http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrjuAlbqaAs
'DC Occupy - Police happy to club, trample, shoot citizens.' SL
Today I have uploaded two videos with extremely inflammatory titles talking about police brutality, when in fact the brutality that the early morning and midday videos revealed was the verbal brutality, abuse, violence of the occupiers. Just, just a nasty young mob, vicious, irresponsible, just a nasty young mob. The title of this video is not facetious. Tonight I witnessed something that in eight years in DC I've not witnessed, that I can recall.
So disgusted was I with what I saw this morning at Occupy DC that it was clear to me I'd have nothing more to do with it. I've never enough respected what I saw to identify myself with it, but I'd seen sufficient glimmerings of hope to try and help it become what it should be. And, as of today I see no hope there. McPherson’s on my return trip from the coffee shop I use, to where I am now, where I sleep, and it also is in park where I get food in the evening. My guess was that the police action would have been done by 5:15 when I was going for supper. On my 10 min. walk halfway I encountered one of the few people that I've had a significant regard for, who was running the opposite direction to catch transportation I think, who said, 'Start, don't go that way, there's police violence.' I believed him because I've learned to trust his word pretty much, his judgment, but I go toward trouble, not away from it. When I arrived at the camp, as he had told me I would find, all of the protesters had been driven out of the park, which didn't alarm me, still doesn't alarm me; the police have been breaking the law for three months, the law that says no camping. And it remains my belief that within the Park police is a sense of duty to democracy, to protect the expression of Democratic action, that was self sacrificial on the part of the police, in allowing this three months suspension of the law, on their own volition. So, that the police are now beginning to enforce the law, I can, no responsible citizen can, have an objection. I saw no responsible citizens in Occupy this morning.
I took 15 or 20 minutes to walk around the park to try and see what I could see. Roughly half of the tents are gone. To what degree the police honored their commitment to only remove tents that had bedding in them, and food, I don't know. It surprises me that that many tents would have violated their dictate. But probably half to two thirds of the tents were gone. On my way back around the north side of the park, because the south streets were closed off for the police action, that's where the crowd was, and I went to a far end and was slowly exiting, I'd pretty much come past the crowd, when a phalanx of, oh, 6 to 8 massive police horses, that had been stationary, hence not catch my attention, and yet only 12 feet from me, instantly lurched into motion and almost trapped me, almost trampled me. I wasn't their target, but there's no indication they would've hesitated to trample me. I was able to get out-of-the-way, I was willing to be trampled, but I could conveniently, with a little rushing, get out. These on-horse officers were part of about 30 officers, maybe only 20; some with night vision scopes on their helmets, SWAT team folks mixed in with the Park police, maybe city police as well, but probably mostly Park, and then SWAT team folks. There was someone about eight feet into the crowd that had been really not paying attention to the police as I recall, not threatening in any way, but someone that they wanted to arrest, so quickly, 12 to 15 heavily armed police, including these SWAT team type folks, extremely military, special forces looking, and the horses, drove into the crowd. The fellow they wanted to apprehend, there was no indication of who or why, it was just a guy in the crowd, was instantly on the ground, was apprehended and carried out.
I didn't sense any viciousness in this, and I didn't sense an ounce of compunction as to whether anyone got trampled; those of us in the crowd were bodies; we could've been Taliban, we could've been rat's, four-legged rats, it didn't matter; these officers were given orders and there was no order they weren't going to carry out. I'm not saying I should be shocked, or even find it worthy of comment, but I do, it's quite horrifying. One could say, well gee, how well trained they are. Okay, well trained droids, well-trained robots, Star Wars clones?
The implications of this in my view, I don't know. It's, it's simply a factor, it's certainly a factor I've not witnessed before, I've heard of, but not paid attention to, and it's now squarely on my radar screen.
There was no humanity in evidence. There was no humanity in evidence on the occupiers, among the occupiers, in the morning and the afternoon, and I'd like to think I saw some evidence of humanity among the police. I believe I've seen evidence of humanity among the police for three months now. But not tonight among the police, nor the occupiers. No humanity on either side. I believe in nothing mystical, believe in no higher sentient power, thinking God, Angels, whatever, of the mystical sort; but I think there's wisdom in some of the old tales, and I frequently now think of Pharaoh in Egypt, warning after warning after warning after warning, to which he could not or would not or both, wake up to, or wake up from. That's you, that's me, that's us as a society, police and demonstrators, and the 99.999% who sit on their asses at home. In their addictive stupors; warning after warning after warning - storms, scientific pronouncements, attacks on the Constitution by Bush and Cheney, wars that slaughter Arabs and our own children, and we do nothing. We even don't even contemplate doing anything. Yes I think of I think of Pharaoh, I think of that story more and more. It's virtually certain we're beyond redemption. This is the end.
I don't feel sorry for we western adults, we deserve, we deserve what our children and all of creation are going to get from our behavior, and they don't deserve it. But 7 billion people on a planet going to nine or 10 billion, and all this technology? It's like a child born into a drug-den. We're not designed to be born in drug dens, were not designed to be born into the dens of this massively dense population, technology, this idol worship. Oh what a tragedy that that sounds so arcane, so moralistic; no, we worship idols, we don't worship humanity, we don't worship human beings, we don't worship Love. We worship everything but, all false idols. Humanity is what we should worship; we are built to be kind to one another; we should worship our ability to care for one another which is life itself.
I seem to be at a place of acceptance that I've been moving toward for quite some time, that whereas my secondary job will be to continue to do what I can to stand in the way of this impending, irreversible doom, that's not my primary job. My primary job is to keep Love alive within me, and to be a possible life raft should anyone come along that either wants the Love in them protected, or want's it kindled. Absurd. Absurd. But that's the truth of it.
