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Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

To dissolve, submerge, and cause to disappear the political or governmental system in the economic system by reducing, simplifying, decentralizing and suppressing, one after another, all the wheels of this great machine, which is called the Government or the State. --Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution

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Location: Northwest Arkansas, United States

Monday, December 12, 2011

Call Emory Campus Police to Protest Arrest of Joe Diaz

Please call and email to protest the arrest of Joe Diaz, a PhD student at Emory University, who was brutally assaulted in the University Library by campus police, arrested, and held under degrading and punitive conditions. In the library he saw his diminutive friend Alice, surrounded by hulking uniformed officers standing over her as she sat peacefully on the floor. As you can see in the video, he stepped in in a non-confrontational manner, identified himself, and asked if his friend was OK. It immediately escalated into a violent confrontation, initiated by the police, who might have following the script of soldiers storming a living room in a house-to-house search of occupied Baghdad. The cop's behavior was that of an Alpha Male dog confronting someone who didn't roll over and show their belly fast enough.

As you can see in the video, Joe did not obstruct police business. That accusation was a lie, coming from someone so hyped on his own adrenaline and authority that he could see only a red haze before his eyes. Joe was not resisting. That was another obvious lie barked by the snarling animal in uniform. The cops also lied when they said it was illegal to videotape them, and when they accused those recording them of having a camera "in my face" -- but that lie's standard police operating procedure, repeated as a matter of course regardless of what "the law" is. Because, you see, "the law" only applies to people who aren't wearing uniforms and carrying guns.

Here's Joe's written account of the events. Here's the video.

What have things come to, when a campus police force dealing with peaceful students in a library behave like Nazi soldiers dealing with an occupied population? Thirty years of the Drug War and SWAT team militarization have bred up uniformed beasts of prey in our midst.

I've aready written before, in the case of UC Davis thug John Pike, of the power of viral video for holding these cockroaches up to the light of day. Please help me give the Emory thugs the John Pike treatment.

Please call and/or email the Emory Campus Police to demand an end to such behavior, and please circulate this message as widely as possible.

Emory Campus Police email: Police@emory.edu

Emory Campus Police email: (404) 727-6115