Remember What They Did in Oakland

[Bozita]

Remember What They Did in Oakland
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
29 October 11

t will take some time before what happened in Oakland, California, on October 25th, 2011, sinks in. It happened in the blink of an eye. I was there and I can tell you that no one really saw it coming. We should have. All the components were in place. Waiting. Ticking.

Civil unrest, civil resistance, a paranoid, uneducated - and far too heavily armed - police force, governmental officials with no experience in managing para-military forces under their control. It was all there, flame lit, waiting to boil over.

Can anyone see it still? It's there, right there in the picture ... look closely. It's an Oakland police officer standing in broad daylight in the middle of an American city leveling a shotgun at American citizens and firing at them as they run for their lives. Think Kent State, think Chicago 1968. This happened. Mark the day, rue the day.

To the credit of the protesters, they provoked but did not engage or reciprocate in the violence. The Oakland Police Department, however, gave the United States an abject lesson in why compromising civil liberties for the sake of national security is a decision that will eventually blow up in your face.

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http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8159-remember-what-they-did-in-oakland

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. K&R!

[EFerrari]

2. OccupyOakland was provoked for more than 12 hours and did not respond

with violence.

12 hours.

[phasma ex machina]

3. The bankster families took their velvet gloves off to show us the steel fist of American Fascism. nt

[roguevalley]

4. making martyrs. they will never learn.

[lunatica]

5. I will never forget it.

I wrote a long rant on DU about it trying to understand why the police were so full of hate for the 99%.

But we learn fast. This opened our eyes to the treatment that can be expected from the police in many places. Today is witness to the continuation of that brute force in Denver and San Diego, and probably in other places as well.

The camps will have their General Assemblies and plan their strategy as things develop. There are obviously a lot of very smart people in this movement. So far they've pretty much blown our socks off, and I expect they'll be quite fluid and able to change quickly as the need arises.

[Denver Progressive]

6. knr

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Sadly, this was the reaction from my friend in Jerusalem to the rubber bullets used on Occupy

Oakland:

Hmmm, if they were not violent then no need for the rubber bullets . . . It's just that its hard for me to imagine, soldiers using rubber bullets on people involved in a peaceful demonstration. Maybe I'm just naive but my first reaction was to question this girl's actions and not the soldiers. Sorry but that's the truth.