Did Oakland Police Give A Boost To OWS Movement ?

The Occupy Wall Street Movement spread far beyond the confines of New York City several weeks ago. It has spread across the country and is showing up in cities around the world. That's because people are finally starting to realize they've been taken advantage of by the rich and government policies that are slanted to benefit only the rich. The term "economic justice" may not have meant much to most people in the past, but for more and more people it has now become a cause they understand and support.

Even though the movement has seemed to spread like wildfire, there are still those who are hoping that the movement will die out. And that was in the realm of possibility -- after all, the cold weather is coming and it can be hard sometimes to keep a citizen's movement growing. Fortunately, it doesn't seem that the authorities, who are trying to cover for Wall Street, have learned anything from the experiences of the sixties and early seventies.



In those past times, authorities used police as violent thugs to try and stop anti-war and civil rights protesters. In Birmingham police turned fire hoses, vicious dogs, and batons on peaceful civil rights demonstrators, including women and children. In Chicago the police attacked peaceful demonstrators and beat them (and some reporters) mercilessly. And at Kent State the National Guard actually shot and killed four students while attacking peaceful and unarmed student demonstrators. Incidents like these (and many others) did nothing to quell the demonstrations, but they did a lot to convince many Americans that the demonstrators were right and change was needed.

Now the authorities are repeating those same mistakes in an attempt to stop the Occupy Wall Street movement. There have been police beatings of peaceful demonstrators in New York and in other cities, and to date over 1200 people have been arrested for trying to use their constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. It seems that while authorities may believe in constitutional rights in theory, they are loathe to actually let Americans use those rights in real-world situations.

And the authorities in Oakland went even further. The Occupy Oakland demonstrators were not causing trouble. Here is how the blogger at GrannyStandingforTruth described the scene of the Oakland protests:

Yesterday, I passed by the "Oakland Occupy Wall Street" and there was nothing out of order, no one throwing bricks through business windows, no one torching a business, no one throwing bricks and bottles at the police. In fact, you would have hardly noticed them if you did not see the signs letting you know what they were there for.

But that was not good enough for the authorities in Oakland. How dare these people try to exercise their constitutional rights in their city! They turned the police loose on the peaceful demonstrators, armed with batons and in full riot gear with tear gas canisters. To say this was an overreaction is an understatement. They attacked the encampment and one young Marine veteran, Scott Olsen, was put in the hospital in critical condition with a fractured skull (see above picture).

The mayor of Oakland even went on FaceBook and bragged about how proud she was of her police thugs. That is, until she began to see how upset many Americans were over this unjustified and unwarranted attack on peaceful demonstrators. Now she has changed her tune and is saying how much she supports the demonstrators. Bull! She and other Oakland authorities are just running scared because they screwed up -- big time!

And it's not just the general public who are angry. Many Marines have expressed their anger. You see, once a Marine, always a Marine. They consider themselves to be brothers, and regardless of how they might have felt about Occupy Wall Street, many of them don't like the idea that a Marine who fought for constitutional rights is attacked for trying to exercise those same rights. And they have a right to be angry.

The crazy thing is that the authorities, in Oakland and elsewhere, may have done the opposite of what they were trying to do. They wanted to quell the Occupy Wall Street movement, but their brutal tactics may actually have given the movement a new life. These people just never seem to learn -- Americans are very proud of their constitutional rights, and most don't like it a bit when they see their fellow citizens denied those rights (even if they disagree with those citizens).