<p>Give me a break, hops_scout. I can’t believe you just said that with a straight face. You think the police in that situation believed they were in danger of getting, hit, injured or killed, and that’s why they used pepper spray? You just proved my point. </p>
<p>Here’s a suggestion: why not treat the kids who got pepper sprayed with the same consideration and refusal to pass judgment that you do with Jerry Sandusky?</p>
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<p>I haven’t once said the students did anything wrong. But apparently you can’t read what I type or you’d see that.</p>
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<p>On the heels of the post asking for poster’s age group, this is a continuation of attacking points that were never made, namely the SUPPORT of police violence. </p>
<p>In this thread, posters have already tried to bring up analogies to the support of gun toting activists, the support of booing of uninsured citizens, or the deriding of Obama in political arenas. All in obviously deliberate attempts to vilify posters who happens to NOT voice a blanket support of the students who sat down on the sidewalks of UC-Davis. </p>
<p>There is stretch between not condoning the decisions by students to remain seated despite the order of a police force that was visibly eager to use their mace and supporting police brutality! At 25 years old, I am supposed to have sympathy for students who express frustration with the “controlling power” and be programmed to challenge authority, rules, and regulations. But then, why cannot I believe that there ARE much better avenues for the most educated among us to express such dismay. Much better than trying to build unsanitary camps on campus all the while failing to express a clear message and positions. </p>
<p>If civil disobedience was necessary in the 30s or the 60s, the progress in communications has diminished (if not eradicated) to need to assemble to shout messages and DEFY the rules of order. The blogosphere and the ubiquitous internet allows anyone to speak up and express a message. This should not be foreign to university students. Why is it necessary to go beyond what has been authorized? If you have the right to assemble, why is it necessary to try to build camps and openly defy the order? </p>
<p>When it comes to its essence, this is not about the right to assemble or protest. The universities where trouble erupted DID allow the students to protest. The trouble started when students decided to defy simple requests of not building camps or not block the safe passages. The trouble reached their apex when students sought to the conflicts by deliberately provoking the reactions by people who are not known for their subtility or intelligence.</p>
<p>What is the worst that could have happened if the seated students had stood up and walked away? They still would have their voice and right to protest by using legitimate and more useful channels. </p>
<p>In the end, little changes. People who are so vociferous about rights, especially the freedom of speech, seem to be first to attack or question anyone who does not share their views. Usually through strawmen arguments and under the pretense that there is no reason to play nice! </p>
<p>This thread has not been much different than others in this forum.</p>
<p>Just listened to the davis president on a cnn interview. IMO she sounded like she was not intimate with the issues, had no real suggestions for a dialogue and was very poorly spoken - almost embarrassingly so. I get that she had to make the students take down the tents but she should have been out there, face-to-face listening and trying to de-escalate the situation. I can’t believe she had anything more pressing going on.</p>
<p>@ Xiggi: Luckily, those of us in the US have rights guaranteed to us, whether we are vociferous about them or not. You take away the right to assemble peacefully and you have Tianamen Square. FWIW, I don’t like it when the KKK marches through a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. I don’t like it when the Westboro Baptist Church spews its hate at the funerals of servicemen and women. But I agree that they have a right, under the US Constitution, to do so, like it or not. You asked what is the worst that could have happened if the Davis students had stood up and walked away? Would the Arab Spring have occurred if the students in Tahrir Square had gotten up and walked away? Of course, what’s on the line is vastly different, but the means of achieving what they want is the same. Civil disobedience, as advocated by Gandhi and King, is able to accomplish change because of the disobedience part of it. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure of what they are asking for, which is why I think the Occupy movement is having so much trouble getting people to listen and take them seriously. But they absolutely have a right to use civil disobedience to try to be heard. And a right not to be sprayed in the face with a weapon for exercising that right.</p>
<p>Mark Yudof, the president of the University of California, has issued a statement. [University</a> of California - UC Newsroom | President Yudof responds to campus protest issues](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26702]University”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26702). </p>
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<p>Multiple sources are reporting two police have been let go.</p>
<p>Yesterday I found a small section of an old NYT in a bookcase - date = exactly 5 years ago. </p>
<p>[A</a> New Class War - The Haves vs. the Have Mores - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/weekinreview/19konigsberg.html]A”>A New Class War: The Haves vs. the Have Mores - The New York Times)</p>
<p>The New Class War - The Have and Have Mores - CONTAINS CHARTS AND NUMBERS OF BOTTOM TO TOP .5%. Before the election and crash of 2007-2008.</p>
<p>[The</a> Smile of Reason - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/opinion/19brooks.html]The”>Opinion | The Smile of Reason - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Brooks and Milton Friedman</p>
<p>Additional articles were about Rumsfeld and how he ruined the military, an article by Frank Rich, partisan politics similar to today, though not as viscious.</p>
<p>It was sad to realize that five years from now there won’t be any paper newspapers to find by surprise.</p>
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<p>Xiggi, I think you’re missing the point here. The protestors wanted to publicize their grievances. With the pepper spray and the walk of shame, the students won. The police, especially the pepper-spraying Officer Tubby McPornstache, lost.</p>
<p>^That really is the power of nonviolent protest.</p>
<p>Xiggi, did it occur to you that at least some of the vehemence of the response to you and others taking similar positions is attributable to the provocative way you referred to the protesters as “idiots”? Given the general public reaction, they don’t really seem like such idiots now, do they?</p>
<p>the Occupy movement doesn’t even know what they are protesting, and I don’t really have much sympathy for the movement as a whole. That said, the Davis students absolutely should not have been pepper sprayed for sitting on the ground not causing a disturbance.</p>
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<p>The whole point was to cause a disturbance…</p>
<p>Hopscotch, those kids sitting on the ground were not a threat to the police and in no way deserved to ne pepper sprayed like that. Ridiculous.</p>
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<p>Wow. Never been called that one before 
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<p>And apparently law enforcement across the country disagree. Considering their policies and procedures haven’t been thrown out by the courts, it must be legal…</p>
<p>“IMHO, maybe this thread becomes even more interesting when we know the ages of the posters? How many aren’t middle-aged or older parents?
I am interested if the oldest posters are those most supportive of OWS.
I am old. I am a supporter.”</p>
<p>alh, I don’t think age has anything to do with it. It’s a philosophy. Me, my husband, and my children generally support the police and absolutely don’t support the OWS protestors. My kids (without us even mentioning our position) think the OWS group are a bunch of morons. I (female, forties) generally support the police because I have a military background and a family full of law enforcement. I realize that police are human, make mistakes in judgement and often feel threatened. There are good and bad, a cross section of humanity, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure this situation will be completely investigated.</p>
<p>Now I have to wonder how many of the people who are enraged at this incident would be similarly enraged if some Tea Partiers were pepper sprayed at a rally. Unlikely there would be this level of furor from the same people, I think. Many would probably assume they deserved it, without any further thought or concern.</p>
<p>“Now I have to wonder how many of the people who are enraged at this incident would be similarly enraged if some Tea Partiers were pepper sprayed at a rally. Unlikely there would be this level of furor from the same people, I think. Many would probably assume they deserved it, without any further thought or concern.”</p>
<p>Nobody should be peppersprayed - however T’s show up at rally’s with AK47s - I doubt the police would risk being killed.</p>
<p>in re. comment #116: or a group of young black males…walking in the ‘wrong’ neighborhood…getting pulled over by the police and cracked upside their heads while minding their own business. same outrage? makes you wonder.</p>
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<p>Maybe the police should just shoot them? Shoot them dead? That’ll teach everybody!</p>
<p>Really, lots of T’s show up at rally’s with AK47s? Does that happen alot? Or was there one man?</p>
<p>I like the generalization there, yeah. One guy does it, it must be all of them.</p>
<p>Let’s spread that around to the OWS crowd. I guess they all must be rapists, criminals, homeless druggies who defecate everywhere. Of course, that is a more accurate generalization than the one you’re making.</p>
<p>And nobody should be pepper sprayed? I think I’d rather have a cop pepper spraying me then shooting and asking questions later.</p>