The Daily Show’s already spoofed the pepper-spraying incident. Turns out the spray-happy cop’s name is Anthony Bologna, so they put together an extremely impressive short film:
“Christopher Meloni is Tony Baloney as The Vigilony!”
And they actually got Christopher Meloni for it.
The police will use force to prevent marches. When the marches get big enough, the police will escalate.
This one was small so they did not get real aggressive. But they sent a message.
When they get bigger, the police will get meaner.
I marched in lots of anti war marches when I was young. It is not a picnic. Getting busted by the cops is not fun. It is a price you reluctantly pay to hopefully sway politicians and send a message that the people want them to do something.
I am old enough that my first marches were for black rights and equality of the races. The nastiness and hatred shown by bigots stays with you forever. There were groups financed by some wealthy people to make it as miserable as possible. They were as bad as the cops ,but it was not just a walk in the park. it could be dangerous and scary.
The police are capable of a lot more destruction now. On 60 minutes the NY police said they can shoot a plane down. The NY cops can shoot a fucking plane down. They have lots of nasty riot control tools in their toolbox. It will get ugly.
I think a huge part of this is due to the technological age we live in and a person’s ability to record an officer’s actions. This is also exactly why more than one assault occurred at these protests by a cop on a pedestrian who was doing nothing more than exercising their right to videotape the police.
Don’t be surprised if you get hit by a car when walking into the middle of a road.
Seriously, if you create an inherently unsafe situation (protest bordering on riot, such as when police orders are ignored) don’t be surprised when police do their job and use force to subdue you.
If you have a problem with that, don’t protest/riot.
I have no sympathy for these people, nor do I blame the police for their actions.
You seem to not understand that there is a difference between a protest and a riot.
I understand that the difference between the two depends solely on the behavior of the individuals involved. The larger a group of people becomes, the lower its mean intelligence.
Riots usually begin with a few people acting nonviolently for a good reason. Then dumbass teenage punks join in and just stand around/break shit/pretend they weren’t doin nothin and before you know it cars are overturned, store windows are broken, and molotov cocktails are flying through the air.
Police are called in, they attempt to restore order by nonviolent means which will inevitably fail because those dumbass teenage punks don’t get it unless someone smacks them in the face or hits em with tear gas. So they form a line with riot shields and batons, advance on the rioters, launch tear gas, and somewhere along the lines something will happen that in retrospect shouldn’t have. People watch videos and think that people are always in perfect control and doing exactly what they want to. The fact of the matter is that when things happen as quickly as they do in a riot, people don’t do what they feel ought to be done. They act on impulse and instinct. Primitive cranial nerve reflexes take over. Then they justify and rationalize what they did after the fact.
Then someone video tapes it, cries police brutality, and politicians take over promising to be tough on crime/investigate the police department/enact social reform of some sort. There are lawsuits, investigations, and in the grand scheme of things nothing has changed. The message of the original protest is lost amidst the tumult of violence and vandalism that it had wrought.
How do you think all the current violence in the middle east began?
I’m going out on a limb and guessing it wasn’t because of lax enforcement or reluctance of the police to use force. How do you think it began?
It probably began with peaceful protests, which were escalated either by the protesters or the police. They all have assault rifles over there so who the hell knows.