How proud Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi must be that UC Davis leadership is insuring that the university take its place in protecting the corporate plutocratic oligarchy’s control over the unwashed masses who dare for a moment even pretend that there is any meaning anymore to the concept of rule under law under a Constitution and Bill of Rights that assure freedom of assembly and petition to redress grievances.
Keep up the good work, Chancellor Katehi, Pres. Yudof, and UC Davis police. I am sure you will be rewarded with crumbs from the table of the 1%. You are right in seeing that history is on the side of the rich and powerful, and the pitiful mewlings of the plebs must be crushed under the boot of big brother as quickly as possible to put an end to all the terrible violence exemplified by those students, who dared to sit there aggressively posturing violently at the police.
Here is the visual proof of the horrors of those aggressive, violent student protestors.
Clearly that policeman feared for his very life. I mean, look at the violence by these students in this video! Horrible!
This report suggest that perhaps the police suddenly realized afterwards the line they had crossed. Emphasis added.
Today at Occupy Davis, a police officer approached a group of students sitting in a line peacefully on the ground, walked up and down the line and pepper-sprayed them directly in the face—as one would spray pesticide on weeds. What you’ll see in this video is such a callous display of police brutality, I don’t know how this police officer is going to go home and look at himself in the mirror.
As the students cry “Shame on you!” the police arrest a few students; but as the crowd circles them—non-threateningly, but insistent—the police begin to retreat. Then, amazingly, the students (via People’s mic) offer the retreating police a moment of peace: “We are willing to give you a brief moment of peace so that you may take your weapons and your friends and go. Please do not return.”
And the police do.
Police Pepper Spray #OWS Student Protestors Directly in their Faces at Occupy Davis
One more time, just to be clear. Look at how these students were attacking this policeman! The horror that poor man is clearly experiencing!
Read the entire powerful letter from a junior faculty member to Chancellor, from which only a portion is quoted in the following.
Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.
One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.
You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.
…
I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.Sincerely,
Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis
Of course we support protests when it suits us. Remember this?
“I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” – Barack Obama, 28 January 2011
How quickly we forget what we as a species are capable of; for instance, the German SS in WWII. Here is a picture that you might want to compare to the one above of the cop walking casually by kneeling students and spraying them in the face.
If you have a Facebook account, please feel free to visit the UC Davis page. I have read through hundreds of comments, page after page, and I would say administrators at UC Davis cannot be really happy with the comments on their wall at the moment. I have struggled in vain to find ANYONE who offers a single word of support. Every comment denounces these obviously repressive and uncalled for violent actions by the police in the strongest possible terms.
Nov. 19, 11:55 a.m. — Claudia Morain, a UC Davis spokesperson, told The Huffington Post that there were 35 police officers on the scene, 50 occupiers and 200 bystanders.
She said that UC Davis officials had warned the occupiers that they could not set up a tent city. They were given notice that they had to clear out their tents by 3 p.m. on Friday. Some complied. Others did not.
“I can’t speak for the thought process for the officer,” Morain noted about the use of pepper spray. She said that the officers were essentially trapped (the videos suggest otherwise) and had to transport several of the arrested students. “The pepper spray was used because they needed to get out of there,” she said, emphasizing that the students were repeatedly warned before the spray was deployed.
Morain admitted that she had not thoroughly studied the videos of the incident.
UC Davis Police Pepper-Spray Seated Students In Occupy Dispute (VIDEO) (UPDATE)
Yeah, I would say there is a pretty high probability Morain had not watched the videos. You would think if UC Davis is going to send a spokesperson out to lie, they would at least come up with something a little better than this.
