Mickey Z

Cool Observer

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Monday, January 09, 2006

Is that your nightstick…or are you just glad to see me?

Groucho sez: “I’ve got a good mind to join a club...and beat you over the head with it.”

Contrary to popular belief (and most of the history textbooks I’ve encountered), the Great Depression of the 1930s was not the only time Americans navigated through difficult economic straits. The nation (I should say, most of the nation) has suffered through at least 10 such Depressions. In the 1870s, for example, things got so bad that 90,000 workers had to sleep in police stations throughout the city. However, not all interactions with the police involved such helpfulness.

In January of 1874, a parade of demonstrating workers was diverted from City Hall and ended up at Tompkins Square where police told them they couldn’t hold a meeting. Here’s how a newspaper reported what ensued: “Police clubs rose and fell. Women and children ran screaming in all directions. Many of them were trampled underfoot in the stampede for the gates. In the street bystanders were ridden down and mercilessly clubbed by mounted officers.”

Speaking of clubs rising and falling…
The proliferation of sweatshops in turn-of-the-century Manhattan led to a 1905 strike at Federman’s Bakery on the Lower East Side. When Federman’s tried to use scab labor, violence ensued at 183 Orchard Street. Here’s how the New York Tribune reported the scene: “Policemen smashed heads right and left with their nightsticks after two of their number had been roughly dealt with by the mob.”

The nightstick made its debut as weapon of choice in the 1840s and here’s what the recruits of the day were told by police instructor, Michael Smith: “Men, when you get your nightsticks, they’re intended to be used on thieves and crooks, but don’t use them on inoffensive citizens. The insane asylums are filled with men whose condition has been caused by a skull injury. Strike them over the arms and legs, unless you’re dealing with real bad crooks. Then it doesn’t make any difference whether they go to the insane asylum or to jail. They’re enemies of society and our common foe.”

Then there are the words of a desk sergeant who scolded an officer for showing restraint with his billyclub. “There’s more religion in the end of a nightstick than in any sermon preached to the likes of them.”

As they said during WWII: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."
(http://tinyurl.com/d9y6m)

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Cindy Sheehan sez: “America, this is what you are allowing your government to do in your name: Detain and torture prisoners without due process. Use chemical weapons on other members of humanity. Spy on Americans without a court order (I hope my conversations put them in a coma of boredom). Carpet bomb cities filled with human beings like yourselves. Destroy the infrastructure of other countries. Destroy the infrastructure of American cities. Cut taxes on the rich while pouring money and blood into the thirsty sands of the Middle East. Decimate our treasury. Rape the environment. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.”
Complete article: http://tinyurl.com/abwyt