"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Sunday, November 20, 2011

the other kind of beat poets

Former Poet Laureate of the United States and UC Berkley professor Robert Hass didn't want to believe that the police were needlessly beating students at Occupy Berkley, so he went down to the demonstration to see what was happening and lo and behold, he and his wife got their fair share of abuse.

My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on.
I suspect that people will only take this for so long before there is considerable pushback against the police. The more sons and daughters of the middle class that get teargassed, peppersprayed and beaten, the fewer fans the police will have among the populace, and the more they will be viewed as the enemy rather than the protectors of the populace.
When that tipping point is reached, there is going to be real and lasting damage to the fabric of society.

Somebody please explain to me how UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike is one of the "good guys" and not a criminal. He's the one you see at the start of this video pepperspraying a group of seated, non-threatening, clearly non-violent protestors.



What makes him any better than the small time gangbanger, Hells' Angel thug or mob enforcer? This kind of action will not always be met with chants. When the general populace start to see the police as the enemy instead of those who serve and protect, it is a bell you can't unring.

http://www.wikio.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is the corruption and greed of politicians and their governments, who are totally responsible for the chaos in the world. Our governments politicians have protesters beat and jailed, for what their own corruption breeds.

When politicians allowed corruption in their ranks, taking money from corporations, to favor them. Eventually politicians were owned by the very corporations they took the money from. It's the gigantic company's that call all the shots. Politicians are merely puppets, dancing on the pull of their strings.

There are very few politicians in this world, that are worth the powder to blow them to hell.

Our politicians keep nattering about how democratic, the other country's at war have to be. They had better clean up their own cesspools, before they open their own, big, fat, and lying mouths.

Life Insurance Policy Tennessee said...

I think that they do need to get rid of lobbyists. Money makes people do things that they shouldn't.