For the very few of you who did not see the incident, last week, a group of students who were sitting in protest as part of Occupy were sprayed, nay, drenched, not once but twice by a UC Davis police. Two students needed to be hospitalized. It was unquestionably an act of proactive violence by the police.
Yet it was the students of UCD who showed themselves to be the true tough guys on the scene, and by tough guys, I mean Rosa Parks, Gandhi-style tough guys -- the kind who have the courage to wield the power of nonviolence. These students sat there and took it in the face when others would have moved. The rest of the protesters neither rioted nor backed down, instead they came together as one voice, a stentorian moral authority, that shamed the cops and their thuggery right of the quad. It gave me chills to watch.
A chief purpose of a police force is to keep public spaces safe for peaceful assembly.
This fundamental first amendment fact seems to be misunderstood by the police, and treated as a threat rather than an opportunity to teach by chancellors. The UCD incident is another in a growing list of police brutality toward Occupiers, and it is noteworthy because in one event, we see egregious behavior met with the best response. So what can we learn from the brutality and beauty of UCD last week?
First, we are reminded of the compelling power of nonviolence. No other force could have won the moment. No other method can convey the fierce decency of those protesters.
Conversely, every time a protester throws a bottle at a police officer, or breaks a window, or spray paints a tree, he or she does exponential damage to the Occupy movement. Non-violence leaves bullies quaking in their boots. As Occupiers develop new ways to protest and communicate, they will achieve their ends with peace, especially when it is met with brutality.
Second, we need better police and we need to be willing to pay them, and pay to train them.
Officer Pike, who sprayed those kids, does not know what his job is. He either has poor training, poor judgment, or both. He certainly has poor leadership from his superior Chief Spicuzza, whose excuse was a cliché: "Hindsight is 20/20," when she was hired to have foresight.
We need to take care of our cops so that they can take care of us. Ironically, that is what some of the Occupiers are protesting for: protection of pensions (including police pensions) from banksters, and the need for social services, like police. They really are on the same side!
I should say though that UCD does not fit neatly into my narrative of 'If only we paid them and trained them more...' UCD police are comparatively well-paid and educated. Sometimes, there is just no excuse.
That brings me to my third takeaway, keep the cameras rolling. Bearing witness is in itself a agent for change.
In these discouraging times of obstructionist Republicans and feckless Democrats, these students remind me what a great people Americans are and what strong unyielding sense of themselves they have. The hopes of the progressive movement are not squandered. These students are going to win.
But perhaps it is a misnomer to label this a progressive or liberal movement at all.
Where Fox News sees radicalism, I see patriotism. I see the ire of people who are not so cynical as to believe the political system needs to be fixed. I see a through-line in almost all of the myriad Occupy complaints: the slide of America into oligarchy will not be tolerated; indeed, it will be reversed, and the remedy to oligarchy is to restore democracy. Not to play with words here, but what News Corp does not understand is that Occupy could just as easily be called a conservative movement.