OCCUPY WALL STREET

[SoNotHer]

I like this a lot, but I particularly like the final message that clean air and water are not commodities but basic human rights -

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

[AtLast]

Friday's Maddow show had a great report on an "Occupation" of a young mother's eviction situation that led to her gaining more time to be able to deal with solutions-

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/


Also a great Great Depression Era segment with pic of 1930's "encampment" protests formed to help save people's homes- history does repeat itself- and going back and looking at the demonstrations of that era and noting the tactics used then and this action is amazing. Also police action comparisons.

Depression era photo-



Another article that talks about the comparisons to the 1930's protests- and that perhaps we need to look at this more intently instead of most of the 1960's protests as those in the 30's are much more related to the how & why of the Occupy movement taking hold.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7964CY20111007

[SoNotHer]

I love this post, and I am so glad one more mother wasn't put out on the streets.

Thank you At Last for evoking the Depression. I get such a charge visiting CCC camps, seeing WPA murals and understanding why and how America got to a fundamental reality in the 30s and how that understanding made us who we are.

Originally Posted by AtLast

Friday's Maddow show had a great report on an "Occupation" of a young mother's eviction situation that led to her gaining more time to be able to deal with solutions-

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/


Also a great Great Depression Era segment with pic of 1930's "encampment" protests formed to help save people's homes- history does repeat itself- and going back and looking at the demonstrations of that era and noting the tactics used then and this action is amazing. Also police action comparisons.

Depression era photo-



Another article that talks about the comparisons to the 1930's protests- and that perhaps we need to look at this more intently instead of most of the 1960's protests as those in the 30's are much more related to the how & why of the Occupy movement taking hold.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7964CY20111007

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

I love this post, and I am so glad one more mother wasn't put out on the streets.

Thank you At Last for evoking the Depression. I get such a charge visiting CCC camps, seeing WPA murals and understanding why and how America got to a fundamental reality in the 30s and how that understanding made us who we are.

I agree- that era is such an important part of US history. Tough times, yet both government and citizen intervention that worked together- "or and of the people" kinds of solutions.

Hey, my Dad helped build the High Point Monument in New Jersey CCC as part of the CCCs. From that he became a fantastic mason and through the years built amazing stone and brick landscape structures.

[atomiczombie]

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

This week, the United States Senate passed S. 1867 also known as the National Defense Authorization Act including sections 1031 and 1032 which authorize the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens without trial or charge. Despite national outcry over the bill which effectively suspends the Constitutional rights of those suspected of terrorist activities and would allow Americans to be incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the Senate passed the bill by an overwhelming margin of 93-7. This means that Congress could easily override the President’s threatened veto.

But this act of Congress is even more dangerous than we first thought. Included in the bill is Amendment 1068 which was offered by Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. This part of the bill undermines President Obama’s executive order that bans torture and overrides the list of permissible interrogation techniques in the US Army Field Manual. In other words, the US military could arrest ordinary American citizens without reading them their Miranda Rights, put them in a cell at Gitmo without the benefit of an attorney, a trial, or charges of any kind, and then torture them during interrogation. A secret list of torture techniques would be created without public knowledge.

Who does this affect? Every single man, woman, and child on American soil would be directly affected by this bill. It would give this President and all future Presidents, the power to arrest American citizens with the military and torture them into confession even if they are innocent. Essentially, it turns the Presidency into a dictatorship authorized to use the military against the people.

The Occupy movement in particular could face this unconstitutional military action. Just imagine if Republicans captured the White House in 2012. Conservative media, corporations, and Republican politicians have referred to the Occupy protesters as terrorists or worse than terrorists. Just this accusation alone gives the President cause to unleash the military to round up and arrest the protesters en masse, suspend their constitutional rights, and torture them in a prison off American soil, all because they were exercising their right to protest. This is an extraordinarily dangerous and un-American bill that would destroy the Constitution and our system of government. The judicial system would be powerless to do anything about it too.

We the people must demand that our government discard this bill permanently. It goes against everything America values and stands for. We must write, email, call, and protest our senators and representatives and the White House and call for action. You can also visit this page and sign a petition. Unless Americans stand up and fight this, we may one day have to rely on other countries to free us from ourselves.

LINK: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/12...an-we-thought/

Welcome to the Fascist States of America.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

LINK: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/12...an-we-thought/

Welcome to the Fascist States of America.

The senate, the house, all our elected officials, they do the will of the people right? So I guess this is what we all wanted or at least the majority of people are not upset by it. I mean if the majority of people objected to the crap that is going on there would be more noise, more people in the street. Not ten, not ten hundred, not ten thousand, there would be hundreds of thousands. There's not. So I can only assume the majority is happy. Well then goodonya. Next they will take our internet. There is so much crap they have already done and will keep doing and with the exception of, relatively speaking, a small group of people (compared to the entire population of the U.S.) most don't even recognize a problem. So really what can ya do? What can you expect? You can't spoon feed awareness. You can't make people see. You certainly can't make them give a shit. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. You can however make him thirsty but sometimes he just ain't gonna drink no matter what. I talked to my sister the other day and with a few minor misgivings she is pretty satisfied with what is going on. Or should I say she feels like it's the best she's going to be able to get. Most seem to be okay with what's happening. I don't know maybe it's me?

I get that the mainstream news doesn't really make it easy to understand what is happening. They do the bidding of the rich who also control the government. But lots of people do get it. So it's possible to figure it out. There are people who have devoted their lives to helping people get it. So it's really a choice. And so far, I don't see change being the choice of the people.

[Corkey]

The only problem with history repeating itself, we still haven't learned, as a people, the lesson of compassion. Perhaps next time.

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

LINK: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/12...an-we-thought/

Welcome to the Fascist States of America.

i signed it. and i hate to say told you so. not "you" personally, but "you" as in the general public. gah i hate being right. i so so so wanted to hope that the threat of guantanomo would not be held over our heads. i feel very sad today.

[ruffryder]

Orlando has been ordered to remove personal belongings at their encampment as of midnight Monday or the police will remove it.

In other occupy news, Occupy Wal-Mart ?

[Diavolo]

8 reasons why Ronald Reagan was the worst President of our lifetime


Arguably eight reasons why this is all Reagan's fault.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Corkey

The only problem with history repeating itself, we still haven't learned, as a people, the lesson of compassion. Perhaps next time.

Very good point, my friend. We sure could use more compassion based historical repeats! And hopefully, do something about the things in our history that were so damn wrong.

[SoNotHer]

While I'm grateful something or someone has taken on the quixotic, fuzzy-wuzzy image of Reagan that has been produced for public consumption, the author fails to mention one very large reason Reagan was the worst president in recent history - he dismantled and eviscerated alternative energy research and prjoects. He had the solar panels Carter had had placed on the WH roof taken down, a symbolic gesture that American, even after an oil embargo and even after Carter's (who, remember, has an engineering background) direction and push toward energy independence, and even after abundant and mounting evidence that we were going to run out of petroleum and the GHGs were real and dangerous, Reagan made sure America kept the pump hooked up like an IV line and in fact ignored history and science and plunged head first into its fossil fuel addiction.

So many "Reagan reasons," but this one effects everything...

Originally Posted by Diavolo

8 reasons why Ronald Reagan was the worst President of our lifetime


Arguably eight reasons why this is all Reagan's fault.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

While I'm grateful something or someone has taken on the quixotic, fuzzy-wuzzy image of Reagan that has been produced for public consumption, the author fails to mention one very large reason Reagan was the worst president in recent history - he dismantled and eviscerated alternative energy research and prjoects. He had the solar panels Carter had had placed on the WH roof taken down, a symbolic gesture that American, even after an oil embargo and even after Carter's (who, remember, has an engineering background) direction and push toward energy independence, and even after abundant and mounting evidence that we were going to run out of petroleum and the GHGs were real and dangerous, Reagan made sure America kept the pump hooked up like an IV line and in fact ignored history and science and plunged head first into its fossil fuel addiction.

So many "Reagan reasons," but this one effects everything...

I can add that he was also the worst Govenor that California has ever had- hummmm.... could also talk about Arnold. Reagan dismantled our mental health system in CA to the point of cruelty for the mentally ill.

There are some very good reasons that his son, Ron is a progresssive!

[*Anya*]

Occupy LA protester, with police looking @ sign woman is holding, in front of LAPD headquarters:

"Thanks for not 'Tazing, teargassing or using live bullets"

[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by ruffryder

(Newser) – When the protesters of Occupy LA vacated their encampment, they left behind 30 tons of debris. Sanitation workers have already removed 25 tons of garbage, clothes, and random belongings—all of which went to a landfill, the Los Angeles Times reports. Protesters, who lived in the tent city for two months, left behind not just trashed protest signs and food, but everything from mattresses to electric razors to bicycles to a treehouse—and, of course, dozens of tents.

According to the AP, the site doesn't smell so great, either—specifically, it reeks of "urine and unwashed bodies." The grass is ruined, trees are damaged, there's graffiti on the walls of City Hall and on statues, and there are rumors of a lice or flea infestation. The site is "so contaminated, it doesn't even make sense to sort [the left-behind belongings] out," says a sanitation superintendent. There were rows of portable toilets, but protesters still urinated in bottles that must now be disposed of. Says a city refuse collection supervisor, "I've never seen anything like this."

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

hahahahahhahaaaa

[SoNotHer]

From - http://www.paramuspost.com/article.p...11203183336535

OWS Hunger Strike For Open Spaces

By Press Release Saturday, December 03, 2011, 06:33 PM EST

New York City—On Saturday, December 3, in Liberty Plaza, we—THE OWS HUNGER STRIKERS—will begin a hunger strike. We are striking to demand outdoor space for a new occupation. We will hold our strike, for its duration, outside at Duarte Square on Sixth Avenue and Canal Street in Manhattan as part of a continued effort seeking sanctuary on Trinity Wall Street's unused and vacant lot of land. Should we be arrested, we will continue the strike in jail. We are calling on Occupiers across the nation to join us.

This is a call for escalation in response to the escalated levels of government-enacted violence and repression The Occupy Movement has endured over the last few weeks. In cities across the nation, Mayors chose to stifle freedom of speech and the right to assemble by evicting peaceful occupations using illegal and unconstitutional force. Here in NYC, in the middle of the night on November 14, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg used the NYPD to illicitly evict our community from Liberty Square.

We recognize the long history of hunger strikes as a radical action that has liberated countries, communities and individuals from repression,
slavery and injustice. From colonial India to modern Turkey; from the Northern Ireland H-Block cells to Palestinian prisons; from 1970s Cuba
to present-day California, hunger strikes have amplified the voices of the oppressed.

Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered direct action movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District. OWS is part of a growing international movement fighting against neoliberal economic practices, the crimes of Wall Street, government controlled by monied interests, and the resulting income inequality, unemployment, environmental destruction, and oppression of people at the front lines of the economic crisis. For more visit www.occupywallst.org.

[atomiczombie]

By Tex Shelters

1. The Occupy Movement blames everything on Wall Street. This is false for many reasons. First, there are many culprits in the economic crisis and corporate takeover of government, including the government itself. We understand that. Wall Street is a symbol of the excess and corporate dominance in our daily lives, not the only cause. Wall Street is a good rallying point, but if journalists and talking heads would look beyond the surface, they would find more. How about looking at the signs online while in your warm offices and you will see signs at Occupy Rallies and elsewhere about many different issues.

2. “They have no agenda.” Josh Barro, a “research scholar” at the right-wing think tank the Manhattan Institute has derided Occupy Wall Street (obviously doing little “research”) for not having an agenda.

But as I wrote in a response to this nonsense in his National Review article,

“You talk to one representative and now you are an expert? Have you been to an encampment or event? There are several clear goals that the Occupy Groups have, and if you had bothered to do research and looked at the various declarations of these groups (online, so you don’t even have to visit a camp to learn) you would find goals such as:

Protect homes from unlawful foreclosures
Repeal Citizens United
Single payer health care
Forgive and reduce student debt obligations
Make college more affordable for families
End foreign wars and bring our troops home
Reinvest in education and infrastructure
End indefinite detentions
Repeal the patriot act
End corporate personhood
and so on.

Perhaps the reason you don’t know of these goals is that you are too lazy to look them up and main stream reporters such as yourself refuse to report on them.

If you want to refute what I say, why not have me debate you and your ignorance.”

Perhaps I am being unfair to him and should forgive his inability to understand a movement that doesn’t fit into his “liberal versus conservative paradigm”, a leaderless movement full of capable people, and a movement that has many goals and objectives but isn’t as narrowly focused as Republican Senators are on bringing down Obama and nothing else.

3. They are all unemployed hippies who are aimless but at the same time violent anarchists, and other demographic falsehoods. The population of the Occupy encampments changes from day-to-day and city to city. I have seen different surveys of the group, but the highest unemployment stat on the movement I have seen is 30%. We are employed, part-time workers, unemployed, retired, homeless, rental unit owners, entrepreneurs, students, vets, and so on.

The actual number of hippies in the movement is quite low, and what’s wrong with hippies anyway? Do hippies make right-wingers uncomfortable or jealous that these reporters and pundits chose a life defending the 1% while hippies are free of such nonsense and don’t have to lie and misrepresent facts for living? I know it’s hard for people in the media to understand that there is not one type of person involved with the Occupy movement, and it makes the movement hard to stereotype. But they keep trying.

4. The Occupy Movement is disorganized. This is false. With few resources and no corporate or political party backing, Occupiers have daily and weekly general assembly meetings. We have declarations, clean camps, feed people, make the media contacts available to us (somehow, the Today Show hasn’t called Occupy Tucson), and so forth. We have no central committee, and I know that is hard to understand for inflexible minds reporting news for the 1%.

Yes, we don’t fit the standard non-profit organization, or the Tea Party (paid for by Koch), but if you go to the camps and talk to the organizers, there is a lot of order for an underfunded, non-aligned, independent organization. People say we are disorganized because they don’t understand our organization and want to marginalize us.

5. Occupy Movements caused their own troubles and the violence. Little of the violence was instigated by the protesters, and at least in LA, much of the violence has occurred to Occupiers after they were in custody. To blame movement activists for being violent when they are attacked is like blaming a rape victim for injuring their assailant, something Republicans and many others have done. Don’t buy it when someone tells you that being hit by batons, or being pepper sprayed or being hit by rubber bullets is the fault of the occupiers. If the police would let us occupy or surrender in peace, there would be little to no violence.

6. We’re Anti-captilist. Not true. While some may hold this view, it is more accurate to say that we are all against the rigged system. We are against a system that gives more tax cuts and affords tax loopholes to billionaires and millionaires and increases fees on the lower classes. We are against a system that passes laws to deregulate industries and gives corporate welfare in free rent, under-market prices for mining rights, military projects we don’t need to help contractors profit off of our tax dollars while they target cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, education and other social programs that help the vast majority of the people. We are against the selling off of valuable assets that only benefit the 1% such as the Rosemont Copper mine in Arizona and we are against the selling of our education system for profit while damaging that system.

Many of us own businesses, promote local enterprises and are for responsible capitalism that doesn’t damage the environment.

Can we ever really ever truly understand a movement that is in progess? Only by being at an Occupy rally or meeting can you have the slightest understanding of the full implications and people in the movement. We must work for the benefit of the 99% forever, whatever the falsehoods told about the Occupy Movement.

Peace,

Tex Shelters

LINK: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/12...cupy-movement/

[greeneyedgrrl]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...comm_ref=false

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."

"If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights," he continued.

La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it's clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces "as long as that doesn't severely affect the rights of others."

In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.

"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.

"One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order -- but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."

And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don't work anyway, he said. In Occupy's case, he said, "disbanding them by force won't change that attitude of indignation."

Occupy encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics.

New York police staged a night raid on the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in mid-November, evicting sleeping demonstrators and confiscating vast amounts of property.

The Oakland Police Department fired tear gas, smoke grenades and bean-bag rounds at demonstrators there in late October, seriously injuring one Iraq War veteran at the Occupy site.

Earlier this week, Philadelphia and Los Angeles police stormed the encampments in their cities in the middle of the night, evicting and arresting hundreds of protesters.

Protesters at University of California, Davis were pepper sprayed by a campus police officer in November while participating in a sit-in, and in September an officer in New York pepper sprayed protesters who were legally standing on the sidewalk.

"We're seeing widespread violations of fundamental First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of a National Lawyers Guild committee, which has sent hundreds of volunteers to provide legal representation to Occupations across the nation.

"The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," she said. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."

What they should do, Verheyden-Hilliard said, is make it their mission to allow the activity to continue.

Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as "Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?"

La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. "There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors," he said. That's especially the case when the bankers "still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes."

"In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue," he said. "These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate."

Indeed, commentators such as Robert Scheer have argued that the Occupy movement's citizen action has a particular justification, based on the government's abject failure to hold banks accountable.

La Rue said he sees parallels between Occupy and the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests. In both cases, for instance, "you have high level of education for young people, but no opportunities."

La Rue said he is in the process of writing what he called "an official communication" to the U.S. government "to ask what exactly is the position of the federal government in regards to understanding the human rights and constitutional rights vis-a-vis the use of local police and local authorities to disband peaceful demonstrations."

Although the letter will not carry any legal authority, it reflects how the violent suppression of dissent threatens to damage the U.S.'s international reputation.

"I think it's a dangerous spot in the sense of a precedent," La Rue said, expressing concern that the United States risks losing its credibility as a model democracy, particularly if the excessive use of force against peaceful protests continues.

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman welcomed the international scrutiny.

"We live in a much smaller, connected world than we ever did before, and just as Americans watch what goes on in Tahrir Square and in Syria, the whole world is watching us, too -- and that's a good thing," Lieberman said.

"We're kind of confident that we're living in the greatest democracy in the world, but when the international human rights world criticizes an American police officer for pepper spraying students who are sitting down, it rightly give us pause."
* * * * *

[SoNotHer]

What does it say when an UN envoy has to call attention to the treatment of protestors exercising a right we so proudly put on display for the world and so often use to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the world? Great post. Thank you, Greeneyedgrrl.

Originally Posted by greeneyedgrrl

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...comm_ref=false

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."

"If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights," he continued.

La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it's clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces "as long as that doesn't severely affect the rights of others."

In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.

"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.

"One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order -- but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."

And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don't work anyway, he said. In Occupy's case, he said, "disbanding them by force won't change that attitude of indignation."

Occupy encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics.

New York police staged a night raid on the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in mid-November, evicting sleeping demonstrators and confiscating vast amounts of property.

The Oakland Police Department fired tear gas, smoke grenades and bean-bag rounds at demonstrators there in late October, seriously injuring one Iraq War veteran at the Occupy site.

Earlier this week, Philadelphia and Los Angeles police stormed the encampments in their cities in the middle of the night, evicting and arresting hundreds of protesters.

Protesters at University of California, Davis were pepper sprayed by a campus police officer in November while participating in a sit-in, and in September an officer in New York pepper sprayed protesters who were legally standing on the sidewalk.

"We're seeing widespread violations of fundamental First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of a National Lawyers Guild committee, which has sent hundreds of volunteers to provide legal representation to Occupations across the nation.

"The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," she said. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."

What they should do, Verheyden-Hilliard said, is make it their mission to allow the activity to continue.

Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as "Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?"

La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. "There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors," he said. That's especially the case when the bankers "still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes."

"In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue," he said. "These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate."

Indeed, commentators such as Robert Scheer have argued that the Occupy movement's citizen action has a particular justification, based on the government's abject failure to hold banks accountable.

La Rue said he sees parallels between Occupy and the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests. In both cases, for instance, "you have high level of education for young people, but no opportunities."

La Rue said he is in the process of writing what he called "an official communication" to the U.S. government "to ask what exactly is the position of the federal government in regards to understanding the human rights and constitutional rights vis-a-vis the use of local police and local authorities to disband peaceful demonstrations."

Although the letter will not carry any legal authority, it reflects how the violent suppression of dissent threatens to damage the U.S.'s international reputation.

"I think it's a dangerous spot in the sense of a precedent," La Rue said, expressing concern that the United States risks losing its credibility as a model democracy, particularly if the excessive use of force against peaceful protests continues.

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman welcomed the international scrutiny.

"We live in a much smaller, connected world than we ever did before, and just as Americans watch what goes on in Tahrir Square and in Syria, the whole world is watching us, too -- and that's a good thing," Lieberman said.

"We're kind of confident that we're living in the greatest democracy in the world, but when the international human rights world criticizes an American police officer for pepper spraying students who are sitting down, it rightly give us pause."
* * * * *