Video of Police Whacking Students With Batons Doesn't Look Good
It's not clear from this YouTube clip what provoked Berkeley, California cops to begin poking at these UC-Berkeley students with such force, but we wouldn't want to be the police spokesperson tasked with explaining this scene to the public.
As reported by the Oakland Tribune, yesterday Berkeley students held a rally to protest privatization and increased education costs. To show solidarity with the Occupy Everywhere movement, some of the protesters set up tents on Sproul Plaza. When riot gear cops showed up to remove the tents, the students reportedly "linked arms and formed a circle" around their camp. Naturally, this resulted in a showdown, police batons a-waving, and multiple arrests. According to the Daily Californian, seven protesters were led away in cuffs, while several others were treated for stomach, arm, and head injuries caused by those batons.
Despite the scary conflagration depicted here, protesters continued their activities into the night. At 10:30 PM a crowd of at least 1,000 occupied Sproul Plaza. After a few hours police in riot gear showed up and arrested 32 more protesters, but not before organizers announced plans for another protest to be held today.
Elsewhere in California, UCLA students held a street sit-in that stopped traffic for a while and led to at least 11 arrests. The ReFund California Coalition, which is headed by The Billionaire George Soros, ACORN, Bill Ayers, and the Ghost of Saul Alinsky behind the student protests, notes that another round of protests is scheduled for November 16 at Berkeley, UCLA, and many other California university campuses, so don't be surprised if more conflagration videos are on the way.
