Cecily McMillan.
This gross injustice is another example of what is called our “justice” system now. It flies in the face of anything rational or sane. It is a world not only upside down, but twisted, broken, bleating.
A woman has her breast forcibly grabbed from behind, SO forcibly that it leaves a handprint on her long after her attack. http://www.democracynow.org/... She reacts, as ANY woman would have reacted, by swinging her arm around to STOP the attack. She discovers it is a police officer who has made the VILE OFFENSE. What happens next? Does she file assault charges against a MAN who has VIOLATED her? No, what happens next is beyond sanity. Just reading about it, seeing a video of it, makes me physically ill. She is surrounded by police officers, who beat her so severely, she convulses into seizures, has a rib broken, as if these officers somehow felt “threatened” by this unarmed, non violent woman. A woman who has done nothing, physically attacked by a man in uniform, and then beaten, punched, kicked by officers of the law. She is then arrested for “attacking” a police officer, shuttled between jail and hospitals, refused a lawyer, refused ability to contact her friends or family, for 40 hours. Meanwhile, lawyers such as Meghan Maurus were frantically trying to find her in the system that was quite literally holding her hostage.
On May 5th, a jury found her guilty of assaulting the officer. She now faces up to 7 years in prison. http://www.theguardian.com/...
If this isn’t a clear message of forcing us into the acceptance of police brutality, I don’t know what is. I’m sure they knew who she was, having been active in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Most of us are familiar with the brutal police crackdown on activists. Unfortunately, those in the jury were kept from any scenes of what the police did to OWS activists. http://www.theguardian.com/...
We have been eased into a society of blind acquiescence, for little if any media is covering this story, or stories like it. Elementary school age children being taken away from schools in handcuffs for offenses that once had them shaking in fear in the principal’s office, now sit in police precincts, away from parents, or lawyers, for hours at a time. http://nypost.com/... Police coming in to schools to take away children in handcuffs? There has also been many instances of children as young as 8 years old being tased by either school officials or law enforcement. And we call ourselves a civilized society?
Or how about the young woman who went to family court over a divorce hearing, and was sexually assaulted by the court officer. Not only does the FEMALE judge IGNORE her pleas, she is arrested by the same man who sexually assaulted her, as her 2 year old child is taken away. http://www.rawstory.com/...
Another case of a young girl, Danielle Maudsley, who was tazered by a police officer, causing her to be left in a vegetative state afterwards. She died 2 years later. https://www.youtube.com/...
Yet it gets even worse, for the numerous accounts of youth killed by men in uniform continue to grow. Take for instance the death of Kelly Thomas. Unarmed, homeless, and mentally ill, his entire brutal beating, where he begged for mercy as he was kicked, punched, and tasered, was caught on tape. http://rt.com/... After they beat him into a coma, he died in the hospital days later. The police officers who killed him got away with it unpunished. His is not the only story of innocent men being murdered by trigger happy police officers. Manuel Diaz was shot dead by police in Anaheim. When the neighborhood came together to protest, police released a dog on women and children, and shot rubber bullets into a crowd with young children present, hitting at least one young girl. http://firedoglake.com/...
Protesters suffer incredible abuse should they try to challenge the senseless crimes their neighborhoods endure. Poor communities have long known the abuse of police, yet police never get convicted, and never are held responsible for proving the need for such brutal force. http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/...
We now have local police forces that have military grade supplies, from full riot gear to tanks. http://www.truth-out.org/... We have militarized our police, as they have changed their motto from “protect and serve” to “law enforcement.” Exactly who’s laws are they enforcing?
How do citizens protect themselves from an institution that is supposed to be there for protection from criminal behavior, who have in fact become criminals themselves? Were a group of vigilante men who did not wear a uniform to commit these heinous acts on our fellow citizens, they would be in jail. Yet, their badge has somehow given them free reign to behave however they please, without punishment, without retribution, without civility, without humanity. It has become the unspeakable horror that gets no news coverage, no national attention, and yet, it is causing harm to our citizens, our freedoms, our children, our lives. Who are you supposed to call when a police squad wrongly enters your home over false information they were given? How does a parent demand justice when their child posing no threat is shot, tasered, or beaten to death by police officers, and no one is disciplined, no one is found guilty of abuse of power, no change is made in their behavior? When did the abuse and murder of innocent American citizens become standard operating procedure?
It should be no mystery that the rise of the militarized police force across this country coincides with the squeeze being initiated upon the citizens that are struggling for their survival of our corporatized government. States are still enduring the repercussions of the fall out from 2008-2009, budgets continue to be slashed in social programs, schools, higher education, infrastructure, yet somehow, there is plenty of money to go around when it comes to amping up the police force. Corporate taxes are at an all time low (and sometimes none at all) while many cities are seeing more money paid out on Wall Street debt than on the care and maintenance of their streets. http://pando.com/... Our government defends it’s position to cut unemployment insurance for those who’ve become chronically unemployed, and like kicking a man when he’s down, has the nerve to cut food stamps to those most in need, while continuing to kiss ass to the Wall Street barons who’ve caused most of this mess. Audacity of hope? Audacity of injustice.
Occupy Wall Street was the result of citizens knowing they were getting screwed continuously by those who hold the power in this country. The media tried to portray them as a bunch of dirty hippy kids who only needed to get a shower and a job. The reality was the people who collected at the OWS protests came from a wide variety of average American citizens, all tired of the bullshit rhetoric they were hearing on the evening news that never matched up to the realities they were enduring. They understood the time had come to do something about it. That’s why they took to the streets. That is why they gathered together to collectively work on a new vision of what they believed possible in this country. The police brutality that resulted, the pepper spraying in the faces of non violent protesters, rubber bullets, unjustified beatings, countless arrests, all messages from not only police enforcement, but from the big bullies in the back offices who were responsible for the hardships Americans have been enduring as well: Stand up to us, and we’ll crush you.
We also must consider what implications the NDAA has on our freedoms, and pull all the pieces together for what it means to live “free” in America. http://www.theguardian.com/... If the police can kill anyone it deems a “threat” including unarmed, homeless, mentally ill people begging for mercy, or fire rubber bullets and release dogs on peaceful crowds full of women and children, or sexually abuse a woman, and then beat her into seizures, and find HER guilty of assault, or arrest 10 year old children and keep them handcuffed and away from their parents while they “interrogate” them, or take us off the streets, whisk us away to a foreign land, torture us, keep us detained without a lawyer, with no rights, for an indefinite amount of time, then I must say, I can’t understand how it is that terrorists “hate us for our freedoms,” considering we don’t seem to have many left.
Do I know what to do to change it? Nope. But we must look at it. We must acknowledge it’s existence, we must take the time to realize, it’s here, and it cannot continue, because it’s getting worse, it’s spreading, it’s growing, and nothing is being done about it.
These people I’ve talked about, they so easily could have been me. The young woman in Las Vegas? The crowd on the streets in Anaheim? Cecily at a demonstration being groped and then beaten? Could have been me. I see myself in them. They are not a world away, in some foreign, third world country ruled by some monstrous dictator. They are friends, loved ones, people I’ve known, who are like me, and the people I know and care about. These are not criminals. They are not deserving of the treatment they have endured at the hands of such brutality. So, I must say something. Will it mean I might be arrested at the next march I attend? Will some police officer reach out and violently grab my breast, and if I try to get him off of me, will he and other police officers beat me into a pulp, take me away for 40 hours without a lawyer or a loved one, and then send me to prison for supposedly assaulting HIM?!
Yet, it is not the only police I blame completely, although I must admit there are some very bad characters in uniform who should be in jail, as much as those who sign their paychecks, those who’ve given the orders from up on high. Police are the soldiers that are used to instill fear from those who wish to put us in our place if we fight back, those who will order police to spray pepper spray into innocent faces, those who will try to push us back down when we try to stand up to the violence that is perpetrated against us in the form of corporate tyranny, or Wall Street thievery, or government overreach. It is a message that is being sent across the country that is basic and brutal: Sit down, shut up, mind your own business, and whatever you do, don’t fight back, or you will be punished, severely. We’re gonna steal your pensions, ruin your health, contaminate your food, force you out of your homes, put you in endless debt, poison the air you breathe and the water you drink, and we’re gonna reap billions in profit while you all starve.
It’s not about us vs. the police. Again, they are a symptom. They are paid thugs, who are guarding the big boss in the back room. It’s not about hating the rich, because most people of regular wealth are not to blame. No, this is about a very small percentage of people who look to take control of everything. The .001 percent.
We are all in this together.