I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged.
I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged.
When police attacked student protesters, a lone trash can was the only damaged property I saw around City College of New York.
I respect their coverage, and absolutely agree with their conclusions, but it is false to say that it is different now. Being involved in mass protest during the period, I can tell you unequivocally that police acted with widespread violence to peaceful protest. This ain't new. They get to choose when things are unlawful. Nonviolence will always be met by unrelenting violence by police. This is who we are as a society. ACAB today and every day. Solidarity with all who are protesting and putting their bodies and educations on the line for Palestine.
The big difference is that now when the protesters level charges of physical abuse they've got footage of the event and the damage it left on them.
Neither the national guard nor staties should ever be called up simply to dislocate protesters - if it turns violent or there are rabid counter-protesters then I can understand... but mere obstruction doesn't warrant violence.
to be fair the protesters aren't really helping their own cause.
the last wave of social protests were maybe 5-10 years ago on sexual assault, and back then protesters knew to keep to public spaces. if you demonstrate on the sidewalk or organise a march you're exercising freedom of speech.
but the new wave of protest organizers didn't get the memo or something. when you do shit like block off a highway or occupy a privately-held building, you're fighting on others' terms. You annoy the heck out of the public, create ill-will, and give law enforcement the excuse of removing you for trespassing.
the amount of police that showed up is shocking (if there were guns present maybe they would all have stayed home instead?), but removing these protesters was the right move.
15 years is only 2009. I don't think we've had any major protests in that time frame, so yeah any brutality looks unhinged. All I can think of is Occupy and the DAPL protests, and those were smaller and slightly less brutalized. Get back to me when you learn about Blair Mountain.
Of course that's not to take away the seriousness of police brutalizing protestors in the first place. It would be so trivially easy to just stop supporting genocide.
We haven't had anything like the Columbia riots of the sixties, sure... but the George Floyd protests were just four years ago.