noted. 11/20/2011

• Occupy D.C. protesters claim vacant Franklin School - Post Now - The Washington Post

  • Protestors wore bandanas over their faces as they dropped the banner from the top of the school about 3 p.m. It read “Public Property Under Community Control.” They waved to about 200 people in a park below who cheered them on.

     

• Occupy Portland denied in Park Blocks | kgw.com Portland

  • Friday, about 15 members of Occupy Portland attempted to occupy a vacant, foreclosed house on NE Roselawn, as part of an effort to continue the movement.

     

  • Demonstrators said they were occupying a bank-owned house. They said they could house 40 people in there, and encouraged others to do the same.

     

• Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street: Excessive Use of Force amidst the New Military Urbanism

  • joined on the phone by Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum that coordinated the conference call with mayors and police officials around the country. Can you talk about what’s happening today—the Occupy Oakland, the massive police response, the kind of police response we saw in Seattle with the pepper-spraying of not only Dorli Rainey, but many other people directly in the face—the conversation that took place, and why you coordinated this call, Chuck?

  • But first of all, a correction: we did not coordinate the call with the mayors. It was simply with police chiefs. And it originated from Boston and Portland. The police chiefs in those cities asked to just compare notes.

     

  • The officers, for example, in Oakland were dressed as my police officers were in Seattle, which is, in effect, for full—in full battle gear. We were using military tactics. I authorized the use of chemical agents on nonviolent offenders. I thought I had good justification at that time. I did not. The police officer in me was thinking about emergency vehicles, fire trucks, aid cars being able to get through a key intersection. The police chief in me should have said, "This is wrong," and vetoed that decision. I will regret that decision for the rest of my life. We took a military response to a situation that was fundamentally nonviolent, in which Americans were expressing their views and their values, and used tear gas on them. And that was just plain wrong.
  • And as I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, "I need to get in. My daughter’s there. I want to know if she’s OK." And he said, "Move on, lady." And he kept pushing—they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she said—and she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head. And I walk over, and I say, "Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that." And he said, "Lady, do you want to get arrested?" And I said, "Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer." He said, "You want to get arrested?" And he pushed me up against the wall.

• Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi | UCDavis Bicycle Barricade

  • These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week.
  • When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.