Victims of Violence: When UC Police Attack

If you've taken a glance at the corporate press' headlines recently, you'd see something like this: "UC Santa Cruz Protest Turns Violent," or, my favorite, "Police Break Up Violent Protest at UC Regents Meeting." The mainstream media blatently suggests that it was the students - the protesters - that were violent. Yet, to have violence you have to have victims. 'cus if nothing or no one was hurt, how can you claim that any crime has been committed?

If you look at Wednesday's (Oct. 18, 2006) protest and all the reports and documentation, you'll see that, in fact, there were victims of violence. The victim wasn't property. The victims weren't the cops (except the one that sprayed himself with his own pepper-spray). The victims weren't the Regents (unless you call really having to pee a form of violence). For the most part, the victims weren't even the corporate visitors (one guy from the Chamber of Commerce claims he got spit on, but that's it). If you were present or if you looked at the documentation, you would see that the victims were, by and large, the protesters.

So.. if violence creates victims, and the victims were mostly protesters, who were the instigators of the violence? The police. This is my argument: that Wednesday's protest was in fact violent, and we should all abhor unjust violence, yet the majority of violence came in the form of pepper-spray in the eyes and batons to the bodies. If we are truly concerned about violence and safety, then we must also be concerned about the police.