The Occupy Seattle is marching, and police have responded in force, according to multiple eyewitness accounts. The Occupy Seattle account tweets, "Pepper spray has been deployed against protesters including a priest and a blind woman." One participant tweets, "They maced a pregnant woman, a kid, a priest, and a blind woman w/ a fucking cane!" Here's a woman recovering from being sprayed. Watch a live stream here. But: the Seattle City Council just passed a resolution supporting the Occupy movement. I am confused.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=39603889 Lauren Seals

    My bus just passed this area (or, at least, 3rd&Bell) about an hour ago where I saw the fire trucks and EMTs pulling away, and what looked like an Occupy medic flushing out a woman’s eyes. 

    Oddly, my 3G connection cut out entirely in the block or two surrounding where the fire trucks were. As soon as we moved past that area, it connected quickly and easily. So far I’m not seeing any local coverage, though I saw a professional-looking camera out. 

    Honestly, I don’t know if it was a coincidence or what, but not being able to connect to the internet and not being able to find anything in local media (besides a one sentence seattle 911 report indicating “aid response”) makes me pretty nervous, even as I’m not actively participating in the protests.

    • Guest

      nervous people are more likely to vote conservatively. Just sayin’. 

    • Gary Johnson

      Conspiracy?  Probably not, unless everybody’s phones have dropped signals too.

  • Guest

    The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, it seems.

  • Alvis

    Oh, come on – a priest and a blind woman?  No need to play any sympathy cards – it’s an affront to our freedoms that ANY non-violent protesters were assaulted – and that includes white males of comfortable means, too, thank you very much.

    • http://twitter.com/shay_guy Shay Guy

      There’s a rationale for playing sympathy cards: We’ve got ‘em.

      Maxim 37: “There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘I need to reload.’”

    • thaum

      Aren’t the white males of comfortable means the people the Occupy movement are going after? ;)

      • EvilSpirit

        Wow! That emoticon magically made your comment not the asshattery that it otherwise would have been. ;)

      • Guest

        yeah, because this is about race?

      • Gary Johnson

        Yep. While the WASP’s are so piss scared there macing old blind ladies by mistake. Sad.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Oh, come on – a priest and a blind woman?  No need to play any sympathy cards – it’s an affront to our freedoms that ANY non-violent protesters were assaulted – and that includes white males of comfortable means, too, thank you very much.

      God forbid that we oppress you by noticing that disabled people and children might have a harder time dealing with being maced than you.  Could you possible be more self-centered and whiny?

      • Guest

        I will take. that. action. 

      • Alvis

        Thanks for the personal attack.

        How well someone “deals” with being assaulted has no bearing on the inherent wrongness of the act.  Calling special attention to a few sympathy cases is hugely insulting to the leagues of uninteresting average dudes who were treated just as badly by the police, if not worse.

        • Guest

          You did not see that as an attack. Clearly you read that as an invitation.

      • You_Sir_Cannot

        I’m no theist, but it’s a little harsh calling a Priest “disabled”.

    • Gary Johnson

      Alvis this isn’t the rainbow parade. It won’t be long though, your parade will come soon enough and there will be plenty of white males for you, your welcome very much!

  • Value Pack

    I live at 3rd and Wall. 4th has a dozen or so police cars, and 5th is blocked as far as I can tell. Traffic is, oddly, not too bad. I didn’t see much downtown either.

    Belltown is mostly tourists and tech company grunts (Popcap is nearby), so I have no idea why OWS would be out this far. Maybe they’re planning on dining in the Space Needle after?

  • David Neil

    Don’t try to make sense of Seattle politics.  They don’t even know what they’re doing half the time.

  • http://twitter.com/slackandsurvive Slacker Faction

    Clearly SPD became impatient. Apparently I left the march just before this happened. Marched from Broadway &  Pine without incident. Crowd was successfully pushed up onto sidewalk at 3rd & Bell by SPD. 
     
    Pepper spray doesn’t discriminate between the provocateur and the bystander…

  • http://twitter.com/slackandsurvive Slacker Faction

    Clarifications: 

    1) Occupy Seattle was not “raided”.2)No”tear gas” (CS) used, just pepper spray (OC).

    • ChurchTucker

      Clarifications:

      1) Yes, it was. 2) Distinction without a difference.

      • http://twitter.com/slackandsurvive Slacker Faction

        Occupy Seattle was NOT “raided. Check out:http://www.livestream.com/owsoccupyseattle

        If you were on the the streets of Seattle 30 November 1999 you would know there is a serious difference.

        • ChurchTucker

          Well, I appreciate the difficulty in proving a negative. But when I tuned in, they were looking for Maalox. 

          • http://twitter.com/slackandsurvive Slacker Faction

            Maalox is mixed with water and used as post pepper spray wash.

  • kaeti humphrey

    Occupy Orange County Irvine was evicted last night as well,  at 1 am with one hour notice, and  the “kitchen staff” tear-gassed: 

    http://www.occupy-oc.org/mini-update-111511-occupy-wall-street-raided-so-we-go-to-long-beach-city-council/

  • jeligula

    Craptastic!  Here I am with a bad cold, horrible chest congestion, etc, and there is no protest around.  A good lungful of CN gas is the cure for the common cold, trust me on this.  A CN canister fired from just outside point blank range at your head from an M203 grenade launcher?  Not so much.

  • jason gilbert

    Police hurt a lot of people. What happened to them “serving and protecting”? I think it’s about time for a violent uprising. 

    • Guest

      You’re seeing one. Do you think the mayors are in control of their staff?

  • artaxerxes

    Color me confused. The mayor of Seattle issued a statement of solidarity with the Occupy Movement about 2 weeks ago, I think. And, of course, more perplexing is the fact that the City Council just passed the resolution to support Occupy.

    I don’t know very much about Seattle politics, but I do know that the Seattle Police have been involved in more than a few cases of illegal use of force, such as the shooting death by a hyped-up rookie of the guy with the tiny whittling knife. 

    Can any Seattleites (sp? correct term) shed some light on the nature of the relationship between SPD and city government? Are those entities involved in a long-simmering conflict? Thanks to anyone who can elaborate or add nuanced information on the situation.

    Also, a message of support and sympathy to our Occupy brothers and sisters in Seattle. Thanks for standing up for the rights of all of us in the face of violence. Much respect. I hope everyone emerged with minor injuries. Stay safe. 

    • http://twitter.com/slackandsurvive Slacker Faction

      Seattle PD is very averse to close quarters interaction with citizens. Which means you are less likely to to be clubbed and more likely to be sprayed — and occasionally shot.

  • fett101

    So a police officer, a blind woman, and a priest walk into a protest camp and…

  • Joseph Brown

    Xeni, Seattle police are a rogue agency, under investigation by the justice department.  They have no ties and no loyalty to city council or hizzhonor the impotent Mayor McSchwinn.

  • ciacontra

    Basically the SPD and the officer’s union are out of control.  They’re a bit on edge since the Justice Department is investigating their recent $#%* ups.  The SPD and the Mayor’s office aren’t really on speaking terms.  And the civilian control of the force often is outright ignored by the Police Union (which has printed some very disturbing “letters to the editor” in its union newsletter this last year).   While most of the officers are just bored and annoyed that they have to be there, there are also a few really bad apples in the force who are thrilled at the chance to crack some lefty heads.

    Having been maced, tear gassed, shot at with rubber bullets and flashbangs by the SPD twice in my life (only one of which was at the WTO) I can say the officers don’t really like crowds…

  • Alan Ball

    Just thought I’d point this out, attacking a priest is instant excommunication. Not that they care or anything, they’d probably tear-gas Christ too. 

  • artaxerxes

    I wonder if the evictions are part of an organized collaborative effort to quash the movement before the holiday season. Many elected officials have strong ties to the business community and merchants have a legitimate concern about the effects on commerce created by the Occupy presence.

    Sales during holiday season can represent up to 50% of a company’s yearly revenue. A few months interning at a marketing firm or working with merchandisers will permanently brand that truth on your brain lobes. 

    The separate industry of spinning and analyzing holiday spending is also a reliable generator of revenue for media, “experts” and finance professionals. From early November to mid-January, dozens of pundits will earn fat paychecks prophesying disaster or recovery, scaring consumers or assuaging their fears. 

    It would be ingenuous to deny that a majority of members of City Governments desperately want their downtowns sparkly clean, inviting environments that encourage consumers to give their best in the playoff game of Shopping, that Greatest of American Sports.

    • Gary Johnson

      While Govt. allows the poor, now a growing legion, to be stripped of everything even the right to demonstrate their poverty by camping in a dirty city park, they set the stage for the game to change. Shopping might become Robbing and Looting. 

  • silkox

    Tweeted at about 1900 local time, a couple hours after the tweets about the man of the cloth and the lady with the cane:

    #occupyseattle Our camp is NOT being raided. Our confrontations with police today have been part of a march in solidarity with #ows

    Maybe time to update the headline?

  • evilpeacock

    The protest appeared to be going fine when I took this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilpeacock/6349072943/in/photostream

    As you can see the protest was blocking a major intersection that also affects quite a few peak commute bus routes (including mine). The intersection didn’t get cleared in the ~30 minutes I was trying to catch another bus that would get me close to home.I had to improvise to get home in time. I would’ve hung out and taken more photos but some of us have to scramble to get home to our second jobs as parents.

  • eryximachus

    To serve and protect…

  • ultranaut

    Seattle pigs love to fuck shit up. I first saw them in action more than a decade ago in full robocop gear beating on an old woman just because some assholes in suits told them to clear a street. They really don’t give a fuck. They’ve beaten and shot people without consequence, even when it happens on video! They’ve blatantly lied and hidden evidence and the worst that’s ever come of it is a sternly worded letter. The Seattle police department is fundamentally a criminal organization, I have no idea when it started but some kind of radical anti-America paramilitary gang has controlled SPD for more than a decade. 

  • rackoo

    The Seattle PI posted this Pulitzer-worthy photo of what happened at Occupy Seattle tonight.  The best photo I’ve seen representing what’s happening with the Occupy movement so far.

    http://www.seattlepi.com/local/gallery/Occupy-Seattle-Protests-11-15-11-32102/photo-1758708.php

    • Gary Johnson

      That is the portrait of our tax dollars at work: paying the police to perpetrate violence on our own citizens, our elders nonetheless. If that was your grandmother would you let the cop get away with it? Who is protecting her?  Are the police leading that women to safety? Look!  Hell no!  Like any criminal, they’ve left the scene – can’t be caught on film.  Besides it’s just ‘collateral damage’, right? It’s the price we pay for peace, right? Wrong!

  • Alan Ball

    Seriously though the patience of these protesters.  I am amazed at their resolve. Someone should be held responsible for this unreasonable escalation. 

    • zombhi

      Actually, the reason you are seeing this behavior from the police is precisely due to the nonviolent nature of the protest. Bullies will hit those who cannot or will not hit back.

      The Occupy movements are merely tips of the same behemoth iceberg. A modern society is too connected to allow isolated and invisible putdowns of dissent. Arab Spring proves that if police use violence to stand in the way of social change, they can easily stir up more trouble than they can handle.

      Last I heard, many in Egypt’s police force are now out of work, and the rest are being paid about $100 a month with no desire on anyone’s part to pay them more. Bleak indeed, all due to picking the wrong side too early and too zealously.