It Has Been Said Here, That The Brutal Take Down Of Occupy Is Hyperbole...

[struggle4progress]

91. "The brutal takedown" presumes the various responses to Occupy were one-and-the-same action

In fact, "the takedown" involves a variety of entirely different people at different times, and the real bottom line may be that a bloodied face here and there, produced by the interaction of a psycho cop with a confused protester, may not teach us much at all

Picture 1: Scott Olsen in Oakland CA c 25 October 2011. Olsen spent four years fighting in Iraq for Bush, which doesn't exactly win him any progressive awards in my book, though after leaving the military, he decided he was an anti-imperialist, and he became active with Occupy San Francisco after moving there. In October, he heard the police had raided Occupy Oakland and went there to confront police. He was injured when a police beanbag struck him in the face. The Oakland mayor subsequently said he planned to demote some police officers and fire others, and Oakland paid out well over $1 million to injured protesters

Picture 2: Kaylee Dedrick, a victim of pepper-spray in NYC c 24 September 2011. Since nothing tells the guys "I am a woman who wants my political views taken seriously" better than topless protest, topless female protesters seem to have been a popular feature of the early Occupy Wall Street movement. And evidently not one to be left behind in a crowd, Kaylee Dedrick seems to have been involved prominently in a topless protest on the streets of NYC earlier in the day on which she was pepper-sprayed. The officer responsible was docked a few vacation days

Picture 3: John Pike pepper spraying UC Davis students c 18 November 2011. John Pike lost his job but collected unemployment

Picture 4: UC Berkeley c 10 November 2011

Picture 5: Brandon Watts, Zuccotti Park, NYC c 17 November 2011. Brandon, at age twenty, had seems to have led a varied life before coming to Occupy Wall Street: he had, for example, lived homeless in the woods a while. Washington Post reporter Elizabeth Flock recalls Brandon's early concern that the protestors had not yet clashed with police enough, though Brandon tried to do his share to take up the slack: he managed to get himself arrested at least six times on a variety of charges, including assault and theft. Before his bloodied face became national news, Brandon had primarily tried to bring attention to the goals of OWS by repeatedly telling media that, thanks to the movement, he had been able to lose his virginity in Zuccotti Park. So OWS helped Brandon get laid, which might have been good for Brandon, or else it teaches us that an amorphous group of unhappy campers may have trouble projecting a consistent national message when not everybody stays on point