Scott Olsen, recovering from a critical brain injury after
being hit by a projectile during riot police action against Occupy Oakland, 25
October 2011. Photograph: Google+
I want you to picture Scott Olsen. Not bloodied
like the pictures you've seen, but healthy and smiling. Several weeks ago, I
held a banner with Scott up at Fleet Week, talking to active duty Marines and
Navy and JROTC cadets about trauma and war. The banner read "Every day 32
veterans attempt suicide. 18 succeed." Scott had been participating in Iraq Veterans Against
the War's Operation Recovery campaign to end the deployment of traumatised
troops, towards a larger goal of ending the deployments of all US troops.
Two tours in Iraq convinced Scott the war was
unjust, and he became a peace activist. On the evening of 25 October, as the
police evicted Occupy Oakland, he was
hit in the head allegedly by a projectile fired by another kind of occupying
army. The OPD functions as a military force in Oakland's low-income
neighborhoods. This isn't the first time the Oakland Police Department has been
accused of using excessive force. They have a record
of shooting people of color with seeming impunity.
A Marine at the protest who was trained in crowd
control detailed how riot police in Oakland fired on protesters in ways that are
prohibited under our notoriously brutal rules of engagements in Iraq and
Afghanistan. That puts Scott's injury into perspective, and many veterans have
exposed the senseless violence and war crimes occurring in these occupations.
The Oakland Police Department (plus reinforcement police shipped in from around
the state) are forbidden from firing tear gas canisters anywhere at a human body
and deny responsibility for Olsen's injury. But the
OPD is now subject of a Oakland's Citizens' Police Review Board
investigation into protesters' allegations that Scott was shot with a tear
gas canister or other projectile fired by police .
Our friend Scott's skull was fractured, causing his
brain to swell dangerously. All day, I could not stop thinking about another
friend of ours, also from Oakland – Tristan Anderson. Tristan was also
struck in the head with a tear gas canister, in the spring of 2009 in the
West Bank, at a peaceful demonstration of Palestinians resisting the militarised
annexation of their village's land. Tristan survived and is back in California
with us, although he is still recovering from his life-endangering,
life-changing injuries. Several Palestinians have been killed by these same tear
gas canisters. "Less lethal" ammunition, these days, is a game of statistics.
The ammunition allegedly involved in both Scott's
and Tristan's cases is manufactured
by a Wyoming-based company called Defense Tech. Our tax dollars paid for
both. Oakland claims it doesn't even have the money for its schools and
libraries. We've heard the helicopters alone cost $833 an hour. How many
hundreds of thousands of dollars were robbed from public services and city
infrastructure in Oakland on 25 October, when 500 riot cops busted up Occupy
Oakland for supposed "sanitation concerns", and then gassed and beat people for
hours later that night? Priorities?
US taxpayers fund $3bn per year in military aid alone to Israel. We paid for
the tear gas canister deaths of Bassem and Jawaher Abu Rahme, two of the unarmed
Palestinians in Bil'in, the village where Tristan was almost killed. We paid for
Scott Olsen to go to Iraq and participate in an occupation which he and many
veterans have concluded is unjust, criminal and based on lies – then once he got
home, we paid for the police tear gas ammunition to break up the protest in
which he was so gravely injured.
Those war funds trickle up to the 1%, to companies that profit from war,
including Defense Tech. We need not only to implement progressive taxation and
stop corporate welfare, including the egregious bank bailouts, but we must
redirect our taxed funds. That is why Scott Olsen was out on the streets, struck
down while standing peacefully beside another antiwar veteran and fellow member
of IVAW and Veterans for Peace. He was demonstrating with 2,000 community
members of Occupy Oakland, defending this experiment in direct democracy,
self-governance and equitable distribution.
Scott believes in the importance of the 99% Movement. He's spent most of the
last few weeks at Occupy SF, while holding down his day job. He, like many
military veterans, is seeking pathways to building true community safety. We
need to stand together to show that violence will not break the powerful spirit
of this movement. We need to defend the rights of veterans and everyone who has
experienced trauma to heal from it. We need to stand for everyone's right to
safety, to free assembly, for our right to build kitchens and community gardens,
for our tax dollars to finally stop going to wars and start going to schools and
healthcare.
Scott has mountains of medical bills that his community is quickly coming
together to help with; otherwise, he will be yet another American sunk in
endless medical debt.
Our struggle against the 1% here, while we are the 1% globally, is something
our comrades around the world have been watching and waiting for. Now, they are
cheering us on – because they need us to triumph. We seek to end US empire and a
transition to a different set of values. We do this in honor of Scott, of other
victims of police violence and military occupations, and of the economic
violence of the 1%.
• Clare Bayard is an activist with Occupy Oakland
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