UC Davis police officer pepper sprays sitting students because, well, just because.
Think that’s %$#ing horrible? The video’s worse.
This makes me sick to my stomach.
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Do you remember the first time you ever saw those videos from the Civil Rights Movement of police turning hoses on black children, or them setting attack dogs on blacks who were sitting on the ground? Remember how horrified you were? That is what you should have felt when you watched those, because human beings in a free and enlightened society shouldn’t treat each other that way, and they certainly shouldn’t be treated that way by their own government.
I feel that same horror when I watch this. And if you don’t, you should think long and hard about what kind of society you are building, and what kind of society you want to be a part of.
These are not minorities. These are not blacks, these are not women, these are not gays, these are not Westboro Baptists. These are just citizens, doing things that citizens have the right to do. They are not being punished. They are being abused. And we, as Americans, know what to do when we find ourselves suffering abuses.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
I saw the video first. This article puts some things in context, but… regardless, I nearly burst into tears when I saw the video.
