From Reuters:
Student protesters at Davis had set up an encampment in the university’s quad area earlier this month as part of the nationwide Occupy movement against economic inequality and excesses of the financial system.
Their demonstrations, which had been endorsed by a faculty association, included protests against tuition increases and what they viewed as police brutality on University of California campuses in response to recent protests.
The students had set up roughly 25 tents in a quad area, but they had been asked not to stay overnight and were told they would not be able to stay during the weekend, due to a lack of university resources, Katehi said.
Some protesters took their tents down voluntarily while others stayed. The pepper spray incident appeared to take place on Friday afternoon, when campus police moved in to forcibly evict the protesters.
Katehi said on Friday she was “saddened” by the manner in which protesters were removed from the quad, and on Saturday announced a task force of faculty, students and staff to investigate the incident.
She said she had also instructed the school to reevaluate whether university policy on encampments offered students sufficient “flexibility to express themselves.”
The move announcing the task force came after Katehi came under criticism from members of her own faculty.
“You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011,” an assistant professor of English, Nathan Brown, wrote in an open letter to Katehi on Friday.
“I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds,” said Brown, who described himself as a faculty organizer who had supported the protests.
UC Davis police could not immediately be reached for comment.
The next evening, several hundred students sat in silence while University Chancellor Katehi walked three blocks to her car.
Photo’s above are from Occupy Wall Street.
In this video, Oakland officers beat a three tour Iraqi War vet during the night of the General Strike on November 2, 2011.
From Common Dreams:
Demonstrators are reporting the NYPD’s use of Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) against protesters during today’s Occupy Wall Street “Day of Action.” The machines are meant to send out “high intensity” noise over large areas, and “allow for near instantaneous escalation across the force protection spectrum,” according to the official product overview. Twitter user Joshua Paul snapped the accompanying photo, which seems to match the LRAD 100X model, and writes: “High pitched noise. Natural reaction: My face scrunched and hands started moving to my ears. Length was around 5 seconds.” The OWS Twitter jokes, “Didn’t we get evicted for our drums being too loud or something?”
And finally, a retired school teacher after being pepper sprayed in Seattle on October 15th.
If you have the stomach to view more videos and photo’s of police brutality on United States citizens, see truthout’s Caught on Camera.
One positive note, the Seattle City Council issued a resolution backing Occupy Seattle. Go Seattle! For the details see the Seattle PI article Seattle City Council backs Occupy Seattle.
And now, a memo circulated around the American Bankers’ Association:
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”
The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.
Dora
Post Script:
Seattle Education 