Occupy Oakland Saturday movement update
Occupy Oakland protestors vandalize City Hall and burn an American flag. Nearly up to 400 people were arrested, at least three officers and one protestor were injured. Apparently the occupiers are planning more actions.
Info and photos from:
- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/oakland_leaders_assess_damage.html
- http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-738326?hpt=hp_bn1
- http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/30/us/california-occupy/?hpt=ibu_c2
(Sorry for the late update)
Your Occupy Oakland post is inaccurate and at best, a half-truth. OPD are on film agitating violence, beating unarmed protesters, firing rubber bullets, beanbags, CS gas and flashbangs. They arrested hundreds, after ordering them to disperse and then NOT ALLOWING THEM TO DO SO. They injured people, waited for medics to respond, then attacked the medics. Claims of police “injuries” are not backed up with records or evidence, while police-injured protesters number in the dozens, at least.
I saw this and all it said to me was:
“I’m an asshat who claims the original post is inaccurate despite them only stating recorded facts from respected news sources. Here is what really happened. Also, I am a hypocrite as I have no source.
Hahaha here’s your source, dipshit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaviIoy4rg
In this video you get graphic closeups of unarmed protesters being held down and beaten by police, screaming for help or to be released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNrCDDPrUcs
Also here: http://oakfosho.com/
And here: http://www.ustream.tv/occupysf
Note in the first video that the OPD injure a protester by shooting them unconscious with a headshot, wait for the medics to gather, then shoot the medics, just as they did with veteran Scott Olsen. This is OPD standard procedure now. Targeting medics, who are defined as non-combatants, is a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
The objects that you see the protesters throwing at police are grenade canisters that had been shot by police at the march. There are no records of police injury during the Occupy protests yet. Claims by the police departments to the contrary are never, ever backed up with records or evidence. Occupy, on the other hand, has dozens of photos from every event of police brutality injuries. Here are a few just from my own records. Hundreds of others can be found online (flickr, google images, picasa, etc).
Rubber bullet contusion on October 25th
Different rubber bullet contusion, same night.
CS gas (“tear gas”) victim, 10/25/11. OPD claimed they “did not use tear gas or rubber bullets” that night.
Flesh wound caused by baton to the face, 12/22/11, 1:57AM. This protester was injured, then lured into the Berkeley Police station with promises of medical treatment. They did not treat him, but instead detained him and attempted to book him, which ultimately they were unable to do. He was released without treatment and was treated on the street by Occupy medics.
1/28/12 - Serious burn to the hand, through protective gloves, by a tear gas canister. Why was this guy picking up a hot tear gas canister? Because the police had fired it into a crowd containing children and other vulnerable citizens, and this guy had the sack to toss it back where it belonged—with the people who’re wearing gas masks.The OPD told the press that protesters were “throwing flares and pipes” on Saturday, and also that several officers were “injured”. The police also claimed that they “did not use tear gas” and “did not use rubber bullets” and that “there were no injured protesters”. You can clearly see that they are lying, in both cases. The entire march, from start to finish, is on film from multiple angles and can be watched several times in its entirety on the live video channels of the streamers who were there, several of whom I linked to above.
The police also claimed that activists on Saturday were “throwing IEDs”, which echoes an earlier farcical claim that marchers in a different action were “arrested with sticks of dynamite”, dynamite which mysteriously vanished at the arraignment. Reminder that OPD has been under court supervision since 2003, when they were found to have planted evidence on a suspect.
Oh, and this happened:
One occupier known as Ali had become a clear target for repression due to his visibility, and even those arrested on the 30th had overheard officers discussing how the hoped to get their hands on him. On Wednesday the 4th, OPD seemed determined to do just that, chasing Ali across the street to arrest him. When they did so, he explained to me, officer Phan reached into his back pocket before feigning surprise and insisting that he was “going away for a long time” because they had found him to be in possession of ecstasy. Some in the Anti-Repression Committee believe that it was only the presence of the Livestream camera, and the fact that Ali immediately began to shout about the attempt to plant drugs, that prevented the charges from being successfully fabricated. Ali was later charged with misdemeanor obstruction.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/09/oakland%E2%80%99s-dirty-war/
As for your laughable little assertion that CNN—or any mainstream media outlet—only deals in “recorded facts”, I refer you to the sources of their “facts”: police press releases. All major media outlets are owned by the specific mega-corporations who are the target of these actions in the first place, mega-corporations that have every reason to paint Occupy as a bloodthirsty terrorist cell. There is also the little matter of the police refusing to play nice-nice with any mainstream news outlet that doesn’t make them look good to Joe Sixpacks like yourself.
Mainstream media also parroted—without investigation—the police claims that “Occupy camps had caused a severe increase in local crime”, an assertion that the police knew was false:
When Jordan received an update that crime was actually down 19 percent in the last week of October, he wrote an email to one of Mayor Jean Quan’s advisers. “Not sure how you want to share this good news,” he wrote. “It may be counter to our statement that the Occupy movement is negatively impacting crime in Oakland.”
[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/14/1054602/-No-Surprise-Oakland-Police-Chief-Lied-to-Discredit-Occupy-Oakland]
Additionally, Oakland Police Department has been under court monitoring since 2003 due to “a civil suit over the Riders case, in which several officers were accused of planting drugs on suspects in East Oakland. As a result of the settlement agreement, the department agreed to implement a series of misconduct-related reforms, including an overhaul of disciplinary procedures and use-of-force reporting. But two missed deadlines later, the department has yet to complete the tasks.”The court monitoring is due to brutality and corruption, in other words. Brutality and corruption which has so far gone totally unaddressed, to the extent that on the 24th of January this year (four days before the protest on Saturday), a federal judge stripped even more power from OPD, bringing them even closer to being taken over by feds entirely.
The real shitter of your whole riposte, though, is that you’re taking the word of the Oakland Police Department over unedited eyewitness video, photographs, and written accounts of what actually happened.
EDIT: But I’m not writing this to engage you, o shirtless cretin. I’m using your dumb post as an effigy to burn, just so I can address all the same dumb arguments I see over and over, being drooled out by doughy goons who think they’d recognize politics or logic if it backed over them in a brand spanking new, Alameda County Sheriff Department, taxpayer-purchased, armored APC.
Uhhh I didn’t bother to read because:
a) Despite thinking the rules of Geneva convention adhere to unruly protesting, there was no medic being assaulted in your first video. You lack basic reading comprehension for what I wrote let alone your own posts and sources.
b) Your sources are just as “biased” as mine. Why would I want to believe some tool in a keffiyeh OR some faceless suit from OPD?
Lastly,
“The real shitter of your whole riposte, though, is that you’re taking the word of the Oakland Police Department over unedited eyewitness video, photographs, and written accounts of what actually happened.”
Both your 1st and 2nd video were edited, biased, compilation videos. Thus, due to your leading with poor example, I did not give you the time of day to read the rest of your post.
OPD is corrupt. They are a piss poor example of what peace keepers should be.
Occupy Oakland is a fucking joke and is a piss poor example of what the Occupy movement stands for.
YOU are a shining example of why America has a stereotype of the protestors as liberal arts majors with no jobs who think anyone in uniform is a pig, suits are bad, and that you should be allowed to radically protest and damn near riot and have no repercussion such as a rubber bullet to the face. Pacification and coercion tools are not police brutality. Don’t protest if you aren’t willing to accept the consequences.
Congratulations on your essay and purchase of a thesaurus. Also thank you for the laughs at rubber bullet wounds, and in conclusion I will remind you….
I never said OPD was telling the truth, but that the original poster said at least 3 officers were injured and 1 protester as well. She told the truth and cited sources. You claimed she was “inaccurate” with no sources. I was justified in my hyperbole assumption. Grats on not making a difference.
EDIT: I will not continue this conversation because reblogging this shitpost will make my blog look mighty unattractive and will do nobody any good.
