a letter from the Chancellor respectfully asking you to peacefully remove your tents by 3:00 pm today," the letter reads. "If you do not remove these tents, we will have to remove them and we cannot guarantee that your property will be returned...It is our hope that there will be no arrests... We do not want to arrest you. We are hopeful that you will be respectful."
At 3:00 pm, dozens of police officers began to march towards the encampment. Students linked arms around a handful of tents, but the police forced themselves through the line of students, throwing students onto the ground and violently jolting students from side to side.
As students continued to rush to the quad to support the protestors, police continued their assault. Two fire trucks were called by protestors to tend to the victims, many of whom were in severe pain.
After forcing the police to retreat, students unanimously passed a resolution calling for a mass action to be held on the quad this coming Monday. Many participants expect the turnout to be large.
"I think UCD just got radicalized," Carla told the World Socialist Web Site. "We're going to meet back here next week... I feel like we have to understand that this system is not set up to protect us—we have a human response to say, 'that's completely unjust'."
"People who didn't identify with the struggle will now. It's pretty scary what happened today, and it's waking up a lot of people."
"Police are here to protect property, not people," she added.
Fatima, a fellow student, commented further: "I saw so many students who normally don't care out here chanting. When they saw their fellow students out here fighting, they saw that they must be fighting for something serious. I think there will be a student uproar on Monday. The entire campus could come out."
Steve, a graduate student, declared: "We are the drum—the harder you beat us, the louder we'll get."
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/davi-n19.shtml
Monday, November 21, 2011
UC Davis Campus Police Pepper Spray Unarmed Protestors As They Make Human Chain
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Friday, June 3, 2011
The Government's War On Cameras And Photography
Who will watch the watchers? In a world of ubiquitous, hand-held digital cameras, that's not an abstract philosophical question. Police everywhere are cracking down on citizens using cameras to capture breaking news and law enforcement in action.
In 2009, police arrested blogger and freelance photographer Antonio Musumeci on the steps of a New York federal courthouse. His alleged crime? Unauthorized photography on federal property.
Police cuffed and arrested Musumeci, ultimately issuing him a citation. With the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union, he forced a settlement in which the federal government agreed to issue a memo acknowledging that it is totally legal to film or photograph on federal property.
Although the legal right to film on federal property now seems to be firmly established, many other questions about public photography still remain and place journalists and citizens in harm's way. Can you record a police encounter? Can you film on city or state property? What are a photographer's rights in so-called public spaces?
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Thursday, June 2, 2011
Triangle UFO Over Oakland California - May 26, 2011
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The Dude Behind The Dude
The Dude Abides...
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Friday, January 28, 2011
The Truth About The Stone Of Destiny
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6:32 PM
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Zeitgeist 3: Moving Forward (Full Length Documentary)
http://www.zeitgeistmovingforward.com/
"Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which will present a case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society.
This subject matter will transcend the issues of cultural relativism and traditional ideology and move to relate the core, empirical "life ground" attributes of human and social survival, extrapolating those immutable natural laws into a new sustainable social paradigm called a "Resource-Based Economy"."
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Tuesday, January 11, 2011
1/11/11 - One - U2
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Saturday, January 1, 2011
UFOs and Aliens Are Real - Revelations Of William Pawelec, USAF Specialist
In an interview just released by Dr. Steven M. Greer, the founder and International Director for the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), the former United States Air Force Computer Operations and Programming Specialist William Pawelec discloses that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrials are real.
In the interview, he give details about extraterrestrial visitations and spacecrafts, four parallel global elite governments, highly advanced network systems, underground bases at the secret military testing facilites at Groom Lake in Nevada "Area 51", assassination plots and control mechanisms, microchips and tracking technologies, nitrogen bullets, and other numerous black budget operations.
http://thealienproject.blogspot.com/2010/12/disclosure-meme-2010-year-we-make_23.html
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