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Pregnant teen, elderly woman among pepper sprayed




SEATTLE (AP) — A downtown march and rally in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement turned briefly chaotic as police scattered a crowd of rowdy protesters — including a pregnant 19-year-old and an 84-year-old activist — with blasts of pepper spray.

Protest organizers denounced the use of force, saying that police indiscriminately sprayed the chemical irritant at peaceful protesters.

The Occupy Seattle movement released a written statement late Tuesday expressing support for "a 4-foot 10-inch, 84-year-old woman, a priest and a pregnant woman who as of this writing is still in the hospital."

Dorli Rainey is an activist who has supported liberal causes in the Seattle area for decades. A photo showing Rainey being cared for by fellow activists in the immediate aftermath of the police incident appeared on news websites around the world.

Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel said he didn't have specifics on the Rainey incident, but he said pepper spray is "is not age specific. No more dangerous to someone who is 10 or someone who is 80."

He added, that if it were harmful, "we probably wouldn't be using pepper spray if that was the case."

Kappel said police had not yet established whether a pregnant woman was involved.

Paramedics examined a handful of people, including a 19-year-old woman who was three-months pregnant, Seattle fire department spokesman Kyle Moore said. The Seattle Times reported on its website that the woman was taken by ambulance to Harborview Medical Center.

Her identity and status were not immediately available.

Moore added that the protester's own medical response team had taken care of others.

"These protesters are well organized, they're using homemade remedies to counter pepper spray," he said.

Seattle police said plenty of verbal warnings were given to demonstrators attempting to block intersections and streets during rush hour.

"Pepper spray was deployed only against subjects who were either refusing a lawful order to disperse or engaging in assaultive behavior toward officers," Kappel wrote on the department's blog.

Kappel also noted that one man threw an "unknown liquid" at an officer's face and was arrested. The officer was not injured.

In another incident, Kappel said a 17-year-old woman swung a stick at an officer, and as police moved to arrest her, others tried to intervene on her behalf, prompting a blast of pepper spray.

Authorities arrested at least six people before quickly restoring order.

Occupy Seattle organizers said the downtown march was in solidarity with other Occupy Wall Street protests around the nation.

The skirmish Tuesday was the first clash in weeks.

Occupy Seattle moved its encampment to Seattle Central Community College late October. Before that, the group had been camping at Westlake Park, leading to tense standoffs with police and dozens of arrests.

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I say, "If you can't stand the pepper spray, stay out of the protest."

Fuck the cops.

I'm not a big fan of the police either but I've found that if you stay out of their face they don't pepper spray you.

However, if you're going to protest via civil dissobedience, expect the hose.

freedom of speech & assembly ?

SandRider wrote:freedom of speech & assembly ?

Fine if you're not breaking the law.

what if those laws are themselves illegal, or immoral, or arbitrarily enforced to squelch dissent ?

These people weren't standing on any moral high ground, they were blocking traffic.

This is what happens when you give everybody a trophey in little league.

They get into the real world (or college) and find out you actually have to work and be better than other people to get ahead.

Now they're crying because it's not fair.

Well, boo hoo.

Freakzilla wrote:This is what happens when you give everybody a trophey in little league.

They get into the real world (or college) and find out you actually have to work and be better than other people to get ahead.

Holdon aminit. Lemmie get my college rhetoric book so I can point out all the fallacies in this.

. . . . .

Or better yet, fuck that bullshit.

Freakzilla wrote:Now they're crying because it's not fair.

Well, boo hoo.

No, Freak. The 84 year old lady is crying because she has pepper spray in her eyes. Personally I'm a little choked up over the injustice of it myself, so yea, "boo-hoo" to me. Her act of civil disobedience is standing up for what is right, and doing it in a public place. Who the hell cares if traffic has to move to another street for her?

Personally, I hope more dumb-ass cops spray grandmothers in the eyes. Might get more people pissed off and in the streets doing the right thing. Notice I did not say the legal thing. There's a difference, and the distinction is not only important, but it goes back a hell of a lot longer then you and I have been walking the Earth.

So you don't expect to police to respond to civil dissobedience? How else are these people supposed to get on the news?

What about the safety of the citizens NOT protesting? Do we take away their rights and give them to the protesters? These camps are a fire and health hazard.

All I'm saying, is if you up against the police you're going to get hurt.

Also, I don't care much for the "1%" but I think these people are going about their protest the wrong way.

Blocking traffic and getting pepper sprayed is not going to help.

Freakzilla wrote:All I'm saying, is if you up against the police you're going to get hurt.

Didn't sound that way. Sounded to me like you were calling them spoiled, as if they expected the cops to step out of their way. That's what the whole "trophy" stuff was about, right? And you kind of implied they were stupid. Well, I think neither is true, so I spoke up.

Freakzilla wrote:So you don't expect to police to respond to civil dissobedience?

If people are practicing civil disobedience then the cops don't need to pepper spray them; just pick them up and move them (without beating the shit out of them along the way).

Omphalos wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:All I'm saying, is if you up against the police you're going to get hurt.

Didn't sound that way. Sounded to me like you were calling them spoiled, as if they expected the cops to step out of their way. That's what the whole "trophy" stuff was about, right? And you kind of implied they were stupid. Well, I think neither is true, so I spoke up.

Sorry, that's not what I meant at all.

My trophy comment was about how in little league today there are no losers, everyone is 'special' and gets a trophy. The real world is not this way and that unfairness is what I think they're protesting. That some people do get rich, just not them.

Maybe I'm mistaken but I think that's the protester's fault for not making what it is they want clear. It looks to me like they're just jealous of rich people.

I'm not rich but I would like to think that the "American Dream" IS still alive, that anyone has a chance to make it. Maybe one of my kids will, I hope so.

And if they do, I don't want to see the money they worked hard for taken away and given to people who think they are entitled to it for nothing.

in little league today there are no losers

tell that to the Japanese ...

At the games I've been too, I don't think they even keep score, they only keep track of outs.

Hell, kids don't even fail in SCHOOL now.

I think most of these occupy protests are foolishness, mostly ways for hipsters to look cool - but pepper spray is WAY out of line when people aren't being violent, and it happens all to often. And I'm someone who isn't all "fuck the police" I actually respect most of them.

This is part of why I'm uncomfortable going to protests, because if I saw police pepper spray an old woman you know what I'd do? I'D KICK THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THAT POLICE OFFICER, AND THEN I'D ALMOST IMMEDIATELY GET SHOT. Not cool for obvious reasons.

I kinda agree with AToE on this one, And Omph too. If there wasn't a reason to protest, people wouldn't be out there. Freak, how can the American dream still be alive and well if all the money is in the hands of a few and no one can get a business loan for anything, or a steady job, our govt. is bankrupt and dysfunctional, and health care is a mess, etc..etc.? It seems to me like these kids and people are doing everything that they are supposed to do, like go to school with student loans, or pay the mortgage on a house, but the industries that employ them are raking the money to the top and getting by with fewer and fewer people and making more and more profit. There has to be a better form of redistribution back to the masses or the dream dies for the average joe to get a decent shake. I mean we can go back to living in shacks and eating only what each of us can scrape from the landlike the old days......

How do you feel about Cain saying the nation needs aleader, not a reader? Didn't we already try that with Bush?

I think you're exaggerating a bit there. I'm not trying to say the system is perfect, I know it has problems. But protesting against rich people just doesn't make sense to me.

Depends on the individual protesters - protesting the rich is dumb unless you're a total socialist. Protesting the specific rich WHO CAUSED THE MELTDOWN OF THE ENTIRE WORLD'S ECONOMY AND ARE NOT ONLY NOT IN TROUBLE, BUT ARE STILL RAKING IT IN is not dumb, it's perfectly justified.

My issue with the protests in places other than Wall Street is that most of these fools don't even understand what they're supposed to be protesting, and yeah, they're just protesting the rich which is childish.

Freakzilla wrote:I think you're exaggerating a bit there. I'm not trying to say the system is perfect, I know it has problems. But protesting against rich people just doesn't make sense to me.

Did you consider that maybe the target of the protest is not the rich per se, but instead the government that taxes them so lightly? Or the system that created them and consolidated wealth in their hands?

Freakzilla wrote:I think you're exaggerating a bit there. I'm not trying to say the system is perfect, I know it has problems. But protesting against rich people just doesn't make sense to me.

What about protests against the Harkonnens, the Padishah Emperor, the Guild, and CHOAM? Would you say that protesting against these factions for killing the Atreides and abusing the Fremen is wrong, because their wealth makes them immune?

You sound like a leader of a High House of the Landsraad.

From what I've seen, anyone who is trying to challenge the status quo of the right-wing institutions today are either maimed or hounded to death politically.

Remember Freakzilla, for a rich person to be respected by the lower classmen who work for him, he has to earn that respect by caring more about the wellfare his employees than just for his profits. That's what Duke Leto did, and unfortunately that was also the reason why he died.

Jesus Christ! I never said protesting is wrong!

Most of these high teenagers don't even know how the system works, much less what it is they want to change.