“There is no honor in this, you’re here to protect them, protect us.”
This is incredible:
Decorated war hero, Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas voiced his objection to the New York Police Department’s treatment of Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Sergent Thomas’s impassioned speech to the officers was caught on video by various protesters who were being moved on by police officers who were allegedly threatening protesters if they did not move along.
Shamar pointed out to the mob of police officers who were intimidating the protesters that there was “No honour” in their actions and said “It takes a coward to harm an unarmed civilian” he went on to say “This is not a war zone, these are unarmed people, it does not make you tough to hurt these people.”
“If you want to go fight, go to Iraq and Afghanistan, Leave these people alone, they are US citizens, why are you doing this to our people?” said Seargent Thomas who then asked where in their (The NYPD officers present) contract does it justify hurting US citizens.
“I’ve been to Iraq 14 months for my people and you come here to hurt them, they don’t have guns, it doesn’t make any sense, how do you sleep at night? there is no honour in this, you’re here to protect them, protect us.”
“You’re all walking around in riot gear like this is a war, these people don’t have guns.”
Sergeant Shamar Thomas is now an American hero not just for his service to his country but for his service to his country in defending civilians at home.
Thank you, Sergeant Thomas.
[via The Economic Voice]
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]**My fundraiser, if you’re so inclined. –ABLxx
mclaren
Run that man for congress.
jeff
That’s what an American can look like. (Meanwhile, I’ll be hiding in shame…) Some people just have authority. The NYPD can recognize it, that’s for sure. I feel bad for the cops, who mostly have been doing a good job, though the abusive senior officers may overshadow their work.
Lolis
It is crazy that they had a counterterrorism unit in Times Square. Imagine if that had been 10 K teabaggers in their scooters and with their concealed hand guns. It never would have happened. It shows what an upside down world we live in when peaceful protesters are treated as possible terrorists. Meanwhile the people actually terrorizing this country are at the highest levels and calling the shots.
piratedan
saw this over @ GOS last night, just as powerful then…. basically shamed the police into standing down, talk about awesome.
Cacti
The job of the police is to control the proles and protect the powerful.
Macing and clubbing protesters IS their job.
Macaillah Ashli
Run that man for President.
The Dangerman
Hate to go OT in this thread…
…but, WTF Miami Dolphins? My new clubhouse leader in Suck for Luck. Truly stunning performance.
AA+ Bonds
There’s always this, too.
Cliff in NH
he was on olberman too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wzBn5X_hsIs
MaximusNYC
This epitomizes what Occupy Wall Street is about. It’s a prophetic movement, not in the strict sense of predicting the future, but in the sense defined by the theologian Walter Brueggemann:
“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”
Lockewasright
Post this video EVERYWHERE please.
usmc
Use of the USMC seal is not authorized.
http://www.marines.mil/unit/divpa/tmlo/pages/welcome.aspx
other than that. Great video! OOH RAH Devil Dog!
gaz
for having the courage to stand up and break his foot off in the ass of people who should know better, i want to buy him a beer.
for not losing sight of what he fights for I want to shake his hand.
and for his brave service to our country both abroad and here at home I want to thank him and send him my love.
travis
I look forward to the attacks on this man. They will twist themselves into pretzels to call this guy a DFH. But they will anyway.
lacp
@Lockewasright: Agree. I hope it goes viral. As a mass movement, Occupy shouldn’t have a single spokesperson – but they could use a hell of a lot more like Sgt. Thomas.
smintheus
OT, but holy crap. Herman Cain as of this evening: I was joking when I said yesterday my death fence was a joke.
jefft452
@AA+ Bonds:
Wow! perfect
Gwiwer
One of the most astounding things about modern America is how the wingnuts shout constantly about how everyone needs to respect the troops who, they assure us, are over in Iraq and Afghanistan “defending our freedom”, whatever that means. Yet, whenever someone dares to even think about using one of those freedoms granted to them by the Constitution in a way that the wingnuts don’t completely and whole-heartedly endorse, they go absolutely ballistic. I guess it’s the same crazy line of thought that allows them to gleefully gobble up their social security, medicare, and other government welfare while constantly whining about how the government has no business helping anyone else out.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@AA+ Bonds: Yep, that photo is also great.
Anya
@AA+ Bonds: If that picture does not inspire all of us to join the protesters, I don’t know what will.
Martin
@smintheus: Look, whatever message you like best – barbecued mexicans or just a plain ol fence, pick the one you like best and just give me credit. I can go either way.
jon
@smintheus: Mike Huckabee is also a fucking funny jokester, too.
It’s all fun and games until all the Baptist churches get burned down in a retaliatory laugh riot.
Mike G
That is ten kinds of awesome.
Now start the countdown to Flush and Faux-News swift boating him and speculating about his countertops.
Chris
@smintheus:
Yeah, I just saw that too. This guy’s flip-flops would put Mitt Romney to shame.
@Gwiwer:
“This guy’s dying for your freedom of speech! So shut the fuck up!”
The most egregious thing is that they apply this to veterans too. If you’re a soldier or veteran and you’re not a White Christian Conservative from Mayberry, as far as they’re concerned, you may as well not exist and you certainly don’t deserve any of that “respect.”
Liberal soldiers, gay soldiers, Muslim soldiers, illegal immigrants or children of illegal immigrants who’re soldiers… even conservative veterans who occasionally stray from the party line ever so slightly, like McCain did on torture. How many soldiers and veterans have they shit and pissed on in the course of their “patriotic” orgies? I don’t think I can count that high before dying of old age.
Shelton Lankford
Sgt. Thomas was on Olbermann this evening. He is a most eloquent spokesperson for doing the right thing, and whatever future he has in the Marine Corps may be in question, but he could replace about a dozen talking heads that masquerade as reporters and pundits on MSNBC and CNN.
smintheus
@Martin: It’s past time for Democrats to weigh in and demand that the rest of the GOP field explain where they stand on electrocuting people at the border. Also too which of Cain’s statements they think he was joking about…if any.
JGabriel
OT, but:
Oh. My. God. David Brooks has gone completely batshit:
It’s so true. People stop having the sex when are gloomy. Here I thought birthrates were down because people were financially strapped, but no: they’re just gloomy.
Yes, this is true too. People did many things “away from the cameras” in the 1820s. Because they didn’t have mass produced cameras or video in the 1820s, you fucking loon!
.
maya
@Gwiwer: If you want even more proof of wingtard bull shit with their claim of troop-love monopoly, go to any rightwing blog that has an archive and look up what they posted from Feb 18, 2007 forward. That was the day that the WaPo exposed the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal. I did a little checking on 14 of them over a 2 month period then and came up with an astounding – ZERO – posts on anything to do with it on all 14. Not a word. Check for yourself.
FOX News was busy that weekend with a 53 hour marathon on the death and funeral of Anna Nicole Smith. But then Rupert and Rodger do seem to have a thing for big boobed blonds. Fuck the troops
Linda Featheringill
I saw the video of the good Sargent.
Righteous rant. Loved it. Loved him.
smintheus
@JGabriel: Maybe Brooks doesn’t know that sex can be free as well as wholesome entertainment?
Villago Delenda Est
@travis:
Oh, it will.
They will start by thanking him for his service, then proceed to savage him for blurting out the unfortunate (for them) truth.
JGabriel
@smintheus: It doesn’t matter that sex is free when you’re gloomy.
.
clayton
Anne Laurie, you should feel some shame at this point, though I doubt you will.
Perhaps you could post on what you are doing to pull you fellow white people out of poverty or post an explanation for why all those cops seemed to be white.
Or you could just wage a battle with ABL via email.
You seem petty enough to do it all here in the comments.
David Koch
This person is an obvious racist.
Turgidson
@travis:
Countertop inspections are surely already commencing.
sherifffruitfly
Best part will be when it comes out that he’s a strong Obama supporter. The whiner left will drop him like a sack of bricks.
TheOtherWA
I love him. He did the simple, obvious thing by telling off the cops and putting the situation in perspective. And he did it sooooo well.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Funny, I watched that video and all I saw was drum circles and puppets, and caught a whiff of patchouli. Cuz that’s all the the protest is. Hippies and trustafarians. The great minds of Balloon Juice told me so.
Lysana
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: Dude, at least catch up to this week before you troll, eh?
0/10.
feebog
If you would like to see the vidieo go viral then post it. I put it on my Facebook page this morning. The Sarge was awesome.
Martin
@smintheus: Well, I think the larger question is whether to barbecue mexicans or use to nourish our alligator army. I don’t think both will work – I’m pretty sure alligators prefer a live meal.
Maybe the next GOP debate (they’re running hourly now, I understand) they can have a show of hands on barbecue or alligators. Or just have the audience hollar out choices.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Lysana: You call it trolling.
I call it a friendly reminder to people of how stupid they were. And often still are, as regularly reading the OWS threads around here will tell you.
Cricket
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: It’s more stupid to come here with nothing more than “neener neener neener”, especially when all of the commenters here are voicing positive sentiments about OWS.
People’s opinions change, you should be happy. Sanctimonious scab-picking accomplishes nothing. In fact, it makes you look like a small person who cares more about showing how righteous you are than about the cause you purport to support.
scav
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: so, to achieve non-stupidity status in your world of the otherly-colored and self-reflecting sky, one no longer has to come to the same decisions as you but at the same time as you. You must be one damn lonely son of a bitch but luckily hugging yourself seems to suffice.
burnspbesq
@The Dangerman:
You seem to be heavily discounting the possibility that a team that has appeared in the last two AFC championship games might not have forgotten everything it knows about how to play winning football.
cinesimon
Baron’s not paying attention: surprise surprise.
You read right wing blogs and – in typical lazy fashion – somehow think that’s all you need to do in order to understand what is going on in the world. Then spout cliched bullshit, and think you’re speaking the truth.
Take Ms Palin’s advice: get out of you basement, kiddo. Walk outside. Take a look around you. You might surprise yourself, and start to hate yourself less.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Cricket: Yeah, that’s right, people can change. I’m hoping they don’t change back.
@scav: No, to be not stupid you merely have to accurately observe the obvious reality. OWS has never been dominated by smelly hippies. Not in the beginning, and not now. Anyone who thought it was was just straight fucking wrong. No two ways about it.
People who are willfully wrong like that need their noses rubbed in it. Maybe they’ll be less stupid next time.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@cinesimon: Speaking of stupid people…
If you think I ever read right-wing blogs for any reason except to mock them, you’re sadly misinformed.
Joel
The Dolphins are basically throwing games at this point. The only team doing this more obviously is Denver.
Dustin
@usmc: “Use of the USMC seal is not authorized.”
Ummm… maybe I’m missing something but where exactly is the USMC seal being used here in anything approaching a commercial manner?
mclaren
@Lolis:
You are aware, are you not, that the Pentagon has defined peaceful public protests as “low-level terrorism”?
This is where the goddamn misbegotten War on Terror is headed. Eventually, anyone who dissents becomes a “terrorist” and gets beaten, cuffed, and dragged off to some secret prison without charges.
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
Riiiiiiiight.
I promise you, when they take me into Room 101 and strap the cage on my head, I will say “do it to mclaren.”
scav
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: you’re still pulling it with your willfully wrong bs and blah blah blah (with it’s overtones of “It requires as act of active and malicious will to interpret and understand facts different from I do!”). Smug and snug as a slug in a self-hug iz you. not that is matters. Go for it if the schtick fits.
ABL
@usmc: Thanks and good point. I changed it.
stickler
@travis: Travis — here’s how it’s gonna go:
1. Sgt. Thomas is exposed by Fox News for faking his countertops.
2. Then, it turns out, due to Fox News and its intrepid reporters, that his mom wasn’t actually in Iraq, she was in Afghanistan, and anyhow, she was in a safe rear area posting like a Kabul hotel.
3. Um, so, it just so happens that Fox News lied, and his mom was blowed up in a Kabul hotel or some such stuff.
Just wait. This guy wasn’t a hero! Film at 11!
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@scav: Sorry for being prematurely pro-OWS. There’s no greater shame than being right when your betters are wrong.
Yutsano
@ABL: The post went all slanty. And stuff.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@scav: you broke the thread, with your italics and all .
The prophet Nostradumbass
There is an [i /] in scav’s post that should be an [/i].
MikeJ
@Yutsano:
I thought we finished all this anti Asian stuff in the MLK thread.
ABL
@The prophet Nostradumbass: fix’d.
@Yutsano: BJ is a funhouse now. or hadn’t you noticed?
ruemara
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
You do realize that if these people fail to get registered to vote and hit the voting booth come November 2012 and remember to vote out every conservative they can on every ticket, that this whole movement will have failed? Yet they’re very busy being not just non-partisan, but above something as pedestrian and done to death as voting. Consider that while you neener. I’m going to keep focus on the issue of voting.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Don’t make gwangung drive up here and kick my butt. We don’t live all that far from each other.
@ABL: Oh I noticed there’s been all kinds of frabjous happenings this day. I’d be amused, but honestly I’m too cranky.
J. Michael Neal
@JGabriel:
Cause and effect. U haz it wrong.
J. Michael Neal
@Shelton Lankford: Sergeant Thomas was a lot more articulate in that interview than Olbermann was.
Short Bus Bully
No other way to say it, Shamar was righteous out there on the street. That legitimate anger, the obvious social justice he was speaking, the American-ness of it all…
Fuck.Yes.
Doug Danger
Sorry, I never considered Olbermann’s delivery and gravitas on par with anyone beyond Mike Douglas. Sarge needs a bigger, better, less polarized but honest platform.
But who am I kidding? Warren Buffet doesn’t even have a tv show.
hamletta
@ruemara: They’re not mutually exclusive.
keestadoll
Just a quick question: how have the police been behaving at other Occupy protests in different cities? DC, etc?
Hawes
Sgt Thomas is obviously a leech on society. He leeched off of us in his government run “training program” that teaches Nubian socialists to use weapons to hunt Christians, like in Uganda. He leeched off us 53%ers by eating government bought food and wearing government bought clothes. Who do you think paid for that bling on his chest? Taxpayers! The bullets? The body armor? That came out of some hedge fund managers pocket!
Where’s the gratitude towards Wall Street for giving Sgt Thomas an opportunity to travel to exciting places like Tikrit?
rikryah
he was wonderful
Jinxtigr
I’ve been reading ‘The Shock Doctrine’.
It’s a shame the guy is so certain that if you want to kill and hurt people, you should go to Iraq. I can forgive that in context, but I’ve got to say, it’s shortsighted.
He’s been working for the same people all along and has every right to be outraged, but he has no business being outraged NOW. It seems a bit late for that.
But better late than never.
MTiffany
@mclaren: Send that man to law school so we can make him attorney general.
MTiffany
That is the very first part of the oath he took:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;”
CynDee
@mclaren: Yeh, and then you’re an Insurgent. And you know what happens to THEM.
CynDee
Shamar Thomas is the most important man in America today. I am grateful to him for all his service and for protecting us at home. I am also grateful to him because it is impossible to know what he did and not be changed by it. I only hope that I can match his dedication, bravery, eloquence, control, and effectiveness.
Thank you, Shamar. You took a risk on the public streets of New York and showed a lot of people that the streets of this country belong to all of us. These are OUR streets and we can stand on them and speak the truth.
I hope that those young police officers who were telling Shamar to “move along” (?!) have a lot to think over now, about their own lives and future. They were put in an awful position by their “superiors.” And the poor older officer who took refuge behind a bullhorn aimed at someone a few feet away — he didn’t quite know what to do. That’s because it’s stupid to chase people off the streets of the city they live in, the city that they keep alive and operational. Where should they go? Inside and stay there?