Police Officers, Public Employers; Private Defenders

In the future, we all work for private corporations.

My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.” Read the rest of this story...

You know, it's amazing. Police officers will happily violently beat up any protestor who protests against the dismantling of Public Goods, including them. Maybe the banks pay the cops directly, maybe the cops get a 94million dollar Christmas bonus if they make an old man sit on his knees on the pavement for 7 hours.
Weird to think you'd be willing to stand up for their rights as public defenders to fair pay and union protection and they thank you by locking you up. Maybe they've already been privatized.

Either way, I don't really know. I'm just guessing. It is a frustrating situation though, how TV can say the protestors were violent and thousands of people all across the country who've never even seen the protests will believe the TV.

This is why we need socialism now.