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Edited on Fri Nov-04-11 06:09 PM by dreamnightwind
1) The Oakland protests, awesome as they are, have not been entirely non-violent. On the day Scott Olsen was wounded, there had been some protesters throwing things at officers before the violence broke out. I watched an interview of an OWS "spokesperson" who confirmed this. It gave the cops an excuse to go off, lame as that excuse is.
And on the night of the port shutdown, a group of protesters had occupied a former homeless shelter that was sitting vacant, and set fire to a barricade they had erected in the street. After police went off on them, a fair amount of violence to property and businesses ensued, done by a black-bandana'd group of protesters. Also 7 officers were apparently injured, mostly by protesters throwing objects, according to a rep of the police association interviewed by Thom Hartmann. OWS is dialoging about how to deal with this.
Some protesters have also been shooting cops with paint guns, or whatever they're called.
2) We live in a police state. The extent of this is not yet fully known, since there has been no real direct challenge to the powers that be since the police state's maturity. I think we'll see that beast emerge and reveal itself soon enough, they can't wait to use their new weapons and tactics in combat, which is what many of these SWAT type cops have been trained for.
So I really think total non-violence must be adhered to, and OWS people need to do anything in their power to stop violent demonstrators, including pointing them out to the police if necessary (edited to add that some of these violent protesters could even be undercover agents inciting violence, in any event they're no friends of the movement, end of edit).
We want to be Egypt, not Libya. And if things get bad enough, the police and para-military might we'd be up against would be brutal and overwhelming. Hell, if the cops can't muster enough force, we'll see National Guard and possibly even Blackwater/Xe goons being used. That's not a road we want to go down.
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