When information is left out

Icalasari

I just found out about this. Makes the macing seem more reasonable now

ClockworkUniverse

Wow...yeah, the students more or less forced them to, looks like.

FrodoGoofballCoTV

Wow.  And here I thought they were being pepper sprayed because they were preventing other students and professors from getting to class.  If I'd been in the riot gear, I hope I would have acted with as much restraint.

glennmagusharvey

That was an interesting video.

 

The "Fuck the police, from Davis to Greece" chant was just completely silly and juvenile.

 

That said, I can understand the motivation of the protesters more clearly now.  They wanted the assurance that those arrested would be released.  AFAIK arrested protesters in the United States are generally not detained very long, maybe a few days at most.  On the other hand, though, simply being arrested and booked, even for a minor crime like disorderly conduct, can lead to anything from your name/info being in the records to you having to explain criminal charges on applications.

Zennistrad

Hmm, interesting.

 

Of course, I'm still a firm believer in civil disobedience. When those who uphold the status quo are forced to resort to violence, it can make them look pretty bad.

ClockworkUniverse

^I believe in civil disobedience, but I don't think this was civil.

glennmagusharvey

Open question: What would you do if you were a protester there and you just saw that people who had been protesting with you had been arrested?

ClockworkUniverse

Leave.

InsanityAddict

Ask them if they have anyone who should be told/left their bags somewhere so I can safekeep it until they get bailed out.

 

MillerCross

Run the fuck out of there

BlackHumor

Ah, so there's narration on that? That's bad, they're pushing their ideology on the video. REALLY badly, now I watch it; there's clearly willful misinterpretation of some of the things they are saying/doing up there.

See, I've seen the whole video WITHOUT narration and that made me think the macing was WORSE than before, if anything. Yeah, they were blocking a path, but that's no excuse to pepper-spray them.

I've never seen anything about them blocking a path OUT anywhere but right-wing sites, and I believe that when they [EDIT: the police] eventually do retreat they retreat in the OPPOSITE direction. (Just checked it up there: YES THEY DO. And frankly, it would make no sense to demand that the police leave MULTIPLE TIMES if you were blocking their path. Which the video NOTES and then IGNORES and ARGGGGGG.)

glennmagusharvey

I'm also not too happy about the "this person seems to be the leader, but is apparently not a student".  Yeah, with words like "seems".

BlackHumor

Also did anyone else notice there was a GIGANTIC edit in the middle?

Also also:

Bee

We already knew the police showed enough restraint to issue repeated warnings.  That doesn't really excuse the fact that they're forcefully quashing a nonviolent protest.

Surrounding the officers would be a pretty stupid idea, but I'm pretty damn sure the same thing would've happened regardless.  At its core, they had orders to forcefully remove a protest and arrest those involved.  Period.

glennmagusharvey

Unfortunately, I don't think there IS any way for protesters to deal directly with police once they're on scene and intent on breaking up whatever it is, without the use of force on either side.

If the police are there already, your best bet is to call someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows the mayor or university president or whoever's in charge in the area, and ask them to personally come and mediate or dispel the police.

Bee

The people who you're protesting against are funding both the people with jurisdiction to silence you and the people who write the laws that give them that jurisdiction.  There's no nice way to bring down an ivory tower like that.  You basically need a second grassroots movement within the law enforcement itself to tell them to fuck off.