Posted on 05/31/2002 11:32:52 PM PDT by Glutton
On one of their videotapes later, a voice matter of factly advised fellow cops to lock themselves in the police cars if the anarchists stormed in.
I saw on cop blast a big OC fogger into a couple of small children's faces. There were excesses there. Also Mayor Jim Torrey was the one who ordered the cops in.
In Eugene, only the City Manager has that authority. The mayor is a no pay position, and the big powers are photo ops, sister city visits, and tiebreaker votes at city council meetings.
Vicky Elmer was scewered for being out of town during this. They actually started consruction a week after this dog day afternoon of F Troop, Eugene style.
This was that year's big story here. In fact, that was the year many of the black clad anarchists settled in, and their numbers and organization is still growing here.
Sorry for everybody...
But the Cops who were torturing those kids beyond medical safety...hey...I'm not ambiguous about the actionablity of that at all...Sick em ACLU...I joined for a year...lost interest after they got on yet another anti RKBA bandwagon...marginal objectivity to put it charitably....The people that let the SWAT dogs do that should be in line at OR St. Unemployment Dept. A cop that told some art students filming Seattle's WTO riots from inside a car to roll down their window so He could BLIND the DRIVER with pepper spray was fired for due cause...I couldn't believe it happened! The cop in question was an isolated bad egg, but FR is where we keep an eye on people pushing the envelope...I got my ear out for events in Oregon now...Good Post...tough topic...FREEP ON!
The fill blown "Make my day" stance caused passive observers to bond with the protesters. Believe me, if the cops could do this over, they would do what they did much differently.
I was one of the first people blasted in the face with OC (pepper-spray), but I had had one eye closed tightly, and never lost my visual footing.
The pain? Hell, I was in the Army and had to do the gas chamber and other fun stuff. I managed to skuttle free and position myself into save spots to watch the show.
It was quite a specticle.
I watched them cut Jim Flynn's pant leg and soak him down with OC. When they grabbed his second pantsleg to start the same process - that was getting a healthy amount of OC on Flynn's private parts - Jim lept from one main branch to another.
The scary thing for me was he was three stories up, and his eyes were tightly shut as he was blinded by pepper-spray.
He gave up when the pressure from the fire department cherry picker bucket pulling back pulling on his harness started to cause him to blackout.
I see him every day outside the main office building for activists on Willamette Street by the train station. He is a local folk hero to the anarchist community.
Most of the casual passerby folks with kids got the heck out of there. That scene was way too violent and intense for kids.
Some of the young teen age and early twenties kids clad in black clothing and boots tore down some fencing, but the police hit them with airborne tear gas and peppersprayed the heck out of them.
I saw one youth, Smurf is his name, kick the mask of a cop. He was arrested later by the State Police and he got a big fine and a week in jail.
If you look at the first photo (click on the "Eugene Weekly" link if indeed the photos are not showing), that's the wheel to his bicycle behind the geared up cops.
He first lost track of that bike, and the city gave him a three hundred dollar compensation check that he got to keep after he "discovered" where the bike was. True story.
Many organized groups and cells of Eugene activists and anarchists took part in Seattle though. I believe Tim Lewis who makes and sells tree-sit, cop-watch, and urban unrest videos has one out that shows Seattle from the Eugene activist perspective.
The actions cells of Eugene activists did in Seattle tended to use non-violent civil disobedience and police disruption tactics extremely well.
For example, lock downs in the street had people assigned to take care of the creature needs of those locked up, and there were always people assigned to "jail support," and media documentation.
Only three were conifers, and they were cedars. Symantec, the big software company who benefitted by the parking in this development has fled Eugene to a new building in Eugene's sister city Springfield.
Springfield is way more conservative then Eugene, and is much more development friendly.
Sacred Heart Medical Center is fleeing Eugene too, building a new 25 million dollar hospital in Springfield as well, in fact Springfield has been growing faster then Eugene by quite a bit in recent years.
{personal rant alert}Every motorcycle cop I've dealt with here was a complete ASS...I have no ready explanation for that palpable difference...I've received citations from both types of LEO's and its like being detained(or abused, depending on number of wheels under the LEO) in two different countries..."Electra Glide in Blue" on the Brain?
Truth is with Micha is he is a meglomaniac who runs for city council ever few years, and makes his living doing the paid petition gatherer trip.
He also sings children's song's horribly, and he also likes to badger cops. (They know him,and usually ignore him as if he were a barking poodle.)
When I close my eyes and remeber this event, I can hear a muffled memory of his dememted Mr. Roger's like voice babbling away.
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