Ricky didn’t like the Occupy Tacoma protesters at his speech in Tacoma yesterday. He called them radicals, called the protesters intolerant, and said Obama supported the 99% over the 1% (though some of the occupy movement members might object to that characterization of the President and Democrats in general). In general, he essentially called the Occupy Tacoma members heckling him scum of the earth.
The former Pennsylvania senator was cheered by the largest public outdoor rally in Western Washington that a Republican White House hopeful has seen in years. But Santorum fought to make himself heard over chants from protesters.
The candidate tried to link together President Obama and the demonstrators, declaring: “They’re fundamentally trying to remake our country into a country that our Founders wouldn’t recognize.”
The Santorum rally, at the Washington State History Museum, was the state’s the most raucous political event since conservative talk radio activists provided a loud bump in the 1994 Hillary Clinton health care caravan.
[…]The 9th Circuit decided anyone who disagrees with these folk,” said Santorum, apparently referring to marriage equality supporters among the hecklers, “is irrational and bigoted . . . What they represent is true intolerance, (that) the only possible reason to disagree is that they are a hater or bigoted.”
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/connelly/article/Santorum-fights-to-be-heard-at-a-raucous-Tacoma-3316478.php#ixzz1mNS6l8Pf
Just watch:
So guess what happened? Local news station KIRO-TV reported that one or two protestors were tasered by Tacoma law enforcement officials at the Santorum event and others were arrested. Who gave the order? Why were Occupy Tacoma protestors arrested brutally by the police? Why were tasers used on the people arrested? It’s unclear, but you can watch the video from KIRO-TV at The Raw Story.
Both men arrested were tased after they were already on the ground, according to one witness interviewed by the KIRO-TV reporters. Police admitted to tasing at least one individual. One other woman was arrested for glitter bombing Santorum.
Now ask yourself, if this had been President Obama or a local Democrat would the police have used the same amount of force against “Tea party” protestors? Would they have arrested any Tea party protestors at all for similar actions? You tell me.
Bringing firearms to political events? No problem! But if you bring glitter? Up against the wall, hippie, before we taze your ass!
Well you answered the question. The Tea Baggers are armed, and wouldn’t hesitate to fight back.
So if Occupiers started showing up armed, cops would back off?
Yeah, that’s … no.
Who knows?
Anyone who thinks about it.
Results for the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights movement caught fire just after “… by any means necessary.” It was the threat of violence that made the “moderate” south take action based on the non-violent civil rights.
No. If Occupy showed up with weapons, cops would not back off, just like they won’t back off from Tea party or Nazis today. But the mayors today spend more time thinking about setting things up to potentially not call the police for the Nazis than they do Occupy.
You want the truth. If it was President Obama or some Democrat, the police would use the same force on the Occupy protesters, but the Tea Party protesters could walk around with open-carry firearms and the police wouldn’t give a shit.
It’s not who is being protested, it’s about the content of the message of the protesters. And in May it will get worse. Rahm Emmanuel has effectively suspended the First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly in the city of Chicago, using the excuse of the G8/NATO summit. Police are spouting scary stories about protesters and preparing for “security theater” with better “non-lethal” weapons and face shields and gas masks—because the protesters are such a danger and might throw piss and poo at them (although there are no documented cases of that ever happening in any of the storied protests).
If the police show up in riot gear, the public thinks the protesters have rioted. If the police show up hazmat suits, the public thinks protesters are a health hazard.
This time the theater is too out-of-proportion, too blatant, and too cynical. Just like Santorum’s use of the protesters as a foil.
When the message to politicians is simple: Stop messaging and listen.
The scare messaging from local (and sometimes national) political figures and media has been a staple of every high-profile summit and political convention in the US for the last 15 years. It’s part of the plan, right along with the riot gear, SWAT teams, and preemptive arrests, and it works. When the inevitable cop violence against nonviolent protesters occurs in Chicago, and later this year at the conventions, there will be almost no public outcry, because as we all know the protesters are hippies and thugs who have it coming.
One of the biggest frustrations on the West Coast has been that the black bloc tactics of much of Occupy Oakland (and, to a lesser extent, Portland and Seattle) help enormously in legitimizing cop violence to the public. As we saw in NYC and Davis and with Dorli Rainey in Seattle, with social media cop misdeeds now have the capacity to go so viral that mainstream media are forced to pay attention – but only when the victims clearly posed no threat. And since the protests themselves rarely receive any mainstream media coverage any longer, most members of the public have no reason to doubt the media narrative of Scary Protesters, unless really compelling video emerges.
The Occupy movement has had more success than any other recent US protests in spotlighting law enforcement thuggery. But another part of the game plan is that cities literally budget for the inevitable lawsuits, judgments and settlements that arise from the premeditated thuggery and unconstitutional arrests that happens at all of these events. We’re a long, long way from having enough public anger to force a change in the way major public protests – specifically, left-leaning protests – are suppressed in this country.
Yep. That is why the folks showing up in Chicago, Tampa, and Charlotte better be creative and better disciplined that previous large events. The Chicago Principles advocate a separation in time and place of tactics (essentially asking those pursuing black bloc tactics not to involve collaterally protesters who are not pursuing those tactics. There is a lot of philosophical sophistry being used by those favoring black bloc tactics that appeals to a moral great chain of offenses in which attacks on property are more moral (less immoral) than attacks on persons. The significant argument is one of effectiveness. Black bloc tactics have been singularly ineffective in producing change other than the escalation of the militarization of the weapons and tactics in the hands of the police.
this just means more bad publiity for the cops, more bad publicity for the cities it occurs in, and more civil rights lawsuits against those cities that the cities will eventually lose.
NY just paid out what, $15 million? You know Oakland’s got lawsuits up the ass now. LA too.
This is unsustainable and unaffordable. More occupations please.
Here’s a (bad but maybe effective) solution: have at least one or two of the Occupy protesters pretend to be tea partiers holding a simultaneous protest about bank bailouts (i.e. “Tea Party against Bank Bailouts”). Have them pretend to be separate from the Occupy protesters. Videotape.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the cops were biased against the lefty protesters but I’m not willing to take it as a matter of faith. Not knowing who did what and under what circumstances, I’m not going to join the chorus of condemnation. We ask that people do their best to be mindful of their prejudices; we should try to be aware of ours too.
No, I’m sure Tea Partiers aren’t getting zapped at Obama rallies, but having been to a few, I can testify that there are certainly a lot more secret service snipers on rooftops drawing beads on the foreheads of the many Tea Partiers openly carrying guns to such rallies (!) than there are at Occupy protests of Obama.
With any luck Rick will cross WA off his list of “friendlies” and I won’t have to worry about him soiling this lovely state again.
All of this emotion and inflamatory speech combined with the Police reaction reminds this old coot of 1968. The frightening part is that it’s only February.
This geezers remembers too. Things are moving much more rapidly than they did in the 1960s. It took 3-4 years for the civil rights movement to face the debate with the Black Power movement and the rise of the Black Panthers (asserting Second Amendment rights was considered “violent” in that era). It took two years from the first anti-draft protests to the police brutality October 1967 at the Pentagon, another year to the aftermath of the Chicago Democratic Convention and another year until the rise of the Weatherman faction of SDS.
It has not yet been six months and the Occupy movement has been beset with massive police brutality in many cities (and surprising toleration in others). And we are now at the juncture of the movement debating with advocates of black bloc tactics.
And the Wall Street Media are even more hostile than they were in 1968.
I think the question overlooks a basic and HUGE difference between Obama and Santorum: Obama would have handled the interruption much differently.
I was present at an Obama campaign speech in St. Petersburg when an organized group of hecklers sat a few rows behind Obama in a closed space. After he started his speech, they started chanted and interrupted him. Though the crowd tried to drown them out, Obama quieted everyone and, in effect, said, “Let’s talk” and he had a dialogue with them. End of story.
Caveat: But those hecklers were more reasonable than, say, the rapid hecklers at the summer town halls during the health care debate. Many of them came to shut down the town halls. But I still think that Obama could handle them with grace and gravitas. Santorum is no Obama.