Oakland PD: Those Who Make Peaceful Protest Impossible

I haven't been following the various Occupy movements very closely, though a few weeks ago, when the movement was new, I wrote a post mentioning my complete agreement with the movement's basic complaint "the system is rigged to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor."

And I deplored the reports of police responding to the protests with violence, and also noted this:

John F. Kennedy famously said “Those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent protest inevitable.” Why don’t the police learn this in their academies? Do the fools – and the greater fools who speak approvingly of their misbehavior – not realize that if enough people decide the system cannot be reformed from within – if enough people decide outright revolt is the only answer – then all is lost? If violent revolution comes to this country, whether from the left wing or the right, then whatever phoenix rises from the ashes will almost certainly be something much, much worse than what they burn down.

And last night, the even greater fools in the Oakland police department responded in force against the non-violent protesters, going after them with tear gas and rubber bullets, and one of those bullets shot Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen in the face. According to the Huffington Post, Olsen's roommate Keith Shannon said Olsen "was simply one of the marchers. 'He was just hit by a projectile,' said Shannon, who did not attend the march but heard about the incident from eyewitnesses. 'He wasn't near a police officer when it happened'." After shooting Olsen, police lobbed a flashbang grenade at the people who went to help him. Olsen is now in the hospital, unconscious and with swelling of the brain.

Twenty years ago, I would have been shocked and surprised to hear American police chose to attack bystanders rather than protect them. Not in today's America.

In related news, British writer Jeff Berwick, fortunate enough to have an outsider's view of the country, published an essay titled "The US is fast becoming a third world police state." It's worth reading in full, but I'll quote only the small section discussing Occupy protesters in Phoenix:

The photos coming out of the US continue to look like something you'd see in a country like North Korea or in the old Soviet Bloc.

This photo, from a small gathering of Occupy Wall Street protesters in Phoenix, shows that not only the police outnumbered the protesters but showed the level of intimidation and force used against just a few people sitting in a park. Their crime? They were there after "curfew". I've been searching my copy of the US Constitution for any reference to curfew but have yet to find anything.

Yeah, well, I've been searching my copy of the constitution for any references to where it says you must submit to government agents fondling your genitalia if you want to travel within the borders of your own country, and I can't find anything either. Nor can I find where it says the president can order an American citizen executed without trial.

I want America to go back to the "free country" we used to be. And I don't want the country I have now to erupt into violent revolution. And I grow evermore terrified and evermore pessimistic, fearing I'll be disappointed in both.