It should be noted these are State Troopers, who basically follow Abbott's orders these days, and are always itching to put on a show for the cameras, eg the one above. APD and UTPD don't seem to be involved in this.
Edit: UTPD was involved:
UT Police Assistant Chief Ashley Griffin issues a dispersal order to those present. That statement was read over campus loudspeakers, Ryan Chandler reports.
“I command you in the name of the People of the State of Texas to disperse, and if you do not, you shall be arrested for Violation of Penal Code Section 42.01 Disorderly Conduct, 42.02 Riot, 42.03 Obstructing a Highway or other passageway,” the order reads.
From everything I've seen, this was a peaceful, mobile protest that caused no disruptions until the police caused disruptions.
It makes sense, the protestors were clear and honest about their non-violent intentions, which is perfect as a target of oppression. They don't get any warning for real crimes like school shootings so there's nothing they can do, too bad.
Reposting this because it’s relevant here too: A scenario like this is what led to the formation of the Black Panthers during the civil rights era, and subsequently led to gun control laws being started by republicans. During the civil rights protests, people quickly realized that peaceful protests were violently broken. But heavily armed peaceful protests had police nervously watching from across the street.
Because police had no qualms about firing into an unarmed crowd to get people to disperse. But when the entire crowd is armed to the teeth and can immediately return fire, the police are suddenly okay with watching from afar. This was the start of the Black Panthers; a group who organized heavily armed protests.
When conservative lawmakers saw a bunch of heavily armed black people (and allies) on their front steps, and saw the police unwilling to break the protests, those conservative lawmakers got really fucking sweaty. So instead, they gave the police tools to arrest individual protestors. The Mulford Act was drafted and quickly passed. At the time, it was the most restrictive gun control law the country had ever seen. It was written by Ronald Reagan (yes, the same Ronald Reagan that the right uplifts as a paragon of conservative values,) and was supported by the NRA, (yes, the same NRA that lobbies for looser gun control laws in the wakes of school shootings.)
This gave the police the power to arrest individual protestors after the fact. Instead of firing into the crowd to disperse the protest, they would wait for the protest to end, follow the protestors home, then kick in their front doors while they were having dinner with their families. (Remember all of the “don’t bring your cell phone to protests because police will arrest you a week or two later if your phone was pinged nearby” messaging during the pandemic protests? Yeah…)
This led to the Black Panthers diving underground. They realized what was happening after protests, so they took efforts to guard their members’ identities. They pulled tactics straight out of anti-espionage textbooks. Randomized meeting places, so police couldn’t set up stings ahead of time. Code names, so arrested members couldn’t rat even if they wanted to. Fragmented info, so no one person (even the leaders) could take down the entire operation if busted. Coded messages. Dead drops. Et cetera, et cetera…
We’re on a rocket trajectory straight down that same pipeline now.
As they should. Police have shown their hand time and time again. Peaceful marchers and protesters get beaten, sprayed, and generally abused without consequence. Armed protesters, even those who go full on violent, are left alone and watched from a distance.
Boy, it’s amazing how responsive they are in when it's a bunch of students protesting war crimes, as opposed to a bunch of students cowering in classrooms trying to avoid getting shot.
How else are the kids going to play dress-up with military surplus? Besides, e v e r y o n e knows a ceramic plate carrier is a prerequisite for dealing with any college student. Their words cut so deep.
Whenever I see things like this I think back to something Lewis Black once said back during the Occupy Wall Street protests. They had him on ABC or one of the major news stations and asked him what he thought about it. His answer was along the lines of, "When were the college kids ever wrong?"
Um, now? I mean, these "protestors" aren't even remotely interested in what's REALLY going on with the Israel/Palestine situation...they just want to protest from the comforts of their home here in the United States.
Here is a LinkedIn post from at least 3 weeks prior that has been edited but contains the same phrase. Source. Because the post has been edited, it does not act as standalone evidence but it is supporting evidence.
The phrase seems to be an existing slogan for the campus, and there seems to be signage with that phrase and color of background of text. The photo in the original post seems to be plausible.
Should we beat and arrest the students or maybe sever ties with a nation committing war crimes? Better get those students and arrest record, looks good on job interviews.
Vast majority of protesters arrested don't end up with any charges or a record, the police know this, but they still get their mugshot taken which gets posted online by right-wingers, doxxing them to potential political violence.
Last I was on Twitter a couple years ago there were antifascist pages that did that, the ones I followed were banned while the fascist 'antifa watch' pages I've seen are promoted. But I agree, Twitter won't work for it anymore but we should have some kind of fascist watchlist.
I've thought about the deck of cards of terror suspects the US had, with higher members of Al Qaeda or whatever, we should have that for the top fascist politicians and war mongers. It should be well known the names and faces of the people pushing us off the cliff.
Eh, a lot of people are fucking terrible at showing love, even to the ones they actually do love.
Either that or they just have their priorities mixed up. I wonder how many of them had attentive parents, but they thought doing a good job as a parent meant raising sons to be aggressive tough guys.
it's indoctrination, which is strong in rural texas. the problem cannot be solved without a complete overhaul of the social landscape of america. conservatives need reeducation camps.
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