Police Attack Peaceful Protestors At March 21st Anti-War Demonstraition in San Francisco!

Here is a completely unedited video of the very beginnings of this confrontation, which clearly shows the police attacking the crowd without provocation. The situation began when it was announced from the stage that the police were trying to arrest a nine year old Palestinian boy for reasons they would not divulge. A crowd of people rushed over to video tape and witness what was going on. Initially, the crowd was pretty much silent, but a couple of us started to encourage people to chant and keep watching after someone on the stage tried to get people to watch the rally instead of the cops. The cops seemed to desist and move away from the boy. The boy and his mother were past the area that had barriers and the cops seemed to have given up on the idea of arresting him. The boy was upset and crying (he is the small figure in the white hat) and shortly before my husband started shooting this video I was encouraging people to comfort the boy and his mother, to show support so that the police wouldn't change their mind Though I was very vocal in encourage people to stand and witness what was happening tried to convince them to verbally defend the boy, i never incited any violence or had any aim too - as I actually verbally described to the crowd before this video was shot, we had a similar incident at an Oscar Grant protest at Fruitvale BART where the police tried to detain a 16 year old who had done nothing, and because of the crowd video taping and verbally engaging with them, the police left the scene and let the boy go. I was hoping to replicate that success in this situation, but unfortunately unbeknownst to us the cops were very riled up that day because of the cop killings in oakland, which most people hadn't heard about by that point. I went up to the boy and said to him "hey little brother, don't worry - we won't let them hurt you" and put my arms around the child. The moment I did a cop shoved in (this part you can see on the tape) and started harrassing the mother, becoming very verbally aggressive with her. The crowd, hearing the aggression, stepped back a little and almost on cue the police just attacked! Unfortunately with our camara, it records the sounds near it very loudly and it is hard what to hear what happens near the boy. My husband is the one video taping this, and at one point after the very vicious attack had ended, he believed I had been hurt as there was a sweater on the ground that looked like the one I had been wearing. We had become separated and each of us was very scared for the other, as you can hear at the end of the video. They let the boy go, but arrested three protesters that we saw, one of whom is the young man right next to the camera who puts his hands up immediately but is brutalized. If anyone has any further information, please leave it in the comments or message me directly. Thanks!

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• police brutality
• cops
• violence
• racism
• protest
• anti-war
• san francisco