For those of you who haven't seen it, this is the video which went viral, it was uploaded over a mobile hot spot that you bought, Kossacks.
We now have new video with police reaction and interviews with Chelsea Elliot, one of the young women assaulted by police.
Now for the new video. I'll be posting the raw footage unedited because Fox News lied about the protesters, essentially saying that they were pushing the police back, and doing something violent with the orange mesh.
You'll see that in this video, that doesn't really happen.
Watch at 1:26 seconds, you'll hear the bald cop say "That's not procedure! You just fucking maced us!" He then wipes pepper spray off of his own face.
What Inspector Bologna did, what the kettling tactic and these agressive tactics are designed to achieve, is nothing more than tactical entrapment.
The point is to antagonize a crowd into fighting back so that you can go to the media and say "These are violent protests. These people are thugs and criminals."
But our protesters are refusing to be antagonized. I hope that officer, the one who yelled at [or as per some comments, about] Bologna keeps his job. Like most of the NYPD, there's a good chance he supports what we're fighting for.
I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of police officers. The ones who will talk to me can't say anything on the record, but I get the feeling they support us. All of them have told us that they're there to make sure that we have a right to express ourselves peacefully, and that we aren't interfered with. Friends of mine who work in law enforcement are worried that the NYPD will eventually be ordered to clear the square for one reason: the NYPD, and New York City, doesn't have unlimited funds. Eventually, whether it's days or months from now, they won't be able to afford the overtime and logistical costs of keeping a constant heavy police presence surrounding Zuccotti Park.
As for fox news, you can see that the mesh was stepped on by one protester, and then casually lifted up to corral the person shooting this video. There was no ridiculous push-back against the police line as described by Megan Kelly. That was an outright fabrication on her part.
Quotation from the person who took this video:
Thank you to the medic who flushed my eyes with what I guess what liquid antacid and water*, and wiped my eyes with the bandana around his wrist saying, "This was my grandfather's bandana, he got through Korea with this, and that means you're going to get through this." And it helped immensely. Thank you. I'm glad we take care of each other.
[It was milk, followed by apple cider vinegar.]
Just as a quick side note, I want to make clear that in general I support the police force, my mom worked in the justice system for 30 years and I know that for the most part cops are good honorable people doing their jobs, and often they are heroes. But whether these cops were just scared and thinking irrationally or taking out their own misdirected rage, there is no excuse for this violent abuse of their authority. This was wrong and it didn't make anyone safer. Hell, along the same lines, I even support the death penalty, but executing Troy Davis only weakened the integrity of the system that I have, up until yesterday, supported and defended.
Pepper spray is a real weapon that hurts like hell and should only be used in the most desperate of situations, not on peaceful protesters that let you push them onto the sidewalk but won't let you corral them into a parking garage.
That quote should make it clear: these protesters aren't "just a bunch of smelly hippies."
There are people from every side of every political issue in Zucotti park asking for an end to the corrupt Kleptocracy which has stolen our homes, exported our jobs, and bathed the world in blood to satisfy their own greed.
That's Chelsea. She's been helping our Media Fund with graphic design. When you see HankNYNY's conversation with the 1% videos, all of the graphics in them will have been designed by Chelsea.
In addition to this interview, she's given several. These quotations come from the Villiage Voice.
We'd marched to Union Square, and we were dancing. We'd walked 2.4 miles, and I was on, I think, 12th Street. These cops [in the blue shirts] were in front of me and told me not to move. They pulled out the net. I was trying to reason with them, saying, "We're pedestrians, we're here for you too, we know your pensions are being cut, your friends are losing their jobs..." They were kind of unresponsive. This girl behind me was getting upset. We were penned off on the sidewalk, and I couldn't really see, but I've seen video since, and there was a kid being beat up in the street.
I heard screams near me, and this young girl near me was shoved down [by the police] -- their hands were on her head until she reached the pavement (she was yelling because the cops were beating up some 19-year-old kid). I screamed something like, "Stop! Why are you doing this?" There was blood and shit; it was terrifying. I looked at the cop I'd been talking to, and he had a blank but worried expression. Then this cop in a white collared shirt came around and just sprayed us, not even one steady stream, more like you were spraying a plant -- me and three or four other girls. I fell to the ground, and the girl behind me, this pretty, thin girl, a total hippie, with short hair and a gray tank top, they got her so bad! We were just lying on the ground, it was extremely painful. The cop I was talking to, he talked to the cop who sprayed us, and was like, "Thanks for the warning." I think he got maced in the eye, too.
Last night, when I was speaking with Chelsea, she was upset by some of the vicious authoritarian attacks coming from folks on youtube. They're the sort of things you expect from the seditious misanthropes at Free Republic.
I told her that I thought she was a hero.
"Don't call me that," she said.
If she doesn't want me to call her a hero, I'll call her an inspiration. Chelsea embodies grace under fire. Despite everything that happened, she's fighting on with a big smile.
11:26 AM PT: Some Kossacks below have pointed out that the officer may be saying "That's not procedure HE just fucking maced us."
Now that I've listened to it several times, I think they might be right. I can't really tell with this audio quality. Something to think about, anyway.
Outspoken82 has this great comment:
Last night, I was telling my partner, who herself is in law enforcement, about this incident and about the protests in general. We sat down and watched a slew of videos on youtube, mostly showing various arrests and incidents, in order to analyze the level of police response. There were several in which the protestors did something, however minor, that would qualify as resisting arrest. I wish there was a crash course for our protestors in "how not to get yourself arrested." Police have a lot of leeway, and like I said, even minor things can be construed to be aggressive or combative and thus will lead to an arrest.
That being said, there were two clips we saw in which police action was unequivocally unjustified and unwarranted--one being the young man with the flag who ends up pinned on the ground, and the other was this pepper spraying incident. The guy with the flag--he made no aggressive moves, did not touch any officers, and complied with police instructions. There was no reason for his takedown.
I could write a book on the pepper spray incident. Not only was there zero provocation, there was zero warning. He sprayed into a crowd, and WALKED AWAY. He didn't follow it with an arrest. He didn't follow it with medical attention (I don't know about NYC, but in Arkansas that is REQUIRED). He sprayed these women in the face, and left them there to writhe in pain. Nothing about this is procedure, and if I were one of these women, I'd already have a lawyer working the case. There are zero excuses for that kind of brutality, and it puts an ugly face on the NYPD when you know most of the police officers would never do something of the sort.
To everyone out there on the streets--stay strong, keep up the good work, and please be careful!