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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Anyone arrested for violence should get jail time and it's time to haul some more folks before grand juries to identify those committing violence that were not arrested.
Perjury by police officers should be treated at least as seriously as breaking windows. I bet each of those lying cops is still out cracking skulls and accusing their victims of assault.
The hell?
Watching the "Anarchists", all I could think of was kids I used to work with in the psych ward who bottled up all their anger. It was like they all showed up just wanting to release.
Street protests/mobs/whathaveyou are made up of many different types of people... some of whom are well known to be police undercover officers, with history clearly indicating some of them to be agents provocateur.
It's quite plausible that agents provocateur smashed Bill's, Sun's and Walgreen's windows, that would certainly play right into the police's hands.
The point is, no one here has any evidence one way or another as to who broke what. Jumping to conclusions serves only your own preconceived notions.
There are lots of 18-year-olds who drink and do drugs, but who also take care of their responsibilities and don't expect to be "provided with all the luxuries in life." Sensible use of drugs and alcohol rarely has anything to do with a person's character. Maybe your nephew needs to be told that, presently, he really is a bad kid.
So much LOL
We saw several of them run up the street and duck into Black Coffee, where the lights were out and refuge given to these criminal cowards. So now you know - Black Coffee is not a friend to the neighborhood, not a place of philosophy and mind expansion or whatever they are claiming to be, it's just a hangout for criminals. And on that note, we're really tired of them trashing the shared bathroom with Raygun games and using it to sell their bodies to eachother and shoot/snort/deal drugs. It's tacky and only proves they're a bunch of confused and immature children who need psychiatric help and rehab.
*Even worse* is that they took a day of peaceful protest and stole the news cycle from those who most needed to be heard. No excuse. Simply shameful on all fronts.
The vast majority of police officers are just like us: they want to go to work, not have any problems, and go home safely. They do not enjoy hurting people, and they don't want to risk their lives just to harm the public.
Seems to me that at some point Occam's Razor has to come into it. If you hear hoofbeats behind you, think horses, not zebras.
KOMO's special blog site for yesterday's event had some wonderful pictures of them.
I don't buy this for a second. A certain kind of asshole becomes a police officer, you have to enjoy asserting rules and authority on others, and a few years into the job changes many of them to more callous and judgmental people. Can't we hate both the police and the little shits that broke the windows of local indie businesses? I don't see why we have to support one or the other. Now if the kids had smashed the windows of police cars instead of local businesses, I'd be giving them props today.
You seem to be operating out of some kind of black and white caricature world, which is typically a result of claiming authority on a subject you actually have no real world experience in.
I am not saying there are no abusive and corrupt police officers, but simply sitting back and saying "they are all like that" is not true, and never is.
Situations like this do bring out the worst in police officers, because they are forced into a situation where they literally can not win. Lay off the crazies, and they smash shit and hurt people. Come down on them and get vilified/assaulted. And the whole time your life and the lives of your fellow officers are in danger. Few of us have even been in situations this stressful, much less both stressful and dangerous.
Besides, what is more likey to you: that all members of X social group are simply abusive and evil, or that a few members of X social group give the rest a bad name? Which has happened more often in real life?
Again,speculation is just that: speculation. You, like I, have no evidence regarding who broke what windows, save for "a person in the crowd".
In my experience anarchists are pretty specific when they break windows and do property damage, they target global chain stores (eg. Nike), and police vehicles. So it's pretty out of character for "them" to attack local businesses.
So my speculation is that it was either a random angsty kid with no affiliation to anything, or a cop/FBI.
I have zero problem with the police investigating people who talk about committing violence, then actually do commit violence.
These assholes are basically a street gang and should be treated as much. That their motivations are political instead of financial does not matter.
How do you feel about police harassing people who talk about nonviolent activism?
How do you feel about police pretending to be activists, and living with the subject of their investigation in a relationship as a couple for years at a time?
Oh no! In an artsy neighborhood! Don't they know how GOOD you are?
I also have no problem with the police attempting to get information on these protests so they can plan. Unlike the real May Day protest, which did the polite thing and got a permit to use the streets we all share, these assholes don't care about the effect their actions have on others. So it falls to the police to figure out what they are doing so that distributions and harm can be minimized.
That is a strange story and seems rather over the line, but not really relevant here.
I know! The immigrants' rights demonstrations were getting so much attention previously! The news media are always live on the scene reporting that immigrants are still treated like shit until the anti-capitalists come along, and then there goes the news cycle. Immigration issues *totally* grab the attention of the TV news crowd, unless there's glass breakage or silly-string deployment somewhere.
The 'anarchists' as they are LABELLED come from I dont know where, but most of them looked like young people who don't feel like lying down under the most fascistically organized militarist society the USA has yet seen, and they're getting attacked for that? Considering that most of them are under 25, don't be surprised if they don't care about your social security when you're old.
Very few of them look like trustfunders another media obfiscation - a large percentage of any population cannot be trustfunders except maybe those at a country club or private school, and I didnt see them represented. The notion is a ridiculous slur. Anyway, I dont know who they are, but they seemed to me to be just a group of ballsy youth ready to face off a bunch of mostly white males in their thirties who need to own streets and control all expression. It got heated downtown because control slipped away from authority who was going to CONTOL the DAY, and they LOST CONTROL for a while, and didnt like it.
Sure, the youths started throwing things at the cops after getting pushed around, mostly plastic water bottles from what I could see. They didnt vandalize cars or harass drivers or break any windows until Walgreen's. A tavern got its window busted, yes, and its stupid yes. So are the police shooting projectiles into a crowd which included lots of bystanders and witnesses, including a blond yuppie woman who got nailed in her leg by a concussion grenade, and probably got a taste of what fascism can start to feel like. There were others.
Get injured for no reason other than staring at a protest, and see how you feel about authority. The message is clear, you're not only not supposed to participate, you are expected to bow your head and go home. Assembly is now illegal in the USA.
The cops were also mostly restrained, not using much pepper spray, but dropping concussion grenades right and left, including shooting them at head level, where they could easily bust out all of someone's front teeth. They weren't paragons of restraint, and they wanted the protest out of downtown and back into Capitol Hill liberal-land where the big box icons of downtown wouldn't be harmed again.
They also dragged out their stupid South African riot control vehicle for who knows what purpose. One of the cops joked to the kids from his black SUV that it was Miller Time. Old, clueless, and mocking - sounds like out-of-touch authoritarians to me.
Stop worrying about the clueless youth and their clueless actions, since Occupy leaders have mostly been harassed into silence by the gestapo, and be glad someone is standing up for anything counter to the PRAVDA line in this country.
I don't think I could hate this "protestors are just a stupid nuisance" attitude any more. Seriously? Are you so easily swayed by media and emotional propaganda? Someone tells you something so you believe it, as long as they say it in the right tone? Are you that mentally passive? Protestor are important, and the ability to protest is worth any fiscal cost to the city. Unless of course you want all your rights taken away until the new cost of your freedom will be your children, spouses and yourselves having to go to war to get those rights back.
As for Bill's off Broadway, it sucks but it's not that bad of damage. And heck, it one of the protestors might not have been from around here and just got confused amid the melee.