Jailed for marching/Reflections on #j28
Two worthwhile articles (imo) from people who were there and details on the conditions that the arrested suffered through. To me, this is where the true outrage is. These folks are being pushed to the edge by an unjust and corrupt system.
Jailed for marching, what it means for your kids.
Posted on 01 February 2012 by Wendy Kenin @greendoula
But more importantly, we wanted to disperse but anyone who tried to leave was beaten with batons. We were smooshed into a corner by the police. We are teachers, students, social workers, non-profit workers, from all sectors of society, from ages 17 to at least 60 plus. Some were not even part of the protest, but were walking home from the grocery store. It could have been you, it could have been your child, your sister, your brother.
Everyone was held at least twelve hours but many of us were held over 40 hours without being booked, in deplorable conditions. Our names were not put into the system during these hours, so we did not exist. The media reported that there would be mass arrests in Oakland before the January 28th actions even started. People were arrested for being protesters, not for violating any law. This was planned and coordinated in advance, most likely with the assistance of Homeland Security.
We sat in concrete cold rooms with bright flourescent light shining 24 hours a day, no blanket, no cot, no place to lay down. The rooms were glorified bathrooms where you had to pee or poo in front of all the 5 to 25 other cellmates in your room and any officers or janitors who walked passed and looked through the window, or unlocked the door. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, when sporadically brought were bologne sandwiches, even though many of us are vegetarian or come from religions that cannot eat that meat, or meat at all.
There was no garbage can or bag so the pile of leftover garbage from used maxi-pads (which were sporadically provided) to uneaten bologne and the plastic and cardboard the unedible food was brought in piled up in the corner. We were basically living in a bathroom filled with garbage. We were denied clocks, watches, paper, pens, phone calls (except for a few people who asked the right guard at the right time for their phone call) and most importantly medicine.
http://hellaoccupyoakland.org/jailed-marching-kids/
Reflections on #J28: Complicit Government, Complacent Masses
Posted on 31 January 2012 by Martha Bacon
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I personally happen to be in agreement with the contingent of Occupy Oakland that sees nonviolence as our most effective tool. However, we all know that the police are not attacking us because we represent a physical threat to them or anyone else. A bottle thrown from the crowd may give the cops a convenient excuse to justify their excessive force, but I doubt they can even feel it through their riot gear. Their tactics do not discriminate between violent and nonviolent protesters any more than they discriminate between children and adults, women and men, the elderly or the disabled. People have been beaten and arrested for doing nothing more than standing on the sidewalk, and it has happened in situations when there was not even the flimsiest pretense of perceived aggression on the part of protesters.
Yes, we could all peacefully submit to arrest and abuse when faced with the all-too-familiar wall of riot cops, and that might be the wisest choice. It probably wouldn’t stop them from beating us but it would undoubtedly help our public image, and it would most likely gain us some support from those on the fence. But is it fair to expect others to be martyrs for the sake of a PR battle that will always be skewed against us? Does anyone have the moral authority to demand that people stay passive and peaceful in the face of a police force that has been systematically violent and oppressive to them for generations, long before the Occupy movement existed?
The police force and the law, which we have always been told are there to protect us, are being used as weapons against us. For many of us, this realization is paradigm shifting and hard to come to grips with. For some of us, it is simply the way things have always been. We need to move beyond the victim-blaming and the false dichotomies that the mainstream media so love, and recognize that we are all in this together and that we need each other badly right now. A burning flag or a broken window means nothing when weighed against the broken bones and teeth, cracked skulls, and crushed spirits of our fellow people. The ideology that holds property as more important than human life is our true enemy, more dangerous than the OPD could ever dream of being.
-snip-
But what will it take for the rest of America to realize, to move past their blind loyalty to the status quo and the powers that be? Reading the news on January 29 was literally a sickening experience for me. It is sickening to still hear friends and family members say that protesters deserve whatever happens to them, when they well know that ‘protesters’ means you, and ‘whatever happens to them’ means being brutally beaten, arrested on false charges, and stripped of your rights. It seems that people have already become used to activists being gassed and beaten, which is absurd and scary to me.
http://hellaoccupyoakland.org/j28-government-complicity-complacency-masses/
