I awakened this morning and, as is my routine, popped on my IPad first thing to check the news. This Huffington Post headline jarred me fully awake:
SHOCK VIDEO: POLICE PEPPER SPRAY COLLEGE STUDENTS
According to the story, about 50 University of California, Davis students were peacefully protesting on the campus quad in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. About 200 bystanders had gathered when the protesters were surrounded by 35 UC Davis Campus police officers. A 42 minute video filmed by a student clearly shows that the students were seated in a group and were not acting in a confrontative or hostile manner. In fact, at one point an officer approached a student, leaned over and had a short conversation with the student. A short while later an officer later identified as Lt John Pike approached the students, calmly displayed and shook his pepper spray canister and then unleashed a heavy cloud of pepper spray on the still seated students.
Later in the day Linda P.B. Katehi, UC Davis Chancellor, released a statement saying, "We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested. We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal."
Chancellor Katihi should be saddened by, “the events that subsequently transpired.” She should be saddened to the point of firing Lt Pike and Chief Spicuzza and then, as her last act of contrition, resigning. We all should be saddened. It’s disgraceful. These students have, as have students all over the country, been largely robbed of their future by criminal activities on Wall Street and by banker leeches who made millions for “processing” student loans and no one has been punished but the students.
UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza spoke out in defense of the assault maintaining that camping on the quad wasn't safe for students. By way of explanation she added, "It's not safe for multiple reasons," Spicuzza said. I’m sorry no one asked her why she believed heavily pepper spraying a large group of peacefully demonstrating students was safe.
The oligarchs minions, mobs of heavily armed militants, indiscriminately spraying tear gas has become the pro forma response to peaceful groups of citizens exercising their first amendment right to express their outrage at the conditions into which the country has fallen and the disinterest of the government in doing anything about it. More and more the people are growing weary of platitudes and political rhetoric from Washington. More and more the people are becoming aware that the government no longer belongs to them; the government, and now the Supreme Court, belong to the corporations and the monied elite. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the people took to the streets to fight for labor rights, in the late1920s they took to the streets over a governments obligation to its citizens’ welfare, in the 1950s and 1960s they took to the streets over civil rights and in the middle to late 1960s over America’s participation in the war in Viet Nam. Each time those in power responded with force and repression and each time the people eventually won. We will eventually win this fight, too. We’ll win because the power brokers never learn. They never learn that you can’t kill an idea with pepper spray; you can’t end a movement with a bulldozer.
Should anyone in Kosland wish to express your thoughts on the attack on the Davis students Lt Pike and Chief Spicuzza can be emailed at:
Lt John Pike
japikeiii@ucdavis.edu
Chief Annette Spicuzza
amspicuzza@ucdavis.edu
A message can be sent to Chancellor Katehi through her page in the UC Davis website.
Linda P.B. Katehi, Chancellor
http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/...