Then Oakland cops under direction of mayor Jean Quan shot an Iraq veteran, a peaceful protester, in the face with a rubber bullet, and targeted other protesters with stun grenades. In all, hundreds of peaceful protesters were injured with projectile weapons and/or exposed to chemical weapons. The shooting victim (the most publicized one, anyway), 24-year-old Scott Thomas Olsen, a retired Marine, is currently hospitalized and his condition has been upgraded to "fair".
Mayor Quan initially publicly commended the police department for their hamfisted crackdown on demonstrators, but as worldwide public disgust and furor mounted, she did a 180, directed police to lay off, and issued a "contrite" public statement.
Police brutality isn't surprising under big-city Republican mayors like NYC's Bloomberg; but under a Democrat mayor of one of the nation's most ethnically diverse cities, just across the bay from San Francisco's radically liberal aura?
This incident multiplied the protesters' numbers tenfold; last night they held an action vote with some 1400 votes counted at Oscar Grant Plaza.
As Nov. 5 approaches, I can only pray that no "V"-inspired Anony-wannabees succumb to urges to take the Occupy movement in any gunpowdery-splodey-treason-y directions.
"The gunpowder treason and plot" of the Guy Fawkes Day rhyme refers to a failed attempt in 1605 by what would today be called a terrorist cabal, to blow up Parliament and the king, in reaction to King James I's anti-Catholic policies. The iconic figure in the plot was Guy Fawkes, who was caught in the basement of Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. He was tortured to confession as was common practice of the time, and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered as was the standard penalty for high treason. On his way up the ladder to the gallows, he leapt clear of his captors, breaking his neck and thus escaping the agonies of genital mutilation and live disembowelment.
What today's would-be Fawkeses need to remember, remember, is that the foiled plot fueled even more extreme anti-Catholic backlash. Less than 50 years later, Charles I sparked civil war by merely trying to steer the Church of England in a somewhat Catholic direction (married a Catholic, appointed a controversial archbishop to Canterbury). England emerged under the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, who set about re-uniting the United Kingdom by slaughtering Irish Catholics. Lowball estimates of the toll on Irish population hover around 15-25%; indirect casualties may have brought the figure closer to 50%, and a Wikipedia article on the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland cites one source that claims a 5/6ths (83.33%) death toll.