To Occupy Wall Street pt. 2: Occupy Oakland

(http://www.rblack.org/)

Last night on the streets of Oakland police clashed with the 99%. They were armored in riot gear, and met hurled rocks and slogans with rubber bullets and enough canisters of tear-gas to fill the streets of Oakland with billowing yellow clouds of poison. "A literal fog of war" i thought as watched live streaming video of the carnage in the streets; a miracle of the modern age, that we can be witness to the battlefield, live and in real time, as we watch the atrocities that are committed in our name. And there is no mistake in my mind, this was a battle. You only have to type "Oakland" into the YouTube search bar to see video after video of senseless brutality that seems as though they would be more fitting on the streets of Damascus than in an American city. Scene after scene of peaceful demands for change being met with violence.

Scott Olsen, a veteran of two tours in Iraq was critically wounded after being hit in the face with a police projectile. He is in the hospital, his condition is critical. And though it saddens and sickens me to say so, this will not be the last clash between police and protesters and Scott Olsen will not be the last man to fall. Because America's police departments are no longer the keepers of our civic peace, but soldiers in an ever growing number of domestic 'wars.' We have made war on Drugs, and war on Terror, and now the Oakland PD has made war on Dissent. 

But violence must not be met with violence. The cause of the Wall Street Protests is righteous; economic justice and corporate accountability, and most importantly an end to the open corruption in DC.