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This is America

This is America people. Earn your keep. Use your God given, hands, legs, head, brain, and heart and fight for what you want. Don’t expect the government to support you, or to take care of you. Yes, they will to an extent, but those dreams you have, those aspirations you wish to achieve: YOU have to make them happen. The reality is the value of the dollar is universal to all Americans, Democrats, Republicans and everyone in between, and it effects the choices being made. When the government makes a decision, it has the country’s and their own best interest in mind. They are not thinking about you as an individual. Stop complaining about what’s not being done for you, and start doing something for yourself. Stop waiting to be spoon fed like a child. Stop sucking on the government tit. You are an adult. You are a more than capable individual. So whether you are the 99% or the 1%, earn and fight for what you want, and never expect anyone to give it to you.

-The Average American Citizen

I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.

My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.

I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.

At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in the park after the police said not to. It’s a misdemeanor. Almost always, for a misdemeanor, the police just give you a ticket and let you go. It costs you a couple hundred dollars. Apparently, that’s what happened with most every other misdemeanor arrest in LA that day.

With us Occupy LA protestors, however, they set bail at $5,000 and booked us into jail. Almost none of the protesters could afford to bail themselves out. I’m lucky and I could afford it, except the LAPD spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set. If you were an accused murderer or a rapist in LAPD custody that day, you could bail yourself right out and be back on the street, no problem. But if you were a nonviolent Occupy LA protestor with bail money in hand, you were held long into the following morning, with absolutely no access to a lawyer.

I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Occupy LA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.

Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days… the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.

As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as “the LAPD’s finest hour.”

Thank God news outlets like NPR are all over what happened there that day. Here’s what NPR has to say about it:

In the end, there was very little force used, in part because this is a new LAPD. It exercises much more restraint than it once did

Thank God for NPR, or we might actually learn about what the LAPD did to Occupy LA!

Play

I think that the whole 99% is working. Some corporate people are actually asking the supercommittee to tax them!

A Tale of Two Occupations: Los Angeles and Albany

In Los Angeles, the occupation has the support of city and local officials:

(Los Angeles) passed a resolution voicing support for the (Occupy L.A.) movement. (Organizer Matt) Rolufs was thrilled when city officials said that Occupy Los Angeles had inspired them to move forward on a policy initiative to demand accountability from big banks.

While protesters in other cities have battled with the police, Los Angeles is letting around 700 people spend the night on city hall’s lawn even though it’s against the law. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa even handed out ponchos to campers during a rainstorm. But the city council went even further in its resolution by urging implementation of a proposal known as the Responsible Banking program because it would address some of the protesters’ concerns.

And in Albany, they don’t… but they get help from unexpected places:

In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany’s mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.

The situation intensified late Friday evening when Jennings, who has cultivated a strong relationship with Cuomo, directed his department to arrest protesters who refused to leave the city-owned portion of a large park that’s across Washington Avenue from the Capitol and City Hall…

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” the official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.”

A city police source said his department also was reluctant to damage what he considers to be good community relations that have taken years to rebuild. In addition, the crowd included elderly people and many others who brought their children with them.

We’re making progress.

Los Angeles police used nearly a dozen undercover detectives to infiltrate the Occupy LA encampment before this week’s raid to gather information on the anti-Wall Street protesters’ intentions, according to media reports.

None of the officers slept at the camp, but they tried to blend in during the weeks leading up to the raid to learn about plans to resist or use weapons against police, a police source told the Los Angeles Times. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

This is one of the more alarming things to come out of the Occupy L.A. movement, which was noted for having a decent relationship with the city before the encampment’s closure.