policies versus cooler heads:

should be used by authorities Sample FBI bulletin that was issued regarding demonstrations on public lands.

Are you old enough to remember the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968? Like rabid Rottweillers off their choke-chains...

"Lord! What fools these Mortals be!"

My experience with the police is that they do their best--and often succeed--at covering up their everyday misbehavior. My fiance and I have both witnessed and been the targets of this sort of behavior in the past. They abuse the already lenient laws regarding their behavior while on-duty, write fake or misleading reports, mishandle evidence at scenes when it could implicate on of their own, and are on far too "friendly" terms with important members of the justice system.

They tend to look out for their own before they look out for the people they are supposed to "serve and protect." I know its not all police and I hope its not the majority of them, but it seems like an awful lot of them operate in this manner. Such incidents as we are seeing now would not "exist" if it weren't for YouTube and cell phone cameras.

One of the things I've picked up since cutting my blog-teeth on 'The Agonist' is having a certain place (bookmark) for local blogs from around the country, & elsewhere around the world. It actually started because I was trying to keep track of certain things - politics, etc., on a few places I have lived & still follow what's going on.

At this one, there's a link for 'Justice for Janitors' blog and access to information, blog, & video.

Who was it that said, '"the revolution will not be televised?" I can see his face; his name escapes me at the moment.

Edited because I remembered as soon as clicked 'post': Gil Scott Heron!

"Another adding her voice was Janie Torres, whose brother Joe Campos Torres was beaten by Houston police in 1977 and drowned after falling or being pushed into Buffalo Bayou."
LINK

Although the Raza Unida Party lost impetus after 1976, its considerable efforts at political education complemented those of PASO and contributed substantially to stimulating more Mexican-Americans to become politically aware. This increased participation, in turn, helped make people more ready to react to perceived social and official injustices. An example occurred on May 5,1977, the Cinco de Mayo. Joe Campos Torres, a United States Army veteran, was arrested by a group of Houston policemen for drunken disturbance in a Houston nightspot. He was subsequently beaten and thrown into Buffalo Bayou, where he drowned.

The reaction from the Mexican-American community was immediate and intense. An organization called People United to Fight Police Brutality was formed to protest the death and ask for justice. It bad strong youth participation, but women also played a significant role. Mrs. Torres, Joe’s mother, was very involved in People United during its first few months. The group organized marches within a few weeks after the homicide and handed out leaflets throughout the summer. In late summer 1977 the trial of the policemen began in Huntsville, having been moved from Houston at the request of the defendants’ lawyers. People United arranged transportation to bring members of the community to the trial. During this time, there were demonstrations being held on weekends. In October the verdict was in: the crime was ruled a "misdemeanor," and the police officers each received a one-dollar fine. The public outcry against the verdict could have been predicted. "A Chicano’s life is only worth one dollar" became the new cry from the Mexican-American community, as they dramatized their outrage by pinning dollar bills to their clothing. The verdict itself led to still more demonstrations in which even more groups became involved. Finally, a federal court decided to try the policemen for civil rights violations. The stage for demonstrations then became the Federal Building. Picket lines were organized and tension was high. In the end the federal verdict was as unacceptable to the community as the state verdict had been. In April the offending police officers were sentenced to serve a year and a day, a sentence that meant they could be paroled in nine months. The disappointment and anger throughout the community was evident.

A month after the federal sentence was imposed, about three thousand members of the Mexican-American community were celebrating the Cinco de Mayo in Moody Park. It was a year to the day after Joe Torres’s arrest and death. A fight broke out among some of the celebrants. When some people tried to intervene, the smoldering anger erupted, rocks began to fly, a police car was set on fire, and a riot was in full swing. Stores were looted and set on fire. The Houston police SWAT team arrived and pushed the crowds out of the park. During that night and the one following, about four hundred people were arrested. But the riot seemed to have had a somewhat cathartic effect, and the community’s anger began to subside.
http://www.houstonhistory.com/erhnic/history1mex.htm

Today's events look fairly lightweight by comparison.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

I was just too lazy to do the research at the time...S

"I beseech you in the bowels of christ think it possible you may be mistaken."

Hey, they might protest again. And they obviously need to be protected from themselves - damn protesters throwing themselves under the horses.

to remind us all what Houston justice is apparently still like.

^{We have lost international support not because foreigners hate our values but because they believe we are repudiating them and behaving contrary to them.}

Below is a snip-it from Anna Denise Solís account of jail in Huston, who was arrested in the janitors protest.

The below methods have to be learned from somewhere (Abu Ghraibization of America) and condoned by someone in authoritative power. It must be nice to have the Huston PD do your dirty dehumanizing work for you, for just paying your property taxes. Oh, if the Huston PD gets sued, the City of Huston has deep pockets.

Here is Anna Denise Solís account.

They really tried to break us down. The first night they put the temperature so high that a woman—one of the other inmates—had a seizure. The second night they made it freezing and took away many of our blankets. We didn’t have access to the cots so we had to sleep on a concrete floor. When we would finally fall asleep the guards would come and yell ‘Are you Anna Denise Solís? Are you so and so?’ One of the protesters had a fractured wrist from the horses. She had a cast on and when she would fall asleep the guard would kick the cast to wake her up. She was in a lot of pain.

The guards would tell us: ‘This is what you get for protesting.’ One of them said, ‘Who gives a shit about janitors making 5 dollars an hour? Lots of people make that much.’ The other inmates—there were a lot of prostitutes in there—said that they had never seen the jail this bad. The guards told them: ‘We’re trying to teach the protesters a lesson.’ Nobody was getting out of jail because the processing was so slow. They would tell the prostitutes that everything is the protesters’ fault. They were trying to turn everybody against each other.

I felt like I was in some Third World jail, not in America. One of the guards called us ‘whores’ and if we talked back, we didn’t get any lunch. We didn’t even have the basic necessities. It felt like a police state, like marshal law, nobody had rights. Some of us had been arrested in other cities, and it was never this bad before.
"Takes a bucket of blood for a barrel of oil"

Steven Bruton