How you feel about the Occupy movement is not important, because my comment here is not about the pros or cons of the movement nor whether or not they have a clear and coherent message like the 60s antiwar movement. My thoughts are centered around the recent pepper spray incident and the use of video and You Tube, without conclusion on the event itself.
If you have children, you can relate to this: Your child is exhibiting a behavior you want stopped. You tell the child to stop and he doesn’t. So you tell the child that if he doesn’t stop, you will swat his butt. He keeps it up, and you swat his butt. Simple, and honestly, most parents can relate – and most of us, when we were kids, had our butts swatted.
Now, add the new technology of cell phone or web cam videos, coupled with You Tube. If you recorded the entire incident leading up to the swat, that is one thing. Again, not drawing any conclusions, but putting facts out there. You can edit out whatever you want in a video when you post it to You Tube. And all you see is what is posted. If all that is posted is the child getting a swat, a conclusion by the video watcher may be very different than if the entire video was posted.
What the You Tube video and the television news is reporting of the pepper spray incident at UC Davis, graphically shows a line of “peaceful” students sitting on the ground, arms locked, being pepper sprayed by the campus police. Very disturbing video. Here is what isn’t shown, but video is available that does show it, but the media has chosen not to. Prior to the pepper spray incident, video shows the police telling (not yelling nor confronting) the students they had to move or they would be pepper sprayed. They were blocking the public from entrance to whatever building the protesters felt compelled to block. The protesters obviously didn’t move. So now, we are where the parent is when the child doesn’t stop misbehaving – the promised swat. In this case, the promised pepper spray.
Part of my job is to review police videos for an attorney. I can see firsthand how easy it would be to edit those videos to show whatever point of view someone would want to show. I am not a professional video editor, but I could easily edit any video.
Lastly, are these protesters really peaceful? If you had some people decide to camp out on your front yard to protest your lifestyle, and refused to move, yet were not violent, but blocking your access to your yard, what would you do? You would call the police and the occupiers would be arrested for trespass and DISTURBING THE PEACE! Are they being “peaceful” in their demonstration – just non-violent? There is a difference. But that’s me, and I was just thinking.
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