Oakland Raiders

To Serve and Protect

—Police Motto

This is a prime example of how subtly pernicious corporate propaganda is.  Today, Oakland police raided an Occupy rally.  The headline of a CNN article says "19 Occupy activists arrested in Oakland after clashing with police."  The first sentence of the article is: "Occupy activists tossed pipes, bottles, burning flares and other objects Saturday at Oakland police, who responded by using tear gas and smoke grenades and arresting 19 demonstrators, police said."

Notice how "police said" is buried at the end of the paragraph.  A more factual rendering would begin with: "Police claimed without providing evidence that Occupy activists..." Reporters, regardless of their political views, want access to the authorities for information and interviews so they won't overtly say or do anything to put the police in a bad light.  They know that if they don't frame the story in a favorable way, they will lose access.  This means that, barring any hard evidence to the contrary, they will report whatever the police say at face value.  That then becomes the narrative regardless of what actually happened.  It is at least as likely that the police claimed there was a "clash" to cover their own behinds. 

Police stations around the country are becoming increasingly militarized.  Clearly, the Oakland police department is leading the charge.  This is the same district where BART police officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot Oscar Grant in the back of the head while he was unarmed and pinned to the ground.  Mehserle served two years for "involuntary manslaughter."  Oakland was also the site of the violent crackdown against Occupiers that left Iraq veteran Scott Olsen with a fractured skull.  Police in Oakland have also arrested a journalist, lacerated a man's spleen by beating him with batons while he was handcuffed, fired a rubber bullet at a man who was filming police, and allowed a hit-and-run driver who ran over protesters to leave the scene without charges.

It may or may not be true that activists threw things at the police.  But even if a handful of people lobbed water bottles at a few hundred cops who were wearing bullet-proof vests, helmets and gas masks while carrying shields and truncheons, that doesn't justify a violent crackdown against all 2,000 or so of the protesters who included children.  The degree of force that the police deployed dwarfs anything that protesters might summon in a pinch. 

The bottom line is, there was no "clash" regardless of what may or may not have happened, or why.  It was completely one-sided.  Some people may have vehemently objected to their impending arrest for speaking.  But the police cracked down violently, using chemical weapons and explosive devices then beating and arresting people among hundreds who had peaceably assembled.  American citizens were attacked by paramilitary police and arrested for speaking, because they were criticizing the plutocratic elite.  The First Amendment and the right to speech that it enshrines so concisely is becoming almost entirely meaningless in America. 

As this blog post goes to print, the number of arrests is continuing to climb and may be in the dozens or hundreds.