Anaheim residents have had increasing distrust of their local police. A series of 7 suspicious shootings with 5 deaths, culminated recently with the death of unarmed 24-year-old Manuel Diaz who, recent evidence showed, was shot in the leg and the back of the head.
Just one day later, Joel Acevedo, who was allegedly in handcuffs, was also gunned down; while residents from a nearby apartment building were targeted by police flashlights in an apparent effort to stifle any video footage being taken of the incident.
The chaos that ensued has shown no signs of abating; and now Anonymous has directly attacked Police Chief John Welters, initiating a new operation that calls for citizens to rise up en masse.
The hacking collective known as Anonymous published Chief Welters’ home address, as well as his personal MySpace page, which is part of #OpAnaheim recorded in the video below:
While legitimate activism is certainly required in the face of blatant tyranny, the original community that came under fire has morphed into something that should at least raise the question: Who are the Anaheim protesters?
The local residents who gathered to express their outrage over the killing of Diaz, and later Acevedo, were predominantly Latino. However, in subsequent protest videos like the first major one below titled “Anaheim Rebellion”, we see a much greater mix, with some protesters wearing the standard provocateur/anarchist garb, as a decent number of professional camera crew follow them around.
See if you can identify which ones might be plants to incite violence (warning: language):
It is interesting to note that police who used blunt force ammunition and a dog against men, women, and children, show amazing restraint in the above video, as well as in many of the subsequent incidents shown in still photos HERE, where demonstrators were filling tanks with gas, kicking police cars, and breaking windows. As Chief Welters states:
I respect the people’s right to demonstrate, but I wish that they weren’t demonstrating in a violent manner.
As Anaheim gears up for more protests throughout the weekend, with demonstrators planning to march near Disneyland and the Anaheim Police Department, it will become increasingly important to question if all elements of this citizen uprising are legitimate, so that any attempt to co-opt a peaceful redress of grievances and turn it into a violent conflict that gives the police state the justification to crack down can be exposed and repudiated.
Additionally, with the history of at least some elements of Anonymous suspected to be controlled opposition, are we witnessing the beginnings of a coordinated effort to use propaganda in tandem with provocateurs to delegitimize community outrage, and even turn this into a racial issue? Will the building chaos and “trend” of civil unrest across the country be used to justify Federal intervention as is suggested in the RT interview below?
We welcome your views in the comments section below, and will continue reporting on this as events develop. We also welcome anyone who is on the ground in Anaheim to send us your firsthand account at ActivistPost (at) gmail.com.
Sources for this article:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/07/anaheim_anonymous_opanaheim_police_chief_john_welters.php
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0728-anaheim-protest-20120728,0,1437219.story
http://rt.com/usa/news/shooting-anaheim-protests-brutality-986/
Read other articles by Activist Post HERE
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