Countdown guest host David Shuster and Jonathan Turley, constitutional law expert and professor at George Washington University – and a Countdown contributor – analyze Mayor Bloomberg’s claim that the NYPD are keeping the press from the story “so journalists can be safe.” Turley notes, “The problem is that we’re not getting any responsible public officials who are coming forward saying, ‘This is wrong,’” and as a result abuses against protesters often go without penalty: “They can really get away with this.”
Last night on Current TV's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith discussed the latest smear campaign aimed at Occupy Wall Street demonstrations by Fox News with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Spitzer has some excellent ideas on where the movement can go next. Of the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street, he said that it "shouldn't be happening in New York," and that Governor Cuomo should be called "Governor 1 percent."
Sound as if former Gov. Spitzer might have made a fine activist.
Partial transcript follows:
SPITZER: "This is almost exclusively a peaceful, well-thought-out protest by people who care: that's why the public is with them."
OLBERMANN: "And you have written now, many people had made points similar to this, but I think you made it more strongly than others and I want to know why in particular, that they have, that there is already a victory to declare..."
SPITZER: "Oh, absolutely."
OLBERMANN: "...changing the dialogue. How do you sustain that when temperatures are not sustainable. It's a symbol that makes it sustainable, but the symbol involves people staying there."
SPITZER: "Well, well, look, first of all, the frustration at these so-called pundits, and thoughtful people, on major editorial pages saying all they're doing is showing up. Wait a minute, they, being the Occupy Wall Street folks, have done more to change what we're talking about, then all the politicians in Washington who pretend to be progressives or liberal - all of them put together, maybe except Elizabeth Warren.
They've done nothing that comes close to what this group of students and thoughtful young kids has done. So, that's why my hat goes off to them.
Now, what next? It is hard. It's going to be cold. So here are a couple of simple things. One: Every college kid in America goes home over Thanksgiving. Announce the day before Thanksgiving, when kids are getting home, huge rallies. Show the support on college campuses, which, from my sort-of experiential information, is huge. Get big-name musicians. Think back to the '60s, hate to say, you and I can do that, Pete Seeger, get Bruce out there. Get them to say in every spot the day before Thanksgiving, huge rallies to make our, sort of, opening statement as we go into the next chapter.
A "Special Comment" from Keith Obermann discusses how Oakland, California Mayor Jean Quan has gone from supporting people's rights to being an oppressor, and calls for her to repent for the treatment of the Occupy Oakland protesters, or resign.
Olbermann calls out Quan for her use of 500 police officers in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday morning, followed by more tear-gas bombs, rubber bullets and bean-bag rounds on Tuesday night. Quan, herself once a victim of the Oakland police’s bullying, now “is the bully,” he says. He calls on Quan to dismiss acting Police Chief Howard Jordan and allow protesters to return to their location, “or, having betrayed everything she’d supported and all those who have supported her, she must resign.”
Quan has come under heavy fire since Tuesday's raids, and especially so after the night-time raid that left an Iraq war veteran, Scott Thomas Olsen, a 24-year old former Marine in critical condition when he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister. Olsen suffered a skull fracture, and brain swelling that puts him at risk of permanent brain damage.
