You Have No Rights II - Student Assaulted for Asking Questions

This is already old news to many of you, but i had some things to say about it, on a personal level. Included here is also the discussion that has happened in my blog about this story posting, so before commenting, please take a look to see what was already covered (thanks!).

Regarding the video links below, this is true brutality and demonstrates irrational need to control people who are passionate about the things they care about and the questions they choose to ask. There is NO justification for the police to have done what they did here. Pure "police state" cruelty and hostility. All the while, the police ignore John Kerry's responses... and John Kerry doesn't escalate to stop them. He even makes a joke about the situation!


This is PROOF that you cannot reason with people who have authority and have chosen you as their bad guy.



University of Florida student Tasered at Kerry forum



UF Student Tasered at John Kerry Q & A - Extended, Different Angle



Same, From the Beginning, Showing the Student's Rational Intent to be Heard



News Coverage by MSNBC Acknowledges the Irrationality

(excellent opinions expressed by reporters in this coverage)



Democracy Now's Coverage



UF President speaks about tasering incident

(takes a while to get to the point, is very PR-like, but respectable enough)


Thanks for the link and the knowledge Christine [the person who pointed this out to me].

This terrifies me, especially as an autistic, because i could BE that student, trying to reason with the police who have decided i'm "a problem." In the end, some people started reacting, but as a whole, the room DID nothing!! A room filled with people and essentially NO ONE DID [CRAP]. They applauded when he was first removed (some of them) and then when the taser noise and the student's screaming started, people changed their tune a bit... but STILL DID NOT INTERVENE. At one point early in the action, you can clearly hear the student declare "let me go and i'll walk out of here."



You watch these videos and tell me this student was "inciting a riot" or is just "putting on a display."

i see passion, a desire to ask a serious question [which i want to know Kerry's answer to] and be heard, and then real fear from someone like myself who has found that he has no rights, even in public, surrounded by cameras and civilians.



Look at the other links and videos. See the responses from the authorities [and below, from my blog commentators]. Even if the student is overdoing it a bit with the secret society stuff, tell me how the reaction of the officers is acceptable. If every slightly off-the-wall question (prefaced with information for the audience) is responded to this way, we have no right to free speech.



police demonstrations of taser use:

one, two, three, four (commercial)



UPDATE:

i wanted to add the following remarks to the main story. This is a response i gave to a commentator (thanks, Christine):


The student's questions weren't off the wall, but i would have left out the college years secret society question. Everything else he said was, to my knowledge, accurate and important to hear an official response to. Notice that Kerry didn't respond, in the end. Not that the videos were focused on him, but you can hear him stammering, staying silent and then attempting to "smoothe things over" by saying "that's a very good question..." and attempting to get people's attention away from a serious situation instead of handling it! He did not handle the situation at all and he made himself look horrible. i used to have respect for the man, but anyone who has a position such as his (influential) should have taken up a VERY verbal and even physical response to the event and STOPPED it from getting to where it went. Kerry DID tell the officers to let the student finish his question but THEY IGNORED HIM which defeats the purpose of them being there for him. He was not at risk of harm. The student pissed off the officers by indicating to them his VERY reasonable stand on being heard out on his full question. They didn't like their authority being ego-bruised in that way and this is what really started the conflict. Kerry did not attempt to reiterate his instruction to the officers to allow the student to finish, NOR did he attempt to get the officers' attention a second time. He addressed the audience, instead. No compassion whatsoever, but a lot of desire to direct HIS audience as he saw fit.



i hold Kerry as responsible as the officers who yanked the student out, without cause or reason, and then assaulted him for responding like a HUMAN BEING!!!!



We're all supposed to be so stoic and controlled all the time... if you believe current social "norms" as expressed by authority figures or those who wish to BE one by backing up the status quo's position. It's inhuman and those who expect it are inhumane. Those who do it are dispassionate or callous (both being different levels of negativity in my mind, with callous being worse than dispassionate).



There's a legal term called "Callous Disregard." Kerry is guilty of this, as is over half of his audience that day. Also, while i appreciate the videographers who captured everything on video, there comes a point where, i, as a human being with appreciation and empathy for another human being's fear of being abused and harmed, would have attempted to intervene (knowing full well that i would have been assaulted, too). But the videographers should have done something, as should the rest of that audience. Annoyed or not with the student's questions or manner of asking, his rights were violated on SEVERAL levels and that audience failed to respond to one of their own species' screams of fear and pain.



THAT is NOT right.

Now some commentary from the blog entry:

Little Tigger said...

I do not know if this would help,

but I have ordered one myself and

I plan to use it.



http://www.americanmedical-id.com/

4:33 AM, October 22, 2007

dysamoria said...

thanks, Little Tigger, i just looked at the website and it even lists Autism as one of the people who should wear a medical ID.

4:44 AM, October 22, 2007

Christine said...

Actually I don't think the question is off the wall at all. And you know John Kerry just keeps a front like he actually cared about the question, how convenient. From my understanding they knew which questions he was going to ask beforehand, that is why they are standing behind him to take him down. And why he is rushing through his questions. It's so ironic that our government now groups assaults etc. as acts of terrorism. Thanks to our current president, there is a whole host of laws now to deal with terrorism. Basically your rights are non-existent now. Yet they can violate people like this as a demonstration that if you speak your mind this could happen to you. Of course we have grown into such "emotionally competent" people nowadays that of course he deserved this treatment and no one should take a stand against it. (Being sarcastic) Of course moments like these just reiterate to them that we will idly standby and do nothing as they abuse us and our rights. Who is under our law committing act of terrorism now? This is a direct violation of his first amendment rights. Obviously we should just shut up about our rights.

8:32 AM, October 22, 2007

Little Tigger said...

I KNEW that autism should be in there somewhere, I almost did not see seizures at first, until I did a rescan, and on that rescan I also picked up a couple more, and when you was talking about safety, I thought again about the medical IDs idea. I have found that to be simple enuf for Bob Normal at times, I had to lump myself into another disability to make them understand. Another thing, although I can seem somewhat smart typing, if one sees me in person they think that cant be who I saw typing on the board, or in a email. I can get words out better on a machine than I can from my mouth.

5:14 PM, October 22, 2007

Adam said...

With all due respect, you guys are completely missing the point. The guy that did this did it as a publicity stunt. He's been known to do this sort of thing and acted very deliberately. He incited the reaction. How much went on that we did not see? Is it a coincidence that officers were nearby?



Don't believe everything you see. The police did what was necessary. He created a situation that had to be controlled. He resisted. He made a scene. He was in a public forum.



The issue is worth researching. Just because someone plays the victim doesn't mean they are.

10:04 PM, October 22, 2007

Christine said...

I disagree sorry, regardless of any publicity attention he desired etc. He committed no crime and had no rights read to him. This is an improper way to subdue someone especially in this type of circumstance. Cops are just tasering people at will. I find it personally to be an abuse. I feel it's really unnecessary to go to this extreme.

2:37 AM, October 23, 2007

Adam said...

christine,



What were they to do? The guy was escorted from the microphone, and resisted. (I'm quoting this from memory, because it's been a while since I've seen the video.) He was removed, and continued to resist. The pulled him out, and not only did he resist, he yelled at the top of his lungs to bring attention to himself. This went on and on. Exactly how long are the police supposed to struggle with him to subdue him? Don't forget, before the taser they would have just started clubbing him, which might have done him some good as well.



While I agree the taser has become an easy out, and is often abused based on the videos I've seen, this was not one of those cases. I'd have gotten this guy twice just to make a point. If you want to disrupt a forum for personal gain, you deserve what you get. If this guy wants to sincerely make a point, he'll find a place to do so.

7:19 AM, October 23, 2007

dysamoria said...

Little Tigger said:

"I can get words out better on a machine than I can from my mouth."



Same for me. Though, i think i lose myself in both places (on machine or in person). i can be calm and fit in and deal with the overstimulation... up to a point. The mask i wear becomes uncomfortable, then it itches, starts to burn my flesh, cracks and then pieces start falling off and no glue will help; at that point, i need to rest with peace, quiet, my own environment, and one or two known friends who can be calm and soothing.



the effort involved in portraying myself as "normal" is exhausting. i can do it, i do not hate it, per se, but i do not enjoy it when the effort becomes conscious. usually i don't pay attention to it, but when stress builds up, i notice it and i get more and more anxious to leave the environment and "be me."

10:49 PM, October 23, 2007

dysamoria said...

Response to Christine:

[seen above as article content]

11:00 PM, October 23, 2007

dysamoria said...

Sorry Adam, i have to stick with Christine here. i was looking to see if this student was a known trouble-maker and would appreciate links for that which are substantial.



REGARDLESS: he did NOT violate any laws. The officers DID. They attempted, several times, to STOP the student from asking his questions, which he very correctly stated "he just talked for over 30 minutes, i think i can have a minute to preface my question, thank you" - which is a wonderful and rational brush off to the inappropriate actions ALREADY in progress by the officers.



This is the problem with identifying people as "KNOWN TROUBLE MAKERS." Authority figures get brazen and disrespectful to human beings. It is a way to dehumanize another individual in order to side-step the fact that they ARE a fellow human being.



Look at Star Wars. How did they handle the rampant killing of the Imperial Navy's Soldiers and Officers? They were given:

• A faceless outfit and generic radio voices (storm trooper armor, which doesn't seem to help much, does it)
• Nazi-like uniforms and behavior of the officers. (with a tiny few reacting emotionally when first informed that "the last vestiges of the Old Republic have been cleared away.")

In real world events, there are a lot of subversive and subduing techniques:

1. Start a meme against your foe (troublemaker, extremist, radical, complainer, whiner, etc). This is the "remove their individual rights in the eyes of others" technique.
2. Assume trouble before there IS trouble.
3. Stop the free expression of perceived or factual facts or the asking of potentially embarrassing questions before they are completed.
4. Referring to item one, refuse to answer to any success found by the person in step 3 above (such as fully asking their question) and make a blanket assessment of the person as not being worth responding to.
5. Cut off the words so that others can't potentially be swayed into actually listening and considering.

Video is a nice thing. Especially when seen from multiple angles, multiple times.



This is what i saw:

1. Officers preparing to remove someone they do not like.
2. At their discretion, they attempted to do so without being SEEN by the audience.
3. The officers cut off the student so others could not hear his objections and their attempts to remove him PRIOR to anything actually requiring them to do so.
4. Officers forcefully removing someone who brushed them off, as was his right to do so because they were attempting to violate his first amendment right to freedom of speech.
5. The student calling for REACTION from the complacent audience.

This is what makes an activist an activist. Oppression, abuse and the disgust of seeing fellow society members being complacent.



Yes, his cries for help did raise an eyebrow. What i thought was: "THAT'S BRILLIANT!"



No matter the student's goal, the crimes committed were committed by the authority figures and NOT the student. The student did not initiate their assault nor did his behavior warrant it.



People have to talk fast when they know they're going to be cut off and subdued. Did you consider that part of his way of speaking when attempting to ask his questions?

11:40 PM, October 23, 2007

bittergirl said...

i can't view the video because youtube is blocked here... but i've heard a lot about this whole thing and am quite disturbed by the whole scenario.



the bottom line, there is no reason to taser someone who doesn't present a threat. just because it was determined that he needed to be removed (which since i can't view the video, can't comment on whether that was necessary to begin with) doesn't mean they had the right to taser him.



free speech is DEAD.

it's all a lie...

we only have free speech when THEY deem it to be so.

ultimately, it's all a ruse.



scary scary scary.

12:32 AM, October 24, 2007