[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 16200-16202]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT: WE'D BETTER PAY ATTENTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Brooks). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush) is 
recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. RUSH. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my outrage and my disappointment 
at the Oakland, California, Police Department, which reacted with 
brutality to those peacefully protesting. Mr. Speaker, I want to remind 
our Nation's law enforcement authorities all across the land that civil 
disobedience is as American as American pie. It is the act through 
which our great Nation was conceived. It required great courage to do 
what they did at the Boston Tea Party. It required great courage for 
the great American, Henry David Thoreau, to refuse to go to war against 
Mexico in 1849, an act that gave birth to the anti-war movement that 
continues today.
  The equalities that we as Americans enjoy today are the result of 
those great, courageous Americans that fought for our liberties, Mr. 
Speaker. The women's suffrage movement went from 1848 to 1920. 
Generations of courageous women marched, they fasted, and they were 
arrested. Finally, in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to 
vote. It took more than seven decades of civil disobedience to achieve 
the change that they sought.
  Let's not forget, Mr. Speaker, that the abolition of slavery, the 
labor movement and the eradication of child labor, the civil rights 
movement, and the environmental movement all used civil disobedience as 
a powerful and peaceful weapon to change laws and to protect all of our 
liberties.

[[Page 16201]]

  Members of the Occupy Movement now emerge as yet another generation 
of courageous Americans voicing a general frustration that many 
citizens feel: It was a money-driven elite that mismanaged the American 
economy. They are challenging us, this Congress, our government, to 
reform not only Wall Street but reform a culture of selfishness and 
greed that has distorted who we are and made the American Dream appear 
unattainable. We are losing ground as a result of these individuals, 
this grotesque, American, greedy and avaricious elite.
  The Occupy Movement, Mr. Speaker, embodies a sense of growing 
disillusionment with the direction of our country. I, for one, 
understand that feeling. With deadlock a daily occurrence in this very 
House, it is hard for the American people not to feel a sense of utter 
frustration. They see their elected representatives unable to govern at 
this crucial time.
  Mr. Speaker, a betrayal of American values occurred last night in 
Oakland, California, when police fired tear gas on those peaceful 
demonstrators. It occurred in New York City when police maced and beat 
protesters. Government violence against our own people? Is this not the 
very thing that we condemn in other places all around the world? How 
dare we denounce an action when committed abroad but yet remain silent 
when it happens in our own, very own--our own backyards.

                              {time}  1930

  I, for one, cannot remain silent. History teaches us that a violent 
response to civil disobedience never, ever works. It makes people 
angrier and turns public opinion against law enforcement, against the 
police. It is counterproductive, and it never achieves the goals of 
those who are trying to impose order.
  Getting arrested is a fundamental part of civil disobedience. The 
Occupy Movement demonstrators expected to be arrested. Civil 
disobedience participants all expect to be arrested, but they should 
also expect that the police will conduct themselves with professional 
understanding and a sensitivity of the power that they possess and of 
the government they represent. They carry weapons. They have the power 
to maim, to kill, to wound, and to arrest.
  With that great power comes an even greater responsibility. That 
greater responsibility includes the freedoms that were promised to all 
American citizens in that great document, the preamble to the 
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which is the freedom from 
``unreasonable searches and seizures'' as promised in the Fourth 
Amendment of the Constitution; the freedom from ``cruel and unusual 
punishments'' as promised in the Eighth Amendment; finally, Mr. 
Speaker, and perhaps most importantly, the freedom enshrined in the 
First Amendment, which guarantees ``the right of the people peaceably 
to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of 
grievances.''
  It is the job of law enforcement to uphold these freedoms, to uphold 
our Constitution, to uphold justice even in the most difficult of 
situations. Beatings and mace and tear gas against our own people 
exercising their constitutional rights? That is unacceptable. More 
importantly, it is un-American.
  I do sympathize with the tough job our Nation's police officers face 
now and have faced, and I can understand why they may feel intimidated 
by the sheer numbers or may mistake the demonstrators' passion for 
aggression. However, in a humble way, I ask the police officers who are 
monitoring these protests to act with a rational head, with soberness, 
with restraint. Violence only breeds violence. Such unwarranted crowd 
control methods will only serve to create mutual contempt between 
protesters and the police alike, dividing Americans against Americans 
and citizens against the police. We don't want that. This is not a 
nation that supports and encourages that type of activity.
  It was only last week, Mr. Speaker, that we--this Nation, the 
citizens of the greatest country in the history of the world--dedicated 
a memorial to a man who was the embodiment, the living proof, of the 
power of civil disobedience and nonviolence. It is those who marched 
peacefully in the face of fire hoses, in the face of dogs attacking 
them, of police batons striking them all over their bodies, including 
their heads, who changed America.
  Now a new generation follows boldly and audaciously with an American 
audacity. They follow in the footsteps of those American patriots who 
dared to disobey the law of the land as a matter of conscience and 
priority, as a matter of conscience that created this great civil 
society called the United States of America. They made our Nation 
better back then, and I believe the Occupy Movement challenges us to 
make America better now.
  Yes, it can be done. America can be better. America must address the 
issues that those who are now demonstrating peacefully across the land 
are raising. They are only trying to peacefully redress their 
grievances. It is their constitutional right. How dare dogs, how dare 
tear gas, how dare police attack them in the wee hours of the morning.
  Mr. Speaker, the mayor of Oakland, California, Mayor Jean Quan, owes 
the Occupy Movement a sincere, heartfelt apology. Mayor Quan owes the 
American people a sincere, heartfelt apology. At 3 a.m. yesterday, the 
Oakland Police invaded the park where the protesters were assembled.
  Forty-five years ago in the same city, 45 years ago this very week, 
an organization that I became a member of, the Black Panther Party, was 
founded in Oakland, California, as a result of the police brutality of 
the Oakland Police Department. Forty-five years later, I as a Member of 
this esteemed body, the House of Representatives, am ashamed to bear 
witness once again to the same Oakland Police Department violating and 
attacking and brutalizing innocent citizens who are protesting, 
bringing their deep-felt grievances to the forefront and engaging in 
acts of civil disobedience.

                              {time}  1940

  Police batons, tear gas, mace, no matter what the weapon is, no 
matter what the strategy is, they cannot kill this movement. They 
cannot stop this movement. This occupy movement is going to move 
forward. It's going to move forward with an accelerated pace because of 
the actions of the police department in Oakland and in other cities 
across this Nation.
  They have a right to protest. They have a right to make their voices 
heard. They have a right, as called for in the gospel of Jesus Christ 
in the Bible, to make their bodies a living sacrifice. These 
individuals, they are epitomizing the greatness in this hour. It's a 
thing that we celebrate all across the land.
  We celebrated it in Tunisia, we celebrated it in Egypt, we celebrated 
it in Libya, we celebrated it in Yemen, we celebrated it in China, we 
celebrated it in other places all across the world. How can we be so 
hypocritical? How can we be so insensitive? How can we be so arrogant 
to celebrate civil disobedience in other places across the world and 
attack the same, the very same actions and attitude here in our Nation 
when our citizens engage in civil disobedience?
  Mr. Speaker, I say that those who are involved in the occupy 
movement, you are just lighting the first spark in a prairie fire of 
peaceful demonstrations across this land. Don't give up, don't give 
out, and please don't give in.
  Godspeed to you. We need you. You're doing the right thing at the 
right time for the right reasons. Keep doing what you're doing. Stand 
up for what you believe in. Stand up for what you believe in.
  It's high time now that the American people stand up for what they 
believe in and take to the streets to demonstrate to all that we're 
sick and tired of being sick and tired. We're sick and tired of home 
foreclosures. We're sick and tired of unemployment. We're sick and 
tired of being sick and tired, as Fannie Lou Hamer once said.
  We're just sick and tired. We're sick, yes, of the rising cost of 
health care. We need to demonstrate and protest the rising cost of 
health care.
  We're sick and tired of the rising gap between those who are sitting 
high on

[[Page 16202]]

the hog, the wealthy, the elite, and those who are at the bottom; the 
rising gap between those who are unemployed and underemployed, who are 
chronically unemployed and the 1 percent who are reaping all the wealth 
of this Nation and telling the rest of us that they have a right to the 
wealth of the Nation, but yet we as American citizens don't have a 
right to a decent job. We as American citizens don't have a right to 
decent housing, that we as American citizens don't have a right to a 
decent education, that we as American citizens don't have a right to 
decent health care.
  How can they look down on us and tell us that we don't have a right 
to the same opportunities and to the same life-style and to the same 
benefits? How can they tell the dwindling, disappearing American middle 
class that they don't have a right to demonstrate?
  These are our children, and they want a better future. These are our 
children, and they are willing to fight for a better future.
  These are our children, and they have the courage to stand up against 
the government, to stand up against the elite, to stand for their 
rights. And I am proud that our children are standing up and standing 
for something to try to get some meaning into their lives and try to 
make this Nation a better Nation.
  I'm proud of them and, again, I say to them, don't give up, don't 
give out, and please don't give in. Godspeed to you.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time

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