I AM Part of the Resistance (by Thomas J. Gray)

UPDATE: I’ve received notification by Thomas J. Gray that he is the author of this piece.  By the time I had seen it on facebook, it had been added to – so I am updating this post to more accurately reflect the original wording.  I liked much of what had been added, and I understand that in the passion of those first horrible days, many felt similar feelings and simply added their own parts.   This phrase was added:

The survival of our democracy and our way of life demands that we stand and resist. So I will Resist. I AM part of the Resistance, and I AM proud of it.

Here is the original, by Thomas J. Gray:

Sights the Corporate Media Won’t Show You at Occupy Oakland

If you only watched corporate TV, you would not have seen the troops of Oakland police shooting tear gas canisters and projectiles  into unarmed crowds –  to know about that, you had to search it out on youtube.  Instead, the television would have shown a protestor (or agent provocateur) tossing back a tear gas canister towards the police.

You probably would not have seen a police officer shoot a flash-bang grenade directly at people who went to the aid of Marine Veteran Scott Olsen as he lay wounded in the street.  (This was after his skull was fractured by police shooting these canisters and projectiles point-blank at him.)  Once again, you would only have seen the shooting and the war-zone like behavior of the police in the pre-dawn raid of the Occupy camp if you found the videos on you tube.

Among other things we haven’t been shown in corporate media coverage of Occupy Oakland is the beautiful spiritual/consciousness side of Occupy movement. 

We haven’t been shown the Buddhist monks who gathered at the site early in the Occupation.  Or how they’ve joined together with  indigenous Native American Ohlone elders to beat drums and pray at the edge of the Occupy Oakland encampment. (Cities in the East Bay were all built on Chochenyo Ohlone land.)

Buddhist Monks and Native American Elders at Occupy Oakland