We Won’t Let Police Brutality Quell Occupy’s Wave of Action


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[UPDATED: With a treat at the bottom!]

In the good old days, we used to be able to bring babies in strollers to protests/rallies/occupations opposing wars based on lies [Iraq] or psychotic arms races.

In the good old days, you didn’t have to worry about being assaulted or beaten to death by the police, or having your children apprehended while you are put under arrest for assembling in public, following our constitutional rights.

Our slide into soft fascism includes the chill effect. Even though YOU may have not yet been arbitrarily arrested or beaten by the police doesn’t mean that increasing arbitrary police brutality doesn’t reduce people’s commitment to show up at a protest.

“You go to a protest you might get arrested or get your butt kicked, is chilling in and of itself.”

– from The Case That Could Rock the Occupy Movement

And even if the police settle with you for tens of thousands of dollars after assaulting you, that’s just the cost of doing business for them. Or, you may simply be charged for assaulting the police. Who needs that kind of hassle.

And even if neutral observers videotape all altercations, what are the chances that you WANT to be unlawfully beaten by the police. Not so high.

There are two take-aways here.

  1. When we protest/occupy/rally, we need to have rich community interdependence where we look out for one another. This isn’t Nazi-occupied France and we are not the underground. But this is an era when police no longer obey the social contract like they used to [but did they ever really used to, or is that naive?].
  2. The 1% and their corporate and government compradors are truly afraid of the potential of the Occupy Movement or the Wave of Action to bring about a revolution that creates a world with more economic and political and social equality, a healthier ecology, and less autocratic corporate rule.

They’re scared of us. We outnumber them.

THAT’s why they’re ramping up police brutality, so that we are discouraged from coming out to demand equality.

Pay attention to those two take-aways. It’s what will help make Occupy’s Wave of Action successful.

UPDATE:

Remember your power!
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Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun
Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

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