This is What Authoritarianism Looks Like

The repression is coordinated, systematic. The rulers are small and centralized, often comprising an elite body of the privileged. There is massive and widespread corruption and free speech is actively discouraged, often with inappropriate and disproportionate displays of force. Subjection and submission to authority is its key premise designed to silence all vocal opposition to the status quo.  

Whether or not this repression emanates from the Homeland Security Department or more locally at the city, county and state level, this is authoritarianism we are witnessing in both the highly orchestrated destruction of Occupy encampments throughout the country and the brutal force martialed against unarmed, non-violent demonstrators.Oakland mayor, Jean Quan admitted to being part of a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities. This systematic effort to quash a nacent political movement doesn't have to be federally mandated to qualify as the machinery of organized suppression. Authoritarianism isn't quite fullblown facism but it is a major way station along that slippery slope.

Police brutality is steadily increasing in response to the growing Occupy Movement. The pepper spraying of UC Davis students followed closely on the heels of the baton beatings on the UC Berkeley campus. Countrywide the police response is intensifying in its brutality. The viral video of police pepper spraying young students sitting in a peaceful row on the quad at UC Davis is just another appalling example of this trend. Watching the students with linked arms huddled in the onslaught of this totally unprovoked chemical attack is a radicalizing experience in and of itself. Learning later that those who refused to separated their  were sprayed in their faces and down their throats, causing people to cough up blood and be hospitalized, is simply a horrifying scenario in which Guantanamo Bay comes home to roost.

The footage of this travesty is strangely moving as well. It harkens back to sit ins in the American South during the Freedom Rides when simply by sitting at a lunch counter, protesters were subjected to coffee and food being poured over their heads. They sat still. They endured. And ultimately they triumphed.

In the recent uprisings in Cairo, CS gas, a potent form of teargas that induces vomiting and possible coma with prolonged exposure,  and rubber bullets are the main weapons of choice by the police and military. A number of protesters have lost eyes to rubber bullets, including one man who lost an eye in a battle but returned only to lose the other one in a subsequent street incident.

In the USA, we haven't arrived at that level of repression in this round of protests. I was a student at Ohio State University in 1970 the year the National Guard fired live ammunition at anti-Vietnam war demonstrators killing four. That same year two students were murdered by police in a women's dormitory at Jackson State College in Mississippi. So, not only can it happen here. It has.

After the pepper-spray incident when UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi walked out to her car, the path was lined with hundreds of silent onlookers bearing witness to one of the many knowing and naive accomplices who are institutionalizing oppression by claiming ignorance or just following orders. Either way, it is our constitutional right to democratic expression of dissent that gets sprayed, beaten and trampled upon.

Police Brutality is Violence

Oakland Police Up to No Good

The Oakland Police Department continues their reign of terror upon demonstrators with the total of moderately to seriously injured folks now at three, two Iraq vets: Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabehgi  and one videographer, Scott Campbell. The Berkeley Police have joined in the brutality by violently evicting a student group attempting to Occupy U.C. Berkeley. Their tents were trampled and they were forcibly removed from Sproul Plaza.

Meanwhile right-leaning propaganda rags like the San Francisco Chronicle are trying to paint actions like the General Strike Day with the broad brush of  "violence" because a small group of angry protesters broke some things sometime towards midnight on a day when 50,000 to 100,000 people closed big banks and the Port of Oakland without incident.

It is important to note a couple of things about this smear campaign. One, it is being used as an unsuccessful attempt to discredit the entire Occupy Movement. Two, people are justifiably angry at the economic crimes that have been perpetrated upon us. And three, vandalism and violence are not synonymous. While understanding that breaking windows or spray painting on them may not be the best way to win supporters and unite the movement, crimes against property are not equal to the harm the police are inflicting with clubs, teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.

The city of Oakland is preparing for another raid on the Occupy Oakland camp. I commend the occupiers for open discussion with various proponents of aggressive action in a serious attempt to resolve differences and stay united. All power to the people!

The Militarization of the Police

Police Riot in Oakland 10/25/2011

I watched Michael Moore's rousing and informative speech at Occupy Oakland Wednesday afternoon. Not only is the encampment reforming and blossoming, according to Moore and the enthusiastic crowd we have reached the end of apathy and despair. But we are in the throes of something else, totally predictable but frightening and potentially devastating nonetheless: the militarization of the police.

Moore mentioned this specifically in his speech. This situation in the USA has developed and worsened in the years since anti Vietnam war protests . When I was a protester at Ohio State University in the early seventies, the National Guard served alongside the police in order to "keep the peace." Yes, the tanks, or "armored personnel carriers rolled down High Street and we carried signs like" Welcome to Prague," referring to 1968 when the Soviet tanks rolled into that city to crush the people's movement that included more freedom of speech, ability to travel and access to information from independent media sources.

In those days, the US Military functioned as the military and the police played a subservient, more localized role. Today, the police function like a mercenary army organized to keep the people in line. The fact that the rate of incarceration in the USA exceeds that of all other countries in the civilized world is no accident. And here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the fact that even the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police are murdering citizens (Oscar Grant at Fruitvale station, Charles Hill near Civic Center), is a new low in the annals of law enforcement.

The governors, mayors, police departments and transit agencies now possess the ability to band together in order to determine the freedom, or lack thereof, of a city's citizens. This was readily apparent on the night of Wednesday, October 25th at around 11pm when, on rumors of an impending police raid of the Occupy SF camp, the authorities closed the two downtown Oakland BART stations along with the Embarcadero station, where the encampment was located solely to prevent citizens from getting there to provide support for the occupiers. Fortunately, Mayor Ed Lee changed his mind and the raid of the SF camp was called off.

Then They Fight You...

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

Here in Oakland the fighting stage is definitely underway. It began with the early morning police raid of the Occupy Oakland camp, with rampaging blue meanies demonstrating the use of excessive force by dismantling, steamrollering and making off with tents, food, equipment, personal effects and medical supplies leaving the occupiers homeless and Oscar Grant Plaza under military siege and in ruins.

At 4 pm Tuesday, around a thousand 99 per-centers who were enraged at the abridgment of free speech rights, gathered in front of the Oakland Main Library on 14th Street where the head librarian, Carmen Martinez, refused to close down for the protest as the police department requested. Librarians, like other public sector workers, remember all those threatened closings, reduction in hours and and cuts in pay, health benefits and pensions. Go librarians, my people of the book!

Now, Oscar Grant Plaza has been fenced off and drenched it with chemicals in order to "grow new grass." The police in their true colors have delivered excessive violence and brutality with their barrage of rubber bullets, flash bang grenades and massive clouds of tear gas. And the mainstream media is not far behind with a propaganda war of its own bringing the staples of fear and intimidation directed at the occupiers and all the 99 percent. Funny though, how the ridicule has diminished.

So we are officially in the fight portion of Gandhi's formula.Yesterday, a canister hit and injured an American veteran of the Iraq war, Scott Olsen of Daly City. He is now in Highland Hospital in critical but stable condition suffering swelling of the brain. Ironic, to survive combat only to come home to this.

This brutal response is echoing around the country in San Jose, Denver, Chicago and cities too numerous to mention, the class war is on. Now Occupy San Francisco is issuing ultimatums to the protesters in Justin Herman Plaza. SF Mayor, Ed Lee like Oakland Mayor Jean Quan before him has now issued an edict declaring food, rats and self-government are keeping these sacred "public" parks from being used by the people. Gosh, it's almost like this is a coordinated effort or something. So what are the protesters and the 99 percent, chopped liver? Who exactly are the people anyway?

We must find our footing under stress. With any new movement there will be growing pains. In an increasing repressive society we will make sacrifices and there will inevitably be casualties. We must run this like a marathon, not a fifty yard dash. As we used to say in the lesbian community of the old days, "we ain't got it easy but we got it."