That’s the crux of the problem with OWS. To be heard, you have to have something to say something.
I didn’t criticize the saying of the thing, but pointed out the lack of clarity as to what, precisely, the protestors mean to have done. But that gets ahead of the real point, which, I think, is self-actualization, as it was in Vancouver.
I’m sure you’re totally right about all that shit you just said. But all over the news this weekend and this coming week will be overfed cop spraying unresisting kids in the face with pepper spray. I’m sure down at the yacht club that doesn’t spill much beer, but there are a lot of people (not just lefties) who find that sort of image disturbing, no matter how you justify it.
Disturbing, yes, but not a cause for moral outrage when the protestors were clearly intending that the police take precisely the kinds of measures that would serve to whip up popular sentiment against them. Combined with fantasies about the significance of their own movement, that’s not a recipe for evoking my compassion.
It’s OK if you don’t get it. Not everyone has to be on board for protest movements to thrive. In fact it’s usually better for them if there’s plenty of pushback.
It’s one thing to defend the protests in spite of the costs they impose on the rest of us. It’s a great irony that they’re taking money out of our pockets, rather than putting any in. It’s another thing to dismiss my observations as somehow inaccurate simply because you believe that the movement itself has utility. That isn’t what we’re debating; rather, the question is whether the case in the video was of actual brutality, or if it just plays well on national television.
DJ, I’ve got a great heating pad you might like to borrow for your shoulders after your furious handwaving of proper force application. Ignoring a bullshit request (and it was. read the chancellor’s post-hoc justification) to move by an authority figure enough times and they’re justified in sending people to the hospital, eh? If the students had sat there long enough, would the police have been justified in using more force? The intellectual laziness here is astounding.
How, exactly, do you propose that the police deal with peaceful disobedience? By standing around and doing nothing until the protestors decide to go home? If that’s what you think, then say so. Many of the Occupy protests are taking place on private property. In those cases, the protestors are guilty of trespassing. If you think that the value of their message is such that it trumps the owners’ rights, say so.
I laid out the options that were available to the police. In what way was the order to disperse, which apparently was repeated many times before the video was shot, “bullshit?”
