VIOLENT ENCOUNTER: Why Aren't the Teabaggers being Pepper Sprayed Like OWS???

[Pryderi]

[djean111]

1. A few reasons IMO.

1. OWS did not align itself with the Democrats.
2. OWS was demonstrating against Wall Street, and Wall Street owns both parties.
3. At this point in time, giving those demonstrators the OWS treatment would have further inflamed the GOP and all of its motley hangers-on.
4. The media and police were given their orders. Neither party wanted OWS pointing out inconvenient truths.
5. If Palin and Cruz want juicy clips of themselves being arrested or roughed up, they will have to create them themselves.
6. All of this kabuki and charade is about elections and campaign financing - the state of the United States and the rest of the world does not matter in the least, and both parties count on people to vote like they always do.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

16. That and the Right Wing likes to play with guns and that could turn nasty.

[canoeist52]

2. And that's the question I've been asking on Facebook, to which there are no replies.

[blueknight]

3. IF THAT

were a bunch of BLACK MEN, doing the EXACT same thing, they would all be locked up!

[MynameisBlarney]

10. Locked up?

Shot and killed most likely.

[JackInGreen]

4. Because OWS

doesn't have much of a possibility of showing back up heavily armed?
More to the point, I think it would have given the revo-douche-ionists that stand with the teapublicans motivation to revolt.

[jberryhill]

5. Because the DC police are not the NYPD?

Different force, different place, different tactics.

What was the wind like?

The last time someone used a chemical agent for crowd control near the White House, there was this:

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Tear gas pepper spray beatings and bullets are for the left. nt.

[freedom fighter jh]

7. It could be because this is DC.

In my experience, the DC police are pretty gentle with protestors.

I was at Occupy one day in DC. The group just kind of spontaneously decided to take over a pretty big street, and the cops responded by waving traffic out of the way.

[LiberalEsto]

11. Are you kidding?

I've been going to protests in DC since 1969.
I've seen mounted park police ride right over demonstrators
I've seen one club a non-protesting passerby for absolutely no reason during May Day 1971.
I've run through clouds of teargas sprayed by the cops.
I've seen them arrest groups of people for no reason.

The last big Iraq war protest my husband and I attended, a group of us, mostly peaceful older folks like me, were walking up a street that the police had directed us to use, when we were suddenly stopped and herded onto a side street and surrounded by DC cops on motorcycles in riot gear. Nobody was allowed to leave that one block area, even people who had absolutely nothing to do with the protest. Nobody was allowed to sit down, and there were elderly people who desperately needed to get to a restroom. The cops were joined by riot cops on foot, and it looked like we were all going to get beaten and arrested. And from the looks on their faces, many of the cops were looking forward to it. Beating up about 70 people who were mostly in their 50s through 70s. No reason was ever given for why they detained us.

After more than an hour of quietly standing there, scared shitless, we were saved by some journalist who spotted us and started asking questions about why we were detained. At one point Chief Ramsey showed up and was also questioned by the reporter. About 20 minutes later, we were permitted to disperse.

The DC and National Capital Park police, in my opinion, contain in their ranks a bunch of crazies who love nothing better than beating the crap out of us "commie pinko hippies," African Americans, etc. And I write this as a former newspaper reporter who associated a great deal with police in NJ and even had a couple of friends among them.

[The Wizard]

19. Star Ledger? (NT)

[LiberalEsto]

20. yep. worked there 11 years

before moving to Maryland.

Also Woodbridge News-Tribune and a couple of weeklies before that.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

21. Are you unaware of DC police pepper-spraying OWS protestors? Try this as a start:

[Dustlawyer]

8. Maybe the cops did nothing b/c they didn't want to have to do mouth-to-mouth on all of the

old men who would have had a heart attack!

[LiberalEsto]

9. Perhaps to give them as little media ink as possible?

That would be my guess, though I do see the discrepancy between the treatment of Occupy and the treatment of the Shutdown Shitheads.

[raging moderate]

12. Should we maybe send sympathetic messages to these police officers?

I tried to call the White House to leave a sympathetic message for these police officers, but the White House isn't taking calls due to the shutdown. It must have been difficult and scary for them. Apparently they had orders not to attack or arrest anybody, not even if they were physically attacked, as this video clearly shows. As several here have said, Tea Party people include a lot of elitist sociopaths who carry guns and do not hesitate to use them if they feel their "honor" (actually selfish pride) is threatened.

[ellennelle]

13. um...there were a lot of US vets in that crowd?

i mean, the clearly militaristic response to OWS, and any and all peaceful protests, is outrageous and jaw-dropping. i see the injustice in the comparison.

but first and foremost, these were not even the DC police; these were the DC park services police!

and, there were a lot of vets in that crowd. tea baggers or not, there were lots of vets. many WWII vets.

i hope it goes without saying that we're all glad these cops did NOT use force.

and it of course goes without saying that the comparable treatment to OWS and the like is not just.

but, y'know; perspective here, folks. think about how bad things might have gone if these guys HAD been treated like OWS. we'd never hear the end of it.

just sayin'.

[Dollface]

17. That was my thought. Please don't give the wingnuts any martyrs. Especially if there is video.

[Plucketeer]

14. DC is one thing

The perimeter of the White House is another. There's likely different strategies. Does anyone know what might happen if a crowd managed to get over those fences?

[heaven05]

15. because the teabaggers

are truly representative of amerikkkan success , while OWS is an embarrassment because it is an amerikkkan example of failure, to the world, in it's inability to provide for it's poorer and downtrodden citizens?

[The Wizard]

18. Radical right wing extremists

support their oppressors. OWS challenges them and wants to know what they did with our money.

[IronLionZion]

22. They shot and killed a woman just 2 weeks ago

for running over cops/secret service with her car outside the white house. If these people breached the perimeter of the white house, they would see the same fate.

DC police have been dealing with protesters for a very long time and have plenty of plans in place to deal with a variety of situations. This case looks like a small number of protesters with a small number of cops. A larger number of protestors would yield a larger response.

Make no mistake, the DC metro area does NOT sympathize with the tea party for shutting down the major employer here and damaging our local economy.

Its wrong when cops in other cities use violence on occupy protesters, it is just as wrong to wish violence upon teabaggers.