"Oh, you have my favorite.” Oakland cops discussing Occupier they arrested later!

[Starry Messenger]

Interview with Oakland Occupier and Kossack Alyssa Eisenberg

http://occupiedoaktrib.org/2012/02/06/interview-with-alyssa-eisenberg/

OOT: Why did you first get involved in Occupy Oakland?

AE: I had been waiting for something like the Occupy movement to come around for a long time, before Obama as elected but especially after. When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis several years ago, I would get sick and miss work and fall behind on my bills. Then I would work out a repayment plan with the credit card companies but right before it went into effect they would sell my debt to another agency and then I would owe the same amount all over again. For years, I had to fight with these companies and they became so lawless due to the regulatory agencies being too weak to do anything.

<snip>

OOT: What was your experience like getting arrested on Move-In Day?

AE: Outside the YMCA, the police just announced that we were under arrest. I had no idea what was going on because there was no dispersal order and we had no idea why we were being arrested. Somebody later told me a police officer pointed at me and said, “Look who’s here.” They knew who I was because I am always talking about Occupy Oakland on Twitter. Another cop was asking me questions when an officer came by and said, “Oh, you have my favorite.” I was worried they might do something to me – they don’t like me because I always take pictures of them around the Plaza.

By the time I got in the bus, I was leaned over because my cuffs were so tight that it hurt to stand up straight. Another woman’s hands were turning blue because her cuffs were so tight that she was crying. Another woman peed on herself because she was stuck on the bus for so long. While I hated it there, I got off lucky compared to some other people.

We finally got to Santa Rita around midnight but after a few hours of staying there, I began to ask about my medication. A guard told me, “We don’t give meds to people who are cited and released, only to people who have to stay.” They finally took us to get booked around 12 noon the next day but they just moved us all into another cell. Finally, a nurse came down after the National Lawyer’s Guild called the jail and she asked, “Are you having an emergency? You don’t look like you’re about to die.” The guards eventually said that I would only get one of my medications anyway and that I would be forced to stay longer if I took it. This was already at 4pm and I had already missed two doses.

She goes on to relate that when she was released she was so ill she signed a form she couldn't even read, because of her missed medication. This happened in the US. If we were reading about this occurring in another country, what would we be saying?

[Dawson Leery]

1. Bust the police unions. If these goombas

want to protect the 1%, then beg them for money.

[Starry Messenger]

3. Bad idea, I'm afraid. Here's what the privatized Oakland police looks like:

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/private-cops-on-teh-public-dime/Content?oid=3108768

So what is Block by Block? SMS Holdings, the parent company of Block by Block, began in 1988 as a janitorial services company in Nashville, Tennessee. In the late 2000s, SMS went on a growth spurt, buying up security companies. Among these was Block by Block, a Louisville, Kentucky firm that controls a large share of the national market for "security ambassadors" and cleaning services provided to business improvement districts. By 2008, SMS posted revenues topping $300 million, and its vice president predicted then that it would surpass a half-billion by 2011.

A document entitled "The SMS Holdings Way," available on the company's website, reveals the Christian beliefs of its owners and executives: "From our company's beginning, our business philosophy has been God-centered and faith-based. While we will always show tolerance and acceptance of the personal beliefs of others, we recognize that there is a higher order that provides a basis for all of our core values."

It's unclear just how deeply the Christian core values of SMS Holdings' owners and executives shape company policy, but in another area, the results are much clearer. Subsidiaries of SMS Holdings, like Block by Block, maintain relatively low-wage, anti-union workplaces. SMS has been very aggressive over the past decade in lobbying federal legislators to privatize thousands of government jobs. Paying minimum wage-levels (and, in some workplaces, even less), SMS Holdings has been able to skim enormous profit margins off of outsourced local and federal government jobs.

An example of the company's anti-union policies took place in Pittsburgh when Block by Block's security ambassadors attempted to unionize through the SEIU in 2009. Block by Block managers opposed the simpler card check process, pressing instead for a secret ballot election, a procedure that gives employers more tools to scuttle pro-union outcomes. Block by Block management barred employees from wearing union buttons or talking to the media, and, according to reports in the Pittsburgh Gazette, even conducted surveillance and called the police on some of their own ambassadors who passed out pro-union literature in front of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership's offices.

OPD are goons, but they are publicly accountable goons. Silver lining? Tiny one anyway.

[sabrina 1]

2. If we were reading about this in Venezuela, people would be OUTRAGED! But those same people

prefer to ignore the brutality, the illegal acts of the police here, because what it all boils down to is there are those in this country who absolutely hate anything that might be slightly to the left. There is an incredible fear among some of people who actually care about human beings. Someone should do a study of that. It needs to be fixed.

[Luminous Animal]

4. There would be outrage if it happened in another country....

When it happens to our own citizens, the response is...meh.

They are, after all, just dirty lazy fucking hippies who brought them all on themselves. Why can't they dress nicer? Why don't they have a leader? What's the point in camping?

Occupy has had a thousand actions or more but look! I found 5 very very bad things that they did. Not as bad as fracturing a skull, or rupturing a couple of spleens, or knocking teeth out, or dragging people by their hair, or denying them their medication, or putting a little horrorshow on the wrists,... but some really things like burning a flag.

[Starry Messenger]

6. They want us to fight corporations with

our own branding, marketing savoir faire, well-groomed spokespeople, and pleasant-sounding slogans. Hmmm, what does that sound like?

[Luminous Animal]

8. Something that starts with an "M" has the word "On" in it, and ends with org.

[Starry Messenger]

13. Yeah that too.

I was just thinking it was ironic that Occupy is expected to maintain some image that is deemed socially acceptable, with a script written for any corporate image-massage. While fighting corporations.

[Luminous Animal]

15. LOL and that, too!

[Robb]

5. Been arrested. Not pleasant.

Being arrested is rather the point, as is relating it's unpleasantness to elicit reaction.

Good on her.

[Luminous Animal]

7. I've been arrested 4 times in San Francisco for civil disobedience...

Once with hundreds of people protesting the 1st Gulf War imperial invasion... the cops treated us with respect. Nobody was denied their medication, the NLG staff was allowed prompt access, and we were processed and released in a timely fashion.

If people don't stand up against this brutality, it will get worse.

[provis99]

9. no, if the cops arrested you for protesting, they DID NOT treat you with respect.

the cops also shat all over the Constitution, too.

[Luminous Animal]

10. I was arrested for actually breaking the law.

1) The AIDS die-in in the middle of the street (Blocking traffic.)
2) Blocking access to a public building (the Federal Building in San Francisco - shut it down!)
3) Infiltrating a Bush the First's fundraiser for his 2nd term (standing on the table and taking off my clothes down to my pink slip... along with a half dozen other women... and "giving Bush the pink slip.&quot
4) Taking over an SF supervisors meeting... i.e., jumping over the railing and sitting in their seats and passing an agenda of progressive legislation.

[Starry Messenger]

11. Did they tell you that you were their favorite?

Maybe I'm sensitive to that phrase, being a woman and reading that it was said to another woman. That sounds gratuitously creepy and something out of a bad b-flick, but with rather real and frightening endings.

[Luminous Animal]

14. The OPD has dossiers. They look for and target their "favorites." Woman or man, it

is creepy. What they are trying to do and want to do is take out potential leaders.

[Starry Messenger]

16. Yeah, OPD reads all the Tweets too.

I've just never heard of a cop saying something like that. These are struggling citizens, turned into the "other" just for their words.