Occupy’s 84-year-old pepper spray victim: Is this the most iconic image of the movement?

Washing Post ^ | 11/16/2011 | Maura Judkis

[Responsibility2nd]

When Occupy marched in downtown Seattle on Tuesday night, a priest, a pregnant teenager and an 84-year-old community activist were doused in pepper spray. Although there have been many striking images of violence and peace in Occupy encampments, and many faces of the movement, none may be as immediately striking as this image of Dorli Rainey, taken by Joshua Trujillo.
Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Nov. 15 at Westlake Park in Seattle. (Joshua Trujillo - AP)

Rainey’s direct gaze at the camera as her face drips with pepper spray is a haunting, cinematic image of brutality, emphasized even more by the chiaroscuro of dark gloved hands holding her head up to lead her to safety. Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has speculated that this image may become the defining one of Occupy unrest.

Rainey, a community activist since the ’60s, decided to walk by the protest on her way to a transportation meeting in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

A woman who gave her name as Jennifer and said she was two months pregnant

Of course, the fact that she is pregnant is irrelevant sympathy-inducing propaganda. Nobody "shows" at 2 months, so the police had no way of knowing. Is pepper spray any danger whatsoever to the baby?

[occam's chainsaw]

My bullshit meter is pegged. There are so many holes in this story...let me see....

An 84 year old who has been a community activist since the sixties just happened to be walking by the protest on her way to a meeting?!! ....and she somehow got sucked in - right up to the front of the mob?!! ...and got pepper-sprayed in the face but it didn’t make her eyes swell shut?!!

Bullshit!

[ronnie raygun]

Setup, much like the child put up infront of the protesters.

[rollo tomasi]

So an activists walks towards “the fire” and is seen as a victim. She probably sat her butt down and refused to move. Post-radical hippies avoid truth just like soap, no sympathy from the rational crowd.

[magslinger]

What you see dripping from her face in the picture is milk. The protesters were using it as an antidote for pepper spray.

The question that no one seems to have asked: did she really get pepper sprayed, or did she just agree to have someone douse her with milk for the photo op?

Looking at the redness of her eyes and around them, I would say she looks like she was hit by pepper spray, but not too hard.

I would like to see a "before" picture before I said definitively. Some people (and at times most people would, especially allergy sufferers) have red around their eyes without being hit by an pepper spray, especially in cities where irritants come free with the air. Such persons would look like pepper spray victims if they had milk splashed in their faces. Another benefit of tear gas is the mucus running down your face, which the milk would wash off.

Good catch, Just. Lets keep an eye out for her at future leftist photo ops.

[airborne]

Muslims hide behind children.

Liberals hide behind old women!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Responsibility2nd.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/11/dorli-raineys-history-activism-she-became-occupy-icon/45075/

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/gallery/Homeless-advocates-sleep-in-front-of-Gates-31397/photo-1664138.php
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/10/27/should-seattle-kids-pledge-allegiance-to-earth-and-natural-systems/
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2011/10/27/howard-schultz-for-president/
http://joshuatrujillophotography.blogspot.com/2009/03/1811-eastlake-home.html