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"THERE IS NO HONOR IN THIS!"

10/28/2011

 
Picture
Sgt. Shamar Thomas speaking to school children
There’s No Honor In This!
    Occupy is different in each city.  It’s  turned violent in Oakland, California, a city with a history of police violence. In 2009, an officer shot and killed unarmed 22-year old Oscar Grant in the back. Yesterday on TV, Oakland’s mayor, Jean Quan, read a statement, eerily bland, as though reporting on school district management or bus routes.
    At most Occupy locations the police were restrained, which I attribute to the pervasive presence of video. Anything can go quickly onto the Internet and then viral, like the sadistic mace attack by NYPD’s Anthony Bologna on defenseless women in NYC’s Zuccotti Park. It seemed as if nothing had changed since Herbert Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to boot the World War I Bonus Army vets put of Anacostia Flats, which he did with brutal efficiency, then burned their tents and pitiful possessions. 
But Bologna’s mace attack was caught on video, went viral, and spurred an investigation.  He was  punished by losing 10 vacation days. That’ll larn him.
    When I was five, I was taught to say my address, “710 Meridian Avenue,” and if I ever got lost, walk
up to the first policeman I saw and say it. My mother said, “Policemen are kind, like daddy, and will take you home.”  It left me with a lifelong feeling that the police are my friends, and despite the ugly side, much has confirmed that. I know a professional entertainer who was genuinely drawn to police work, became an officer, and I know that I’ll never hear of Mike attacking kids in a park.
    Yet not all can resist the obvious stresses of a job that puts them in close daily contact with criminals and crime. Is that what makes it so easy for an Anthony Bologna to fire mace into the face of a young woman, for a policman in Oakland to shoot a tear-gas cannister at a retreating crowd instead of up into the air, hitting and seriously injuring ex-marine and Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, in the head with a gas cannister? Police behavior outraged another war vet, Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas, who confronted police in Time Square: "This is not war! This is America! How do you sleep at night? There is no honor in this! There is no honor in this! None!"

    To see Sgt. Thomas on video, click the link.
  Sgt. Shamar Thomas


Martha
10/28/2011 12:13:26 pm

Thank you, Stuart, as always.

Barbara Friedlich
10/28/2011 04:31:09 pm

WOW!!!

CH
10/28/2011 10:33:50 pm

Stresses, yes. But also - not all can resist abusing the power that comes with their job.

urbisoler
10/30/2011 04:13:37 am

Ah, but you are mistaken. It is war and it has been going on since the dawn of time. It will never end. It is . . . as I have suggested to our friend Stuart . . . part of the human condition. Life is not fair. We can strive for Justice but she is NOT blind. She sees the misery but she is confronted at each turn by the built-in prejudices of a world of Babel proportions. It is overwhelming and it is unending. Ciao!

urbisoler
10/31/2011 04:15:13 am

Remember this:
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html

Billy Joel telling us that they didn't start the fire; that it began when the world began; it has always been this way.


Comments are closed.
    Picture

    Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

    Being 90 years in this world,  with great kids,  great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
                                   Stuart Hodes

    Picture
           With my friend, Nero.
                   April, 2012.
        Photo by Ray Madrigal

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