I was at the Occupy Baltimore "Schools Not Jails" action on Monday, the 18th — Martin Luther King Jr Day.
The police actions to which I was witness that evening would have left anyone feeling angry at the overreaction of our government and police. Once they had pushed away all the "official" media, I saw police in riot gear corral and intimidate young activists, smashing their meeting tent to the ground and shoving it into a garbage truck.
The police and other officials have issued the excuse that the tent was "blocking a right of way" — I assure you, nothing critical was blocked.
Youth activists entered an empty lot in a bleak part of town. They damaged nothing and set up a meeting tent in an abandoned street. They asked for more money for schools and less for prisons. And the powers-that-be reacted to these actions with circling helicopters, squads of riot police and brutal preemptive attacks.
Their behavior is sick and un-American.
The leaders of this city and the police should be ashamed.
G. Snyder