I respect their coverage, and absolutely agree with their conclusions, but it is false to say that it is different now. Being involved in mass protest during the period, I can tell you unequivocally that police acted with widespread violence to peaceful protest. This ain’t new. They get to choose when things are unlawful. Nonviolence will always be met by unrelenting violence by police. This is who we are as a society. ACAB today and every day. Solidarity with all who are protesting and putting their bodies and educations on the line for Palestine.
The big difference is that now when the protesters level charges of physical abuse they’ve got footage of the event and the damage it left on them.
Neither the national guard nor staties should ever be called up simply to dislocate protesters - if it turns violent or there are rabid counter-protesters then I can understand… but mere obstruction doesn’t warrant violence.
deleted by creator
15 years is only 2009. I don’t think we’ve had any major protests in that time frame, so yeah any brutality looks unhinged. All I can think of is Occupy and the DAPL protests, and those were smaller and slightly less brutalized. Get back to me when you learn about Blair Mountain.
Of course that’s not to take away the seriousness of police brutalizing protestors in the first place. It would be so trivially easy to just stop supporting genocide.
We haven’t had anything like the Columbia riots of the sixties, sure… but the George Floyd protests were just four years ago.
