Protesters have been arrested in Grand Central Station for the grievous crime of… protesting indefinite detention without charges in a public place. What do you want to bet that they’re going to be detained indefinitely without charges?
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Casual Pepper-spray Cop and the Christmas Miracle
Via Copyranter, possibly the only Christmas sweater I’d ever consider buying and wearing.
The casual pepper-spraying cop meme
Dana linked a picture of a campus cop by the name of John Pike casually spraying a line of seated Occupy Wall Street protesters with pepper-spray. This video went viral. Then, like most viral things do once they reach a certain level of critical mass, it mutated. In some cases rather drastically. Here’s some pictures I’ve found around the intertubes, proving that there’s a lighter side to a violent fuckwit attacking peaceful protesters with damaging “non-violent weaponry”. Images link to the sources.
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An anthem for the minority
We keep forgetting, in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the minority’s rights. Kris Kitko wrote them an anthem of their own.
Teachers and Students Occupy Wall Street
Don’t mind the repeating — it’s not ritualistic chanting, it’s a technique to allow the people at the back to hear the speaker. It’s completely necessary in these protests because megaphones or speakers or other volume amplification techniques require city permits.
Heh. That last guy doesn’t know how to work this crowd-based megaphone very well, does he? Still, their stories are important and the 13-year-old girl was great. Schools shouldn’t be privatized. The more for-profit you make something, the more it benefits the rich and detriments the poor. Shoring up education benefits the country in question’s economy, though it explicitly does not benefit one particular side of the political spectrum ideologically.
Police in Oakland disperse crowd using a flashbang while they try to rescue Iraq vet
Way to go, you jackbooted thugs, you fascist assholes. I hope you feel really big now. These people were trying to rescue the 24 year old two-tour Iraq War veteran you just shot in the face with a tear gas canister — fracturing his damned skull, by the way — and you have the gall to toss a flashbang at their feet. The lack of empathy is staggering. I hope the 1% is willing to bring you into their ranks, because taking orders from them and oppressing peaceful protesters in such a violent manner is simple cowardice. Cowardice that should be rewarded monetarily, because you’re part of the very 99% whose throats you’re stomping otherwise.
Every protest that fights the establishment will have casualties. I hope this guy pulls through, because he’s given his body for his country three times over. It would be beyond sad if the assholes who took his life happened to be countrymen fighting for the rich.
Cuttlefish wrote a lullaby about these events. If I could find a tune, I’d use it to cry myself to sleep.
Occupy Wall Street photo memes
A number of great photos from or about the Occupy Wall Street protests have gone viral. Figured you’d like to see some of them. Below the fold, obviously.
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On the Role of the Middle Class in Occupy Wall Street
I’ve been involved in a conversation with Juniper Shoemaker these past few days about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the worry that the middle class will eventually co-opt it, and that the concerns of the less-privileged will be subsumed into returning the middle class to the status quo. It’s also been a conversation largely about language, and it’s covered a good deal of territory that we’ve already been over. At the same time, I think the conversation exposes a lot of nuance that we haven’t discussed, so it’s worth continuing in a new post. I’m answering this comment primarily, but there are other bits of the conversation in the “Clue this dude in” post and it touches on something martha said as well.
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Science dispels “vagueness” about Occupy Wall Street
One of the claims by the right-wing media about the Occupy movement is that they’re vague, e.g. they don’t know what they’re fighting for. I find this meme interesting in that it attacks the Occupy movement’s strength — the fact that the issues are so widespread and so palpable that you have to be in that 1% of advantaged folks to miss the point.
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Chris Hedges: “This one could take them all down.”
Yes, the same Chris Hedges that O’Leary called a “left-wing nutjob” as regards Occupy Wall Street.
Interesting — I don’t know too many left wing nutjobs that consider MoveOn.org to be a reprehensible organization.