The Peoples Response to Police Violence

In Oakland, California on October 25th, 2011 an Occupy Wall Street protest turned into a confrontation between the protestors and the Oakland Police. As Marc Ash can tell you in Remember What They Did in Oakland that "no one really saw it coming. We should have."

Civil unrest, civil resistance, a paranoid, uneducated - and far too heavily armed - police force, governmental officials with no experience in managing para-military forces under their control. It was all there, flame lit, waiting to boil over.

Can anyone see it still? It's there, right there in the picture ... look closely. It's an Oakland police officer standing in broad daylight in the middle of an American city leveling a shotgun at American citizens and firing at them as they run for their lives. Think Kent State, think Chicago 1968. This happened. Mark the day, rue the day.

To the credit of the protesters, they provoked but did not engage or reciprocate in the violence. The Oakland Police Department, however, gave the United States an abject lesson in why compromising civil liberties for the sake of national security is a decision that will eventually blow up in your face.

Scott Olsen and Joshua Shepherd were trained - they thought - by the Marine Corps and the Navy, respectively, to defend freedom. Both served overseas until they realized that the real fight for American freedom is, and really has been, here in the land we call home. So they stood side by side facing down freedom's oldest enemies: fear, ignorance and authoritarianism. The police opened fire on them and Scott Olsen fell critically wounded. Not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but here. He is now in an Oakland hospital fighting for his life. He and all of those who were there with him that night in Oakland, and every city in America now occupied by Americans standing up to injustice, need our support.

What are they fighting for?

Like all revolutionary political movements the Occupy Movement is a spontaneous eruption. It was not scripted or planned in advance. It is rather, the stifled voice of the oppressed, silent no more. To understand what they want we must ask, what do we want? And we must listen to what they say, and to what is in our hearts.

The common theme is "justice." Economic justice, earth environmental justice and social justice. Do those goals sound familiar? They should. They have been at the forefront of every political demonstration in history. However, on a slightly more specific note, if you are looking for things to watch for you will probably be hearing more about the abolishment of the Federal Reserve System in the days, weeks and months to come. Perhaps growing demands for legal prosecution of financial industry managers, maybe some - real - healthcare reform, a little solidarity with our fellow citizens of earth who do not want an American military base in their back yard. Stuff like that.

If the goal of the Oakland police was to squash the Occupy movement, then the violence was not the message. The result is that Occupy Oakland and its supporters have called for a "GENERAL STRIKE & MASS DAY OF ACTION - NOVEMBER 2."

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city. All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.

Change may have been a campaign slogan. Now is is a reality!

The "Not My Fault" Excuse

Once again, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, a close Republican ally of Gov. Scott Walker (R) is claiming that his actions are not his fault. Justice Prosser who has been on the court since 1998, ran as the incumbent candidate in the the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, 2011. Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg ran against Prosser in the election. Prosser has a history of inappropriate behavior. In March, 2011, Prosser declared that he was goaded into insulting the Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

As the deeply divided state Supreme Court wrestled over whether to force one member off criminal cases last year, Justice David Prosser exploded at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson behind closed doors, calling her a "bitch" and threatening to "destroy" her. ... "In a fit of temper, you were screaming at the chief; calling her a 'bitch,' threatening her with '...I will destroy you'; and describing the means of destruction as a war against her 'and it won't be a ground war,'" [Justice Ann Walsh] Bradley wrote in a Feb. 18, 2010, e-mail to Prosser and others.

Prosser acknowledged his outburst, but said he was justified—and then proceeded to blame it on the woman he had verbally assaulted:

"I probably overreacted, but I think it was entirely warranted.... They (Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley) are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements. This is bullying and abuse of very, very long standing."

After the April election, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg had initially declared victory by a an unofficial 204-vote lead over Justice David Prosser, as reported by the Associated Press. However, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, subsequently found more than 14,000 votes that had not been reported from her predominantly GOP county which gave conservative Justice David Prosser a 7,500-vote lead.

Controversy has followed Prosser since the election.

Democrats in Wisconsin were crying foul Friday after a significant vote-count change in the hotly contested Supreme Court election gave the conservative incumbent the lead in a race that could decide the fate of the state's new divisive collective bargaining law.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said it was "human error" that resulted in more than 14,000 votes from her predominantly GOP county not being reported on Tuesday. The corrected totals gave conservative Justice David Prosser a 7,500-vote lead, according to unofficial tallies, and undid the earlier likelihood of a recount.

Rep. Peter Barca, Democratic Assembly minority leader, said Nickolaus' revelation "raises disturbing questions, particularly in light of her partisan history."

"The new Supreme Court race vote totals she 'discovered' during canvassing not only swung the election but also put the race just barely past the amount needed to trigger a state-financed recount," he said in a statement.

Recently, Prosser is being accused of chocking the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley came forth with a statement late Saturday saying that fellow Justice David Prosser choked her and refuting claims that she attacked him first.

"The facts are that I was demanding that he get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a choke-hold," she said. "Those are the facts and you can try to spin those facts and try to make it sound like I ran up to him and threw my neck into his hands, but that's only spin.

"Matters of abusive behavior in the workplace aren't resolved by competing press releases," she said.

"I'm confident the appropriate authorities will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident involving abusive behavior in the workplace."

Prosser's behavior against several female Chief Justices include both verbal and physical aggression. An unnamed source who is on Prosser's side of the argument has now accused Bradley of initiating the violence.

"She charged him with fists raised," the source told the paper, saying that Prosser "put his hands in a defensive posture" to block her, and made contact with her neck. Bradley is then said to have immediately complained of being choked, while another, unnamed Justice responded, "You were not choked."

Prosser has denied the allegations against him.

For his part, Prosser -- who had initially declined to publicly comment -- released a statement containing a denial, and that would make no further public comments: "Once there's a proper review of the matter and the facts surrounding it are made clear, the anonymous claim made to the media will be proven false. Until then I will refrain from further public comment."

There are now calls for Prosser to step down or be removed. Think Progress has Four Ways Justice David Prosser Can Be Removed from Office.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser has exploded. He has cursed. He has threatened. He has choked. He has acknowledged. He has denied. He is a bully who excuses his behavior by blaming his victim.

Time To Chill

Inflammatory language has become the norm for the Republican Party. Whether the leaders of Congress actually mean what they say is not the point. The lack of civility is turning into negative actions by their followers.

It began with racial epithets and homophobic slurs. Democrats in Congress have received threatening letters. They have had bricks thrown through their office windows. Is this vandalism or terrorism?

Rachel Maddow dedicated her show to the issue of 'Intimidation.' WATCH:

The Republicans tried to explain the reasons for the anger before they acknowledged the inappropriateness of the actions.

Rachel Maddow has an excellent analogy of the situation. "If you set a brush fire you are responsible for where it goes and where it burns." The politicians and conservative talking heads need to be responsible and accountable for the violence that is erupting.

Via Crooks and Liars: "We get to vote every couple of years or so. Violence is for dictatorships, not democracies. Like it or not, they're not going to turn the US into Teabagistan, no matter how hard they wish it, or how nasty they get."

Is Domestic Terrorism Rising?

What Now!

Steve Clemons in The Washington Note has and article about the ever changing situation in Iran, There will be Blood. Clemons suggests that what we are seeing on TV is just the tip of the iceberg according to his Iranian contact.

(To get a feel for what is going on in the streets of Tehran, watch this linked BBC video clip.)

Last night in London after appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, I got an email from a well-connected Iranian who knows many of the power figures in the Tehran political order asking to meet me. I told him that the only place possible was Paddington on the way to Heathrow -- and there we met.

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

Sound Familiar?

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.

I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.

This is not a vision he advocates -- but one he fears.

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UPDATE: Check out the Huffington Post's Live Blogging on the Iran Uprise.

Hate, a Vicious Disease

If you think 'hate'...if you speak 'hate'...if you instigate 'hate'...you will get hate, violence and death.

There's a wave of hate in this country. Don't fool yourself. It's nothing new. Yes, the right-wing pundits now feel at liberty to spew their hate filled rants. But it has always been here and it usually stems from ignorance and fear.

When hateful, radical, and despicable rhetoric is being sent out over the internet and broadcast by extreme cable and radio pundits then violence related to hate crimes will increase.

Digby at Firedoglake refers to a new book by Dave Neiwert called The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized The American Right.

The Eliminationists is an extremely timely book, not because we are on the verge of fascism, which Neiwert patiently explains is not the case. But with the Republican party shrinking to its most ardent true believers and the conservative movement floundering on the shoals of its massive failure at governance, this ugly tendency is both more prevalent and more obvious. Recent shootings in Tennessee and Pennsylvania were shown to have been motivated by the malignant misinformation that's being passed down through radical right wing groups to the mainstream media. The Tea Party movement features a febrile paranoia about the president, comparing him to Mao, Stalin and Hitler. People are stockpiling guns. On the edge and losing power and prestige, the conservative id is pulsating like a raw nerve.

Unfortunately there have been several hate filled events that are recently in the news...

Scott Roeder Held As "Person Of Interest" In Probe Of Dr. George Tiller's Killer
Huffington Post

***UPDATE*** McClatchy Newspapers is reporting that Scott Roeder, the "person of interest" held by police in Kansas, belonged to the "Freemen" anti-government group in the 1990s and was once arrested for having bomb-making materials in his car:

"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

George Tiller Killed: Abortion Doctor Shot at Church
AP/Huffington Post

***UPDATE*** US Attorney General Eric Holder is dispatching US Marshals to protect abortion clinic and doctors around the country.

Guard Killed in Shooting at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A rifle-wielding white supremacist entered Washington’s crowded but solemn Holocaust museum on Wednesday afternoon, fatally shooting a security guard before being wounded himself by return fire from other guards.

Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the museum’s security staff, later “died heroically in the line of duty,” a museum statement said.

Law enforcement sources identified the suspect as James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland.

He is a known Holocaust denier who created an anti-Semitic Web site called “The Holy Western Empire.” He has repeatedly claimed “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a widely-read book about a teenage girl’s experiences under Nazi rule, was a hoax. The museum shooting occurred on a day the m
Von Brunn maintains a racist, anti-Semitic website and wrote a book titled Kill the Best Gentile, alleging a Jewish "conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool."

Right-Wing Violence

Washington Monthly

In light of the shootings at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. this afternoon, allegedly committed by white supremacist James Von Brunn, Matt Yglesias noted, "I hope that everyone who mau-maued the Department of Homeland Security for expressing concern about this kind of thing feel appropriately ashamed of themselves."

It's hardly an unreasonable point. Two months ago, Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban." A few weeks ago, Scott Roeder, another right-wing extremist, allegedly assassinated Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. A few hours ago, Von Brunn, another right-wing extremist, allegedly opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

There are other recent examples that bear similar characteristics. This story out of Tennessee from last year continues to haunt:

Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children's musical. [...]

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of "the liberal movement," and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his "hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said. "Liberals in general, as well as gays."

Obviously, we're dealing with sick individuals here. There are key differences between violent right-wing radicals and mainstream Americans who happen to be conservative. Indeed, I'm not suggesting that conservative activists are necessarily dangerous, violent people.

I am suggesting that it makes sense of the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate and communicate with law enforcement agencies about potentially violent extremists -- of every ideological stripe -- to help prevent tragedies like the ones we've seen lately.

The DHS report specifically addressed the possibility of violence from anti-abortion radicals and anti-Semitic extremists. And in the last two weeks, Tiller was assassinated and a white supremacist opened fire at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Republican hysteria over the DHS report -- which was, by the way, initiated by a Bush administration official -- was always based more on a partisan scheme than reality, but the incessant complaints look especially misguided today.

Changing the rhetoric won't change those who are filled with hate. But right-wing pundits, politicians and bloggers need be responsible. A change of tone will be a place to start.
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UPDATE: Crooks and Liars on point about "Glen Beck and his fellow wingnuts."

Beck offered the following rationale on his Fox News show tonight:

Beck: What they're missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.

Actually, Beck has this exactly right. But frankly, it's boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming "liberal fascism," the "economic meltdown," the "New World Order," violence spilling over the Mexican border, even FEMA concentration camps.

As I tried to explain in the case of the shooting of Dr. George Tiller, when you spread far-right conspiracy theories through mainstream channels the way Beck does with such abandon, it not only validates their beliefs, it rather hyper-validates them: It tells these people -- who see the Becks and O'Reillys as part of the "liberal media" -- that things are even worse than they thought, and it often spurs them into action.