The Daily Tar Heel
URL: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2011/11/occupys_violence_should_not_be_tolerated
Current Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 08:15:58 -0400
Occupy’s violence should not be tolerated
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TO THE EDITOR:
This weekend, a group of protesters participating in Occupy D.C. pushed down two elderly women who were attending a conference hosted by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative grassroots organization. One woman was injured, and protesters heckled a family with two small children, attempted to force entry into the conference building and halted the flow of traffic.
I was present at the fifth annual “Defending the American Dream Summit” this weekend and witnessed this behavior firsthand. This latest incident highlights the increasingly violent nature of the Occupy movement. Last week, Occupy Oakland supporters shut down the nation’s fifth-busiest port in Oakland, Calif., throwing debris, setting fires and shattering windows.
Not only is this unacceptable, but it is also dangerous to our democracy. A staple of America’s democracy is freedom of expression, but the protesters clearly attempted to intimidate and squelch political participation by the peaceful, conservative conference participants in Washington, D.C., this weekend. The Constitution guarantees us our right to non-violent expression, whether we identify as conservatives, liberals or neither. But violence must never be tolerated.
I would encourage students to concentrate their political passions in a movement other than Occupy UNC. What makes this campus great is the diversity of student organizations and the freedom that students have to share their ideas. Students can certainly find another organization that peacefully represents their views instead of participating in protests that have been escalating violence at the national level and blocking local business owners from conducting their business.
Andrew Johnstone
Senior
Political Science
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30 comments
Here’s actual video footage showing one of the women being pushed down by her husband. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTnOwaTRDog
Check the facts, bud. Or just go read Breitbart and espouse your false opinions.
Unfortunately for your writer’s thesis, the violence did not occur until long after the port shutdown, which was accomplished peacefully, Violence occurring later, after dark. Between 10,00 and 20,000 people were involved in the port shutdown, about 80 people were engaged in active efforts at destruction, and most of those were stopped by the members of the occupy movement.
@John Harold, nobody pushed her down. The guy was trying to bust through the crowd ahead of them, because the Occupy folks had tried to block the AFP folks’ exit.
How about explaining the Oakland issue? Or is that more false information from Breitbart?
The Oakland situation has gotten out of hand on both sides of the protest with the police force going too far with its implementation of force that has in turn triggered a violent reaction from the protesters. While I could see that situation devolving into a game of who-shot-first, I think they need to just take themselves out of the equation completely, or else threaten the legitimacy of the entire movement (using the word “legitimacy” in a very loose interpretation). The entire point of non-violent resistance is specifically to not combat violence with more violence. Once you break this only rule of protesting, even out of defense, you have given cause to ones against whom you are protesting.
Pretty sure this is the same rally where protesters placed/threw themselves in front of a car trying to exit, and then got super pissed about getting hit by the car. What do they expect?!
@John Harold, I think you should check the facts, bud, because this article was completely accurate. A woman was knocked down in the video you posted but a woman was clearly pushed down the stairs in this one. The writer of this article was there and you were not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgcRlrt2ZL4
You actually have the gall to call Americans for Prosperity a “grassroots” organization? Its funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers who seek to lower taxes on themselves and their businesses. Why attend such an event, its just a ploy by the brothers (in the same sense quack groups like CATO and Heritage do) to further enrich themselves at your expense.
Andrew, tell your message about the protests getting violent to the veteran attacked by police in Oakland. How can you watch footage of the event and not blame reckless police activity.Police departments across the country have been escalating violence, using the actions of a few knuckle-headed protestors to squash democratic protests. Vandalism is wrong, I agree, but shouldn’t you have more anger for the actions of Wall Street? Your upset about purported attacks on small business, so why not be upset at reckless actions by Wall Street that obliterated tons of small businesses?
Guys, this is the standard strategy to destroy protests. It was done to anti-war protests and civil-rights protests. Remember how much of the public was turned against the civil rights movement by conservative propaganda in the late 60’s? Propaganda that distorted violent incidents into narrative fitting simplistic stories. Same principle of divide and conquer at work.
Amen. Sexual assaults in Ohio, assaults in DC, destruction in Oakland, vandalism everywhere- why does anyone support this movement of infantile college students?
Imagine if ANY of this happened at the Tea Party. OWS is lucky they have the media in their pocket.
@GVA – if this “strategy” has been used so often, shouldn’t protesters have figured out a way to deal with it? if your opponent constantly runs the same play over and over, you’ve got to be a pretty incompetent team to not develop an effective counter-attack. the veteran getting hurt in Oakland could have been a rallying point for the movement. instead, they squandered that good will by vandalizing a Whole Foods and taking money out of the pockets of blue-collar dock workers. it doesn’t take a right-wing conspiracy for that kind of ignorant violence to hurt the movement’s public image.
The “strategy” works, because the right wing agenda that wants to silence them is organized. The protestors, as with true grassroots movements, are an unorganized mess of people frustrated and fed up, but with no leader. There’s no billionaire pulling their puppet strings. The protesters are an incompetent team in the worst sense. To take your own analogy, if Greenbay shows up on the field, and plays a large group of fans that just show up at the stadium, who do you think is going to win? The same play will work every time.
Nobody’s perfect, and any group that allows anyone in is going to have a problem like this with bad apples. What’s completely unfair is to assume everyone protesting is a violent thug. That’s irresponsible, close minded, assumptive crap… unless you just want to shut them up.
LOL, did anyone watch those youtube videos?
What raging violence!!!! The atrocities!!!!!!Its not just a few bad eggs, there have been numerous incidents of sexual assault and drug deals going down at these camping parties across the nation.
http://gothamist.com/2011/11/05/occupy_wall_street_erects_women-onl.phphttp://abcnews.go.com/US/sexual-assaults-occupy-wall-street-camps/story?id=14873014#.Trh9nEMg_UA
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/11/04/3-charged-with-dealing-crack-occupy-boston-deteriorating/
@Grassroot vs Astroturf, you unnecessarily marginalize yourself by calling mainstream groups like the Heritage Foundation “quack groups.”
Vandalism is wrong, just as damaging decisions made by financial institutions that gloss over glaring deficiencies in favor of promoting the generation of wealth at all costs are wrong. Protest your heart out. Sue the banks to the ends of the earth. There are legitimate ways of doing things. However, indiscriminately setting fires, breaking windows, and destroying property in a mob makes me just as angry as anything that “Wall Street” did. Get some common sense. The Oakland protesters are fortunate that the damn National Guard didn’t get called in to clean up the mess left by their little temper tantrum. And you’re defending those actions, saying that they are somehow less of a problem than the greed committed by the flavor-of-the-week national enemy, Wall Street? Absolutely pathetic.
What propaganda are you speaking of? All that conservative propaganda saying that Bull Connor did it right down in Montgomery? Never happened. To the contrary, the media was one of the key players in sparking national outrage about it from the outset. You’re making things up as you go to defend the despicable actions of your choice group of rebels without a cause.
What you’re missing is a simple rule of thumb: when protests go peacefully, and protesters are exercising their first amendment rights in a way that is conducive to real dialogue, there is nothing that the media could possibly be happier about. But when there’s a full-scale riot in a key harbor that shuts down commerce and involves the indiscriminate destruction of property, don’t expect much sympathy. The media has an innate appreciation for freedom of speech; this appreciation, however, does not extend to violent, dangerous situations that arise from that speech.
If you can say with a straight face that Oakland was a “democratic protest,” you’re stoned.
Ahhhh, the intellectual vacuum that is UNC. Allow me to continue the non-sensical, fallacious mud-slinging, if I may. Opinion pieces like this (and many of the supporting comments) make me want to burn my diploma.
Everything from your collective views that the Oakland protesters were at fault (when numerous marines and riot police have stated that the Oakland Pig Department did not follow SOP when deploying their smoke/tear-gas/riot equipment against the crowd) to claiming grass-roots status for organizations that are anything but, is just so fucked that there’s no sense in trying to explain any of this to you guys.
I bet you morons think that Kayvan Sabeghi deserved what he got even more than Scott Olsen, but that the illegal wars that both men fought in are patriotic. For those that want to attack the movement for occasional small-scale drug use or distribution; LOOK AT THE UNC FRAT CULTURE. Talk about widespread use of harmful drugs…but I’m sure not one of you would suggest shutting down such a wonderful system. Gimme a break. You all suck. Your views are inconsistent and your stances are incoherent and (I’d wager) in many cases hypocritical.
Occupy isn’t going anywhere, I hope it pisses you off a little more each and every day, until you’re spitting mad and red-faced and realize you haven’t got the slightest clue as to why you feel this way.
Well, Anon, it’s not so much a matter of thinking that the protesters deserved what happened to them. It’s more that, in the case of Oakland, if protesters retaliate against violence with more violence, even out of self-defense, then they have given their opponents the evidence necessary to justifying their use of force. You may ask what alternative the protesters had in the face of tear-gas cannisters and riot gear, and to that I say strategic retreat. Turn tail and run the hell away. From a PR perspective in support of Occupy, what image looks better: a protester throwing a rock through a window or a protester running from a smoke cloud with a riot-gear clad police officer charging through it with a baton in the air? The latter picture, while coming at the sacrifice of that demonstration position, gains the support of the public. So, in this way, the Oakland protesters need to either completely surrender so as to protect the rest of the movement from being characterized as violent, or regroup in order to re-evaluate their tactics with regard to facing a hostile force (i.e. the police). This movement will only succeed if the general public can come to sympathize and empathize with the protesters, and this only happens when they behave more like MLK Jr. and less like Malcolm X.
@Anon – this movement doesn’t bother me in the slightest. it has absolutely no affect on my day-to-day life except adding variety to the topics i read about and discuss. judging from the tone of your response, it seems like you are the angry one. if you believe this movement to be such a success, i’m not sure what you’re so upset about.
3 Struck by a car at Occupy DC
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/313953
Second Vet injured at an Occupy Event
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/iraq-war-vet-injured-occupy-oakland-clash-cops-article-1.972622
First Iraq Vet injured
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/occupy-oakland-protester-severely-injured-in-police-clash-ided-as-iraq-war-veteran/
Because Violence is all the Occupiers faults right?
And I am sure poor people are just asking for it,
Highly uninformed letter. Students should not take this into consideration while analyzing the Occupy movement.
No, Andrew Johnstone, and other terrifying commentators— YOU ARE THE VIOLENT ONES. YOU are engaging in violence by sitting idly by as your neighbors’ homes are foreclosed and their children go hungry. YOU are engaging in violence by failing to take action against the thieves who robbed our citizenry blind, then walked away with their jobs and multi-million dollar bailouts. YOU are engaging in violence by justifying police brutality perpetrated against peaceful, unarmed protestors. YOU are engaging in violence by not standing against the illegal wars our country is taking money from your pockets to fight. YOU are engaging in violence by not advocating for decent health care and education for your neighbors.
If you say “THOSE [poor] PEOPLE are not my neighbors”, you are being woefully and dangerously short-sighted and selfish. YOU ARE HUMAN, and thus YOUR FATE is inextricably tied to the fate of the human beings around you, both locally and globally. Poor people and people of color are unfortunately the canary in this coal mine—their suffering is a signal that WE will ALL suffer if we don’t abolish this appallingly greedy and violent system.
When our teachers, nurses, social workers, and plumbers are all homeless;
when we run out of oil, despite committing mass crimes against humanity and killing millions of innocent civilians to attain it;
when the last tree has been cut down;
when our children are sick, uneducated, and unable to grow in to productive adults;
when North Carolina has been frac-ed to pieces;
when our oceans and rivers and lakes are unswimmable, unfishable, and undrinkable;
when the last farmer’s crops are destroyed:
will YOU be ready to look your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren in the eyes and say “I allowed this to happen”? “I did nothing to stop this”? Or more truthfully, “I berated and fought against those who had the courage to fight for all of us”?
…I didn’t think so.
Doing NOTHING while millions of people around you suffer is the TRUE VIOLENCE.
Yes, Naomi, and accusatory rhetoric only serves to further polarize the public by putting them on the defensive. I’m not saying that I disagree with point of view because I think I am on your side. However, your particular manner of expression does nothing to change the mind of your opposition or bring the undecided over to our side. You do not rally the favor of the general public by antagonizing them; you do it by relating to them and showing them that the blight of others is their blight as well. You are as much responsible for the lack of action in this country by virtue of keeping people polarized and stagnant. But, no, go ahead and point fingers.
@Mystic—
1. The truth is not “accusatory rhetoric”.
2. This editorialist and these commentators are not “the general public”—they have already expressed their unwillingness to support this movement (and their inability to understand what it’s about). My previous comment is a direct RESPONSE to their hateration, not an assault on genuinely interested or open-minded members of the “general public”.
3. Can I just point out the complete irony of you commenting that I shouldn’t point fingers, while pointing yours at me?
4. Despite this misunderstanding, I’m glad we’re on the same side. It will take ALL of US to fix this.
*some of these commentators
Thanks to those of you willing to call out the ignorance of Andrew Johnstone and his posse of OWS haters.
Yes, but the truth needs to presented in a way that does make people get defensive. I do agree that the truth needs to be heard, and that it can be hard to hear sometimes. However, experience tells me that when you make someone feel guilty for their indirect action/inaction, they are more easily influenced by the people who would relieve them of that guilty, i.e. the opposition to this movement. I don’t think guilt works. I think it leads to denial and a blocking of one’s ability to sympathize or empathize. I think it leads to people wanting and even searching for people like Johnstone to justify their desire to not believe the truth of our country’s current situation.
Now, I do apologize for the finger pointing comment. That was a bit ad hominem.
@Mystic—
Good point, I really understand your stance here.
I hope to see you at the Franklin St. Post Office sometime so we can continue working together for The People.
Your rhetoric is absolutely terrible. Think about how you can represent the movement better. Being accusatory, ignoring the fact that words like violence have an actual definition, and capitalizing random words aren’t exactly going to help.
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