My thoughts on the whole Occupy Wall Street movement have just changed considerably. I just watched the video of UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walking to her car, surrounded by thousands of completely-silent student protesters. Calling it the “Walk Of Shame,” the silent protest was in response to Katehi’s order which resulted in the egregious pepper spraying of a dozen peaceful protesters on the UC Davis campus Friday.
As Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic points out, Friday’s unprovoked attack was much worse than the above video shows, with police holding the peaceful students and directly pepper-spraying them in the face and throat.
In all of these incidents, it appears that only the police have been violent. The protesters have remained true to their peaceful purposes and not lashed out in response, though they could’ve easily done so. This will only help build sympathy for this movement. It’s hard to argue that the police reaction isn’t incredibly aggressive and far in excess of what is decent and proper. These are mostly kids, after all.
Seeing the UC Davis student’s Walk Of Shame protest makes me think the whole “Occupy” movement has reached a tipping point, that it’s not going to go away any time soon. These kids have every right to assert their right to peaceful assembly and bless them for defending that right. From my view, the cops’ violent tactics show who is in the right on this issue.
There’s no excuse for gassing peaceful kids. None. This kind of fearful response means the kids are winning.
I agree that the response of the campus police in this instance was *apparently* above what should have been done.
However, since they had already been asked, then ordered, to leave and did not, the students were clearly in violation of campus rules.
As to the “they’re just kids” – I can’t disagree more, sadly. These college students are demanding to be looked at as adults: responsible, grown-up members of society. If they want to be treated and viewed as adults, then they need to realize their actions can be responded to as adult will be.
I have read about several of the “Occupy” protests that have had some pretty Bad Stuff ™ going on amongst the gatherees 🙁
Warren, the pepper spraying of non-violent (and the definition of non-violent is sitting down) protestors is a fourth amendment violation as per established case law in the 9th circuit. In addition, it is cause for the police office in question to lose his immunity from prosecution as a police officer.
http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2011/11/did-uc-davis-pepper-spray-cop-use-excessive-force.html