violence

Protest in Rochester NY Erupts in Violence

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Those who make peaceful revolution protest impossible, make violent revolution protest inevitable ~JFK

I’m not sure how I missed this but it seems last Wednesday October 7th there was a protest by the Students for a Democratic Society in Downtown Rochester NY that ended in a lot of violence and brutality.

If you read section 240.20 of the New York State Penal Code it’s pretty clear that the protesters broke the law. To me it’s also pretty clear that the police overstepped their bounds.

Although it’s pretty hard to tell exactly what happened, it’s pretty easy to see the police were excessively violent.  Two protesters were even sent to the hospital and 12 were arrested by brutal means like throwing them to the ground.  The video clearly shows several officers pushing and shoving, yelling, screaming and pulling out their billy clubs.

Frankly, I don’t see how this type of blatant power trip can be tolerated.  They should all be fired.

The following is a press conference the SDS gave after the protest.  There’s tons more interviews and articles about the SDS protest online if you’re interested in reading more.

http://blip.tv/play/AYGmpAYC

Jeffrey Mullin

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

My niece’s brother, Jeffrey Mullin, was recently shot and killed in Rochester NY. It’s always extremely sad when someone so young passes away but when it’s from such a violent act it hits twice as deep. Unfortunately Rochester is one of the most violent cities in America and we live and work right smack dab in the middle of it. People here often dismiss the murders in Rochester to the gangs and somehow believe it doesn’t happen to good citizens. Try telling that to Cassandra, my niece. Somehow I think you will come away with a different opinion.

It’s time to wake up Rochester. We need more police presence and we need better schools. According to the 2006 census there’s roughly 200,000 people living in the city of Rochester. There were 54 Murders here in 2005 and 50 so far in 2007. That’s roughly 1 in every 3700 people. Put another way, thats almost 27 people for every 100,000. That’s almost four times the national average (which is only 7)!

The Democrat and Chronicle has a piece entitled Not Forgotten where they list each of this year’s murders and have short slide shows dedicated to them. I think this is important. I think people forget that these murders are more than just statistics and that every one of the people lost was important to someone.

I copied Jeff’s slide show for my niece and I thought I’d share it with everyone, so they could learn a little bit about Jeff instead of hearing about number 50.

I’ve also uploaded the original in case anyone wanted a copy to share.