Scott Olsen is a veteran from the Iraqi war who became famous when he was struck in the head by “bean bag rounds” at Occupy Oakland in October 2011. He went to the hospital and suffered from hemorrhaging and has had severe mental and physical damage since. 

This is the lawsuit that he has filed against the City of Oakland, the OPD, and other officials for not only his damage, but to address the “inadequate training” and illegal actions of the police. 

[/r/occupywallstreet thread] 

Here’s a [video] of the incident, highlight the moment when his injury occurred. Trigger warning for violence. 

One inspired the other. 

My eternal thanks to the guy who let me take a picture of him. 

stfuconservatives:

thetruthisouttheree:

Alright, thanks for the replies everyone. Didn’t mean to make you all mad, I just wanted to understand the liberal side. I’m cool with welfare for families that need it and are actively seeking work. I know the requirements, but it is an easy system to corrupt. Forget about statistics here because you can’t gather this kind. Use common sense- Don’t you think it’s the least bit odd that you have to get drug tests to have a job in this country, but not to collect money from those who have jobs and contribute to society? Seriously, I’d be fine with helping people who are not doing drugs. I admire the trust in this “honor system,” but wouldn’t it make all the sense in the world to require drug tests on the unemployed who go on welfare.

As far as OWS goes, I’m all for exercising democratic rights. However, this has gone too far. You might want to check this out- http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-29/occupy-oakland-protests/52871646/1. I’m sure that not all protesters use drugs, burn our flag, and assault people. But it’s disturbing how many are, and getting away with it.

Also, corporations create jobs and run this country. Attacking them and being paranoid about “lobbying” is just silly and un- American. Capitalism runs on competition and these corporations create global competitiveness and American superiority across the world. Why do people have a problem with our politicians helping them out? So what, they get paid. Good for them! It’s not undermining democracy at all. Corporations are made up of people, and those people are the ones helping our economy. We must get work ethic back in America because this system has always worked until this current epidemic of laziness and entitlement sense.

As far as poor people helping themselves, that’s not what I said at all. I think we the people must take responsibility and help them, apart from the government. My family is active in helping the poor. My parents donate to many charities and we help the poor through my volunteer activities, such as homeless shelters. This is actually caring for the poor. Unlike big government help, with its many opportunities for corruption, it’s actually showing them love as opposed to forced giving.

I’m just going to focus real quick on the part I bolded. This, folks, is spoon-fed conservative nonsense. OP, you asked liberals to explain corruption. But corporations paying politicians to look out for their special interests is just “creating competition”? And questioning that is UN-AMERICAN? Gee, I wonder why people say Republicans don’t care about poor people!

For real though. Having social programs (which every first-world nation has, including the ones with better economies than ours) is creating an “epidemic of laziness and entitlement” but openly supporting candidates who will let you pay less in taxes is just how capitalism works? Seriously? Seriously? Are you even listening to yourself?

Take your own advice and use a little common sense. Do you think we should drug test every person who gets tax breaks? Every person who uses public schools and parks and sidewalks? No? Then why should we only drug test poor people who use “taxpayer money”? HMMMM.

I love your “well you can’t gather statistics on this stuff” line. Actually you can! In Florida, when they started drug-testing welfare recipients, less than 2% of them failed. That’s lower than than the average level of drug use in our country, period. That’s not common sense — that’s reality. The truth has a liberal bias.

-Jess

To respond to the #OWS accusation: Almost every single time you find a violent situation in #OWS, it starts with the police actually making efforts to avoid letting the peaceful protests reach their destination.

The Oakland protests, though, have far more history than just OWS with police brutality. I personally wouldn’t know it, since I don’t keep up on that area, but within days of their first rounds of arrests, media outlets had articles linking OWS arrests to past situations in the justice system. There’s barely a handful of citizens that are surprised that there’s this much violence on both sides of the playing field.

Unfortunately, Oakland is going to be used as a huge target for OWS critics that don’t really “get” this particular city. Certainly, though, it’s going to polarize the media further. 

Anonymous promised that after hacking the intelligence firm Stratfor, called by some a “shadow CIA,” they’d prove that they were more than just a consulting firm.

Now it looks like the private company worked along with law enforcement in attempting to bring down the Occupy movement.

In some of the latest pieces of correspondence made public, however, information that many had already suspected about the role law enforcement played in infiltrating the Occupy Wall Street movement is brought to light. In an exchange of emails between Stratfor executives that has been published by hackers involved in the matter, employees of the firm go back-and-forth with one another in detail over information that Texas law enforcement supplied the firm after investigating an Austin Occupy meet-up.

Just wanted to share. 

holdenon:

by Lara Blackman 

Be informed about the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Please read this post. Seriously. It’s your job as a citizen of the world to be informed about what’s going on, and this is something that you need to be aware of. And please reblog it and inform your followers.

Don’t make any judgement until you know both sides of the story.  

This is one of the most important protests of our time — whether or not it’s more important than the Arab Spring is debatable, but it’s up there. So I’m going to explain to you the basics in one post. 

Read More

Heading up to the media preview of #WhileWeWatch. Hopefully an interesting experience. 

Let’s just say I have more than a few reasons to be upset personally since the crisis began. 

I want our generation to be aware of the corruption in corporations and the government. We’ve been brainwashed to think that everything’s perfect the way it is. That’s bull. We need to remain educated. 

That’s the purpose of OWS. Not to put a candidate in office, not to overthrow the government, not to take down all the corporations. 

We occupy because we’re upset. We want to raise awareness in politics and economics. We want to change the way the world thinks. 

And we want you to know that. 

That is what Occupy Wall Street has done. 

If you have a problem with that, please tell me about how perfect the economy is and how corruption doesn’t affect anything. 

My Day Off by ~RizzleG on DeviantART 

I’m part of that ADD generation that shouldn’t give a shit about anything for more than five minutes. It’s true. I don’t most of the time. I’m sick of the Republican candidates, I’m sick of people rambling about how terrible the Holocaust was, I’m sick of hearing about how terrible and how great America is, I’m sick of 9/11 and the “wars” on terror and drugs, and I’m even getting a bit sick of gay rights.

However, somehow, Occupy Wall Street still has my attention.

It’s not like it has a climax and resolution. Nobody should be expecting a climax and resolution in this. It’s slowly building. 

Honestly? I’ve been following this story since a month or two before the actual protest began. They’ve been planning this out. And I thought it was only going to last, what, a week or two? A lot of people thought that. 

But these might be the most successful protests ever.

See, the point of OWS isn’t to get someone in office or stop a war. It’s to get the attention of the American public as well as the government about the issues created by the government’s handling of the economy and the constant corruption in huge corporation. Which means the protesters are doing their job very very well. In fact, if there weren’t such a big negative fuss about it in the media, with the police, and in conservative attack tactics, it would probably have faded it out into the dark of the political world. 

OWS has done much more at this point than their original goal. They’re bringing out points about the excessive force of police (which, mind you, didn’t exist when the country was founded) and the haughtiness of the “1%” and the government that supports them. They’re getting people to talk. They’ve made a huge bang in the world. 

And it keeps coming. The media covers the same movement, but every time, there’s a different story to tell. 

OWS is not going to be any less interesting to me for a very, very long time. 

Dear floraboraa. 

May I address many of the points you make here? Thank you. 

If half the people who actually do occupy Wall Street were in fact homeless, then I would be more sympathetic with their cause. But they’re not.

They are, actually. If you go down to where they’re occupying, you can expect at least a few roaming handtrucks piled with bags. In fact, people are saying the exact opposite of what you’re saying is the issue: that it’s all shameless homeless people. 

If you actually watch protesting videos or see pictures, each person has something made by the corporations they so detest:Canon cameras, iPhones, Droids, Panasonic video cameras, etc. I dont get it. You guys look like hypocrites honestly. Most of you guys are just pissed that you have no money for things (probably made by the corporations you’re protesting against) so you feel like protesting is your only option.

There’s a difference between fair capitalism and the corruption that OWS is protesting against. Apple good, Citibank bad. Panasonic good, WalMart (for many reasons that I can barely begin to touch upon without taking up too much space) bad. 

How about actually using that time to stop occupying wall street and go try to occupy a job. Sometimes its not the governments problems, its just your own. You just need to work for it, and not try, fail and then never try again.

That’s the logic they’ve been using since the crash. If they could get a job, they wouldn’t be whining about how there’s not enough jobs. I know plenty of people who work their poor asses off and still can’t find a job. Besides, for every four unemployed people in America, it’s been estimated that there’s only one job opening. 

If you guys were a legit 99% you wouldn’t be able to see what I’m writing, because you would have no internet or laptop. You wouldn’t be able to afford it. So go snuggle up in the Northfaces I had seen a couple of protesters wear, blog about how greedy corps are.

Erm, no. I can easily bet you’re the 99%. I’m the 99%. We make less than the 1%. That’s the point of the protests. You don’t have to be dirt broke to be the 99%. You just have to fall in that statistic. That’s what point they’re trying to break. 

Your main tools for getting people to rally are two the biggest corporations in social networking: Twitter and Facebook. I thought you were protesting big corps? 

Again. Good corp/bad corp. They’ve been staying away from Facebook for the most part due to a lot of their ethical concerns, but Twitter has been very good about their presence, since they get so much traffic from things like these. 

If the whole movement was to protest for people who can’t afford, I would withdraw my stance. But you guys are playing it out to be like you all are poor and cant afford.

Can’t afford what? A house? College? To feed your kids when you were perfectly capable of doing so five years ago? My parents didn’t think I’d have to worry about financial aid five years ago because we were so well off before the crash, but now that’s the main factor in my current college hunt. So personally, I can’t afford college. People can’t afford rent. They can’t afford to lose their voice with so many people losing their jobs.  

But lets face it, half of the people you know that are occupying Wall Street never had to deal with any of that. 

Two words: Debt slavery. The average college student debt is $25,000 after college. Some have tens of thousands more, some have less. But with the lack of good jobs out there, it’s getting harder and harder to pay off. 

And the people occupying Wall Street don’t have to be poor. I don’t have to be black to support the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t have to be a female to support feminism (though it helps). And I certainly don’t have to be gay to support the LGBT movement. They have to have an issue with corruption in corporations and the government. 

That’s my opinion, and I just wanted to share it. I can’t wait for some of you guys to write me back from your laptops and try to tell me off.

Wish granted. Thanks for providing every media cliche objection to OWS. I’m ashamed of you for falling for it. Have fun in your little mental bubble there. 

“Mr. President, we HOPE You’re on our side.” 

Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the original Obama “Hope” poster from the 2008 campaign, created this version of the poster in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  

[click through for the official page for this work]

Creating limited media pools at high-profile, heavily policed events isn’t an uncommon practice at the Los Angeles Police Department.

“When we don’t have resources to accomodate every single outlet that wants to be there, we often do that,” says Officer Karen Rayner in the media-relations office.

But a last-minute email to the LAPD’s press list last night — saying “any outlet interested in being considered for the [Occupy L.A. eviction] pool must have a representative attend this meeting, no exceptions” — has raised some concerns among smaller-time reporters covering Occupy L.A.

[  .    .    .  ] 

Neiman’s “pool media” email was sent to select media outlets (not including the LA Weekly, strangely) around 5:30 p.m. on Monday evening. The notification went up on the City News Service wire (which not all outlets subscribe to) at about 6 p.m. The meeting began at 7:15 p.m.

Frustrated blogger/reporter Ruth Fowler quotes the following from an anonymous attendee of the meeting:

“They were only going to let in one media outlet for each medium (print, tv and radio) but we convinced them to let in three….the only media eligible for pool were those who were on the LAPD press release list and able to get to headquarters with an hours notice. So very few were represented at the meeting. I asked about independent radio/blogs and they said that only media with LAPD-issued badges would be allowed in the vicinity. I asked about those already at the camp and they said after the unlawful assembly order everyone who doesn’t leave will be arrested, even those who are journalists. Our attorney was looking into whether there were legal challenges to be made.”

This blog article by an LA Weekly reporter was written a few hours ago, so it’s been updated a few times. 

It’s been reported that anyone who is approved to enter the scene will be given “special protective clothing,” warned an hour ahead of the raid, and be given special access. So far, it’s rumored that ABC, NBC and the Associated Press are the only video media outlets that have been given the OK. 

Also, apparently, any official news outlets that plans on releasing information about the raid has to pass everything through the City News Service (approved by the government) before publishing it.