An email I just received. Please read.

For Immediate Release

From Occupy Lincoln

Contact for more information:

http://www.occupylincoln.net/contact/

November 21, 2011

Vigil for Victims of Police Brutality at UNL on Tuesday

Last week at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Davis protesting students were brutally suppressed by police. At Berkeley, students and faculty members attempted to set up a tent occupation on their school’s campus. Though the demonstrators remained peaceful, the police did not, and several protestors were attacked with clubs, including former United States Poet Laureate Robert Hass. Video footage of the police assault can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_f06VQOkI4

At the University of California at Davis, demonstrators - including students, alumni, and the parents of students - set up a tent occupation. They too were met with violence. Though the demonstrators were not threatening to the police, more than a dozen of them were shot at close range in the face with pepper spray. Video footage can be seen here:

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/18/police-pepper-spraying-arrest.html

Nathan Brown, an assistant professor at UC Davis, described the scene this way:

“Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.”

Similar events have taken place throughout the country. In Seattle, Washington, police pepper-sprayed peaceful activists, including an eighty-four year old woman, a pregnant woman, and a priest. In New York City, many activists were assaulted by police, including City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, whose head was bleeding as he was taken off to jail. Rodriguez was then denied access to legal representation for thirteen hours.

The members of Occupy Lincoln have decided to take a stand against this violent suppression of peaceful protest. They have released a statement stating "We, the members of Occupy Lincoln, feel that this type of violence goes against the principles of openness and acceptance that are the basis of our university system. Students cannot fully develop in an environment that stifles dissent with violence. People cannot practice democracy in a society that limits freedom of speech."

We will meet in the lobby of the UNL Student Union,
City Campus, at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, November 22.
A statement will be read, and there will be a minute
of silence to honor everyone who has suffered from
police violence.

____________

The document for the pamphlet can be found below.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=15g3kFRzmtFVhbIm6nUgC6n6u59KagAQrzsB5LHy_vPkE2Pz3W4hSH9XOibsf