Monday, November 21, 2011
City/County News Rhodes College to Host Candlelight Vigil in Support of Occupy UC Davis
Posted by Hannah Sayle on Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 3:32 PM
If you haven't seen the chilling footage of campus police officers pepper-spraying a line of seated, peaceful Occupy protesters at the University of California Davis, you should probably take a few minutes to watch the video here.
In response to the UC Davis incident, Rhodes College students have organized a solidarity vigil on Barret Lawn at 8 p.m. According to the event flyer: "This is an event to demonstrate that we, the Rhodes community, stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement, specifically with the students who have been unfairly and unnecessarily brutalized as they protested peacefully."
Occupy Colleges, an organized response from higher education institutions to the Occupy Wall Street movement, has enjoined colleges and universities across the country to hold candlelight vigils for UC Davis.
"This is about the role of campus spaces in a democracy, so we don't want to wait until our campus space is violated to see that it has anything to do with us," says Leigh Johnson, a philosophy professor at Rhodes who specializes in ethics and social and political philosophy. She has been asked by student organizers to say a few words at tonight's event. "What's important here is to insist upon maintaining the integrity of campus spaces for things like critical discourse, civic engagement, and democratic action."
Johnson anticipates that, despite the inclement weather, a couple of hundred students will be in attendance. The vigil is also open to the public. For more information, visit the event page on Facebook.
Comments (11)
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I had not seen the full video before. Thank you for the link. The first thing that struck me was that most of the cops were very young. Most of them seemed to wish they were somewhere else. And it was fantastic that the protesters got the cops to retreat.
Of course, pepper spraying peaceful demonstrators is going to reverberate around the country. These images may boost the 99% agenda hugely. Thank you to those men and women for your sacrifice and your service.
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Where was Rhodes' solidarity with the protestors who were brutalized by police state tactics in Portland, Seattle, Berkeley, Oakland, Denver, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, and yes, New York? http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archiv…; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/…
Are we to understand that it was only the threat to the tranquility of their campus that raised their consciousness and prompted their expression of solidarity? That's pretty sad, actually, but not surprising, coming from an ivory tower institution that is, literally and figuratively, walled off from the outside community, and whose students are far more privileged than most of their compatriots on other campuses.
Oh well, better late than never.
I don't think the pepper spraying at this point helps OWS protestors. Rather than focusing on the issue of inequality, the national conversation is about heavy handed tactics and the militarization of law enforcement. That first early spraying of the girls in New York raised awareness of OWS. This episode shows how quickly society became inured by sights of people getting sprayed that the cop at UC Davis calmly walks up to the sitting protestors and sprays them down all while being filmed. He didn't care. What makes UC Davis' police brutality different was the response of the crowd basically breaking the will of the cops by chanting and standing together. Also there is an aspect of class playing a part in how differently viewed Oakland is to UC Davis, which Awesomeberg correctly points out.
Personally, I don't know where OWS protests are headed. Since they have no demands, there isn't a way to measure success/failure and therefore no way to effectively end the occupation. It is similar to the the occupation of Iraq. There wasn't any benchmarks set for victory, so we stayed until Iraq just became too burdensome. You can see from public polling that OWS is trending downwards in popularity. The public got what OWS was protesting about, but protesting for the sake of protesting only goes so far.
However much I dislike Mayor Wharton, he has handled the OWS protests better than about any other mayor in the country. He ignored it. You would think with Memphis having the 4th highest rate of inequality and the highest rate of poverty, we'd be ground zero for talking about income inequality. It wasn't until the CA article a couple days ago did the subject get even a mention in local media over the past 6 weeks.
I hear the officer who pepper-sprayed the UC students is now the leading candidate for the Bull Connor Award of 2011.
Doubting Thomas, I really hope you are wrong. The fact that OWS has no demands is fundamental to the problem our country faces. What demands could they have? That corporations stop screwing their workers? That corporations act ethically? That seems like a reasonable demand, now that coprorations are persons, but it will never happen. In fact, the repub/conservs would consider that suggestion as improper, immorall and unAmerican. People who control/have money should act with integrity and honor? Not in this reality.
A thorough bleaching ought to restore your creative wit, Packrat. Nothing stimulates the muse like a sparkling sphincter.
Good idea, Jeff, if I do say so myself. You're all invited to Smitty's for "Pink Friday". We'll open our doors at 12:00 am. Bring a friend and get the second anus tinted free of charge!
Smitty, you ought to do a special for police officers. Maybe some kind of pepper spray exchange program.
Our bleaching industry has assembled some of the best technicians in America for our new mission: "Occupy Rectum." We intend to destroy the colons of the UC Davis cops with a wicked blend of tellicherry peppercorns and Kashi Autumn Wheat. The campus has already hired a massive cleanup crew in anticipation of this stomach-churning event.
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