This is not a warzone, it just sometimes looks like one.

Just two videos that sum up what's going on with the "Occupy" movement and why I think one of the biggest things that needs to happen is a change of attitudes about how we look at justice as a society and how people are treated.

This is a clip of  Iraq veteran Sgt. Shamar Thomas speaking his mind to cops a few weeks ago after witnessing police brutality:



What he repeats over and over is that "This is not a war zone."  And it's not. This is a nonviolent show of solidarity by people exercising their rights to free speech and assembly. This is people making use of common space to raise awareness and make themselves heard. This is a display of our Constitutional rights in this country. It's not a crime to be, to speak, to walk, to sit, to hold a sign, and a person should feel secure exercising their rights--

but take a look at this (although, trigger warning, it does depict violence) is a clip from the events at Occupy Oakland where another Iraq veteran, Scott Olsen, was wounded:



That looks like a war zone to me.  That is how people are treated when they are viewed as the enemy, instead of as just people.  It looks very much to me as if projectiles were fired with the intent to harm the protesters, and that is just not acceptable. As with the Bologna pepper-spray incident, it appears to be an incident of hostility towards the protesters, and I think I can understand it. Understanding doesn't excuse, and it doesn't make it right.  I just think I understand.



Police officers are supposed to keep the peace. It's their job to be suspicious of things that are anomalous, and to be guarded and expect danger. A protest is messy, loud, anomalous.  It can act as a magnet for behaviors that are just unpredictable, because crowds are unpredictable, and because emotions can be high. There's a lot there for an officer to be concerned about. His training tells him to expect something.  And time wears on. And maybe they hear taunts from the crowd from people who don't respect the presence of the police, or respect that they are trying to do a job--and that prejudices them some more.   I'm not saying it makes the kind of incident indicated above ever right--only that I can see how human beings can develop opinions about "Us and Them". The cops were tired of "Them". Those people. Those people taking up that space.

But there's the hitch--there isn't an "Us" and a "Them". The people in the Oakland clip were saying "We are the People", but they weren't being seen that way. They were treated as others, or strangers, or an enemy. When that "Us and Them" mentality is displayed, the understanding that we are dealing with people is lost. We start dealing with labels. It's hippies and pigs. It's anarchists and law-abiders. It's bullshit and more bullshit.

I think in a lot of ways, our society as been stuck in a rut where we identify with labels of the past, as if time doesn't move on. These 99% protests, though, aren't based on division or identities. They are multi-generational and diverse. These aren't the "hippies" of some dumb generalization--the two men who are the subjects of these clips are vets, and identify with some aspects of the economic justice issues that the protests are about. But this movement is not a monolith--and above all, its made up of just people.

The idea is, 99% of the people aren't getting what they are working for, in terms of social or economic justice,. They aren't being represented by their government. They are taking to the streets because the ballot boxes and the emails and the letters and all that never seems to remedy the big problem. We are the People. We're also just people. And the people whose job is to serve and protect should not be doing harm.  Officers of the peace shouldn't be bringing a war zone to peaceful protests.

The people are not the enemy. The cops aren't the enemy either--but that clip was certainly hard to watch without feeling some kind of way about it.