Scott Olsen: Two Tours In Iraq, One Tour In America... So Far...

Scott Olsen, Occupy Oakland's soldier for peace
After what happened to Scott, we have a right to be angry that our tax dollars go on tear gas instead of schools and healthcare
Clare Bayard - guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 15 November 2011 17.36 EST


Scott Olsen, recovering from a critical brain injury after being hit by a projectile during riot police action against Occupy Oakland, 25 October 2011.

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I want you to picture Scott Olsen. Not bloodied like the pictures you've seen, but healthy and smiling. Several weeks ago, I held a banner with Scott up at Fleet Week, talking to active duty Marines and Navy and JROTC cadets about trauma and war. The banner read "Every day 32 veterans attempt suicide. 18 succeed." Scott had been participating in Iraq Veterans Against the War's Operation Recovery campaign to end the deployment of traumatised troops, towards a larger goal of ending the deployments of all US troops.

Two tours in Iraq convinced Scott the war was unjust, and he became a peace activist. On the evening of 25 October, as the police evicted Occupy Oakland, he was hit in the head allegedly by a projectile fired by another kind of occupying army. The OPD functions as a military force in Oakland's low-income neighborhoods. This isn't the first time the Oakland Police Department has been accused of using excessive force. They have a record of shooting people of color with seeming impunity.

A Marine at the protest who was trained in crowd control detailed how riot police in Oakland fired on protesters in ways that are prohibited under our notoriously brutal rules of engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. That puts Scott's injury into perspective, and many veterans have exposed the senseless violence and war crimes occurring in these occupations. The Oakland Police Department (plus reinforcement police shipped in from around the state) are forbidden from firing tear gas canisters anywhere at a human body and deny responsibility for Olsen's injury. But the OPD is now subject of a Oakland's Citizens' Police Review Board investigation into protesters' allegations that Scott was shot with a tear gas canister or other projectile fired by police .

Our friend Scott's skull was fractured, causing his brain to swell dangerously. All day, I could not stop thinking about another friend of ours, also from Oakland – Tristan Anderson. Tristan was also struck in the head with a tear gas canister, in the spring of 2009 in the West Bank, at a peaceful demonstration of Palestinians resisting the militarised annexation of their village's land. Tristan survived and is back in California with us, although he is still recovering from his life-endangering, life-changing injuries. Several Palestinians have been killed by these same tear gas canisters. "Less lethal" ammunition, these days, is a game of statistics.

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More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/15/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-soldier

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