A video from Tuesday night's Occupy Oakland protest, when police removed protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza, shows a man lying in the street bleeding from the head after a tear gas attack by police.
Occupy SF identified the man as 24-year-old Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran, reports NBC. Olsen has a fractured skull and is in critical condition at Highland Hospital in Oakland, according to a hospital spokesperson.
On Wednesday night, accordong to NBC, hundreds gathered on the plaza and forceably took down a fence that had been placed around the grassy area to keep people out. Police did not stop that effort.
By morning people had turned the fencing into a tower and called it art.
Also during Wednesday's marches, protesters called for a citywide strike next Wednesday, where workers and students would leave their positions to join a march in downtown Oakland.
NBC also reports that on Wednesday a large number of people left Wednesday night's Oakland demonstration to join the "Occupy SF" rally, which was feared to be facing eviction from police in San Francisco. In the end, even though dozens of officers were present, the raid did not happen.
http://blog.jim.com/politics/and-now-to-manufacture-a-kent-state-moment.html
ReplyDeleteWhat are the Police
ReplyDeleteprotecting & serving
The news on this is definitely portraying the police as innocent and saying that the occupiers attacked them, that is why the police swooped in. Even crazier, the police are saying, "no, no, those explosions that you hear, those aren't flash bangs (stun grenades), those are the protesters lighting off firecrackers." Um, except that there are tons of videos popping up on youtube showing the cops shooting flash bangs. While flash bangs are classified as non-lethal, it will F you up if if goes off right next to you.
ReplyDeleteThe Oakland Police Chief is denying the use of flash bangs, yet in this video you can clearly see a cop tossing a flash bang directly into a crowd of people:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLyUK0t0vQ
There are also blogs posts popping up all over showing what appear to be rubber bullets claimed to be found at the site of the protest (which the police deny using).
Tech blog Gizmodo has some specification info on flash bang grenades. (See here.)
ReplyDelete