Just one day after the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Occupy movement, Seattle police went on a pepper spray rampage. Among the non-violent protesters blasted with the substance at point-blank range were 84-year-old activist Dorli Rainey; the Rev. Rich Lang, who was dressed in full clerical garb; and a woman two months pregnant, who was taken to the hospital. The pregnant woman’s condition is unknown; Lang and Rainey have recovered from their ordeals.
On Nov. 14, in a significant victory for Occupy Seattle, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution recognizing “the peaceful and lawful exercise of First Amendment rights by Occupy Seattle and others.” The resolution went on to note: “The structural causes of the economic crisis facing our society require decisive and sustained action at the national and state levels.”
By the next morning, OS activists had learned of the police attack on Occupy Wall Street, and resolved to hold a solidarity march later that day. Activists marched downtown from the OS base camp at Seattle Central Community College. At Westlake, people took the intersection of Pine and 5th Avenue. It was there that police faced off against the non-violent protesters and began pepper spraying randomly and at close range. Lang posted on Facebook that his garments were soaked with the substance.
Rainey, a long-time activist, had joined the protest after getting off the bus on her way to a meeting. When she was sprayed, a young Iraq war veteran held her up and prevented her from falling. Had she fallen, she would have been at significant risk for breaking a bone or other serious injury. OS medics on site treated her, washing her face with milk to remove the pepper spray. Rainey told Liberation News that when she got on the bus to return home, she explained to her fellow riders that she had been pepper sprayed.
Photographs of Rainey after being pepper sprayed have gone viral on the Internet. She is well known in Seattle among activists and elected officials. That this tiny woman was attacked only highlights the brutality of the police and the tenuousness of our right to free speech.
In other news related to OS, the campsite at SCCC faces possible attack by the police and the community college administration. There is ambiguity in Washington state law that prevents the college from forbidding the occupation outright. While the faculty union actively supports OS, the administration has issued unsubstantiated claims that the occupation is costing the school $20,000 a week. The administration has raised a hue and cry about alleged safety issues, while OS volunteers are working hard each and every day to make the camp a safe place.
A delegation from OS has been meeting regularly with SCCC administrators in an attempt to keep an open line of communication. On Nov. 15, prior to the march at which people were pepper sprayed, the president of the college, Paul Killpatrick, abruptly canceled the meeting, claiming an emergency. When activists tried to reschedule it, his deputy was hostile and evasive, eventually rescheduling the meeting for next week.
Activists need to be on the alert for a renewed attack on the encampment site in Seattle; in Portland, the camp was cleared by police in the early hours of Nov. 13, following claims of “unsafe conditions” by Mayor Sam Adams. In the police violence that ensued, a musician and American Sign Language interpreter was seriously injured from being beaten by cops.
In an “Open letter to the people of Portland,” Occupy Portland wrote: “Justin Bridges, a beloved member of our community and Occupy Portland’s only ASL interpreter, fell due to a pre-existing injury. Yet once he had fallen he was dragged through the mud, choked by his collar until he lost consciousness, and injured by the police until he had lost use of both legs and his right arm. He was hospitalized for these injuries and is now in a wheelchair, living with what he describes as ‘excruciating pain’.”
Occupy Portland activists have vowed to continue the struggle.
It is clear that the attacks on occupations from Wall Street to Portland are not random or isolated events but part of a nationally coordinated effort directed at killing this emerging movement. Those attempting to kill this struggle with police raids, stun grenades and pepper spray do not understand that the people will continue to struggle, because the causes of our discontent have not been resolved.
