General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: what chicago learned from '68 [View all]Mc Mike
(9,107 posts)Says ~ min 12 sec 45 (14 min vid) that the bb s were travelling west along with dispersing protestors, and were forced back east by the police. They were already blocked to the south, and east. That 'kettling' makes a dispersal order unhelpful.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=710141
Wnd's eyewitness accounts are only good for the part of the field s\he was in. The photo sequence is incomplete, because it starts with the white shirted officer's helmet already off, which doesn't necessarily show an unprovoked attack on that officer. Doesn't show either side before the start of the altercation. When I see an officer with an old-style night stick, instead of the Okinawa-style grain grinder model, I think that officer is harking back to the 'good old days' of police-community relations. My opinion may be wrong, but that officer's bosses created the whole situation with the kettling.
There was no legit reason people couldn't march south in the first place. In Pgh.'s G-20 (the 9-25-09 march), the cops arbitrarily enforced bridge and street closures which clearly contradicted my State Rep.'s official route info, and the official established 'free speech' zone directly E-NE of the Convention center. Nobody was allowed to even approach the area. The cops were Keystone to a Chinese Fire drill degree. The field commanders made up the rules on the fly, to make a moving and constantly enveloping kettle around the legally permitted marchers, with overwhelming manpower on all sides, as they shunted the protest across the river from the G-20 site, tastefully out of the range of the WB and IMF big-shots.
If I saw a protestor launch an unprovoked attack on a cop, I'd do my best to restrain them, before the cops responded to the attack by ravaging the rest of the innocent protestors. All cops aren't bad, but they're bad in large groups, listening to their pin-head bosses. I don't want any physical harm to come to women or men who are on the job. But there isn't a large casualty list on the law enforcement side, and there is one on the protestors' side.
Either cops start the violence, or u.c. cops start the violence, or some agro protestor whose brain is in pawn to the system (so s\he is working for that cop system) starts the violence. So now it's obviously time for all DU hands to call each other cops, and pick which of the 3 flavors of cop they want to back, against other DU people. Sweet mother of mercy, we could screw up a 2 car funeral.
(cross posted as a re to posts 53, 60 in the link you just posted. That's ME screwing up a 2 car funeral. Sorry. Har har.)