via kaseyanderson:
Within the piece, Levine says this:
* Everyone on my bus felt her pain–literally felt it. That’s because the zip-tie handcuffs they use—like the ones you see on Iraq prisoners in Abu Ghraib—cut off your circulation and wedge deep through your skin, where they can do some serious nerve damage, if that’s the point. And it did seem to be the point. A couple of guys around me were writhing in agony in their hard plastic seats, hands handcuffed behind their back.
Here are some photos of actual prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Listen, police brutality under any circumstance is abhorrent and ought be exposed and punished, but when you do this - when you make a passive-aggressive comparison between your experience and that of prisoners at Abu Ghraib - you lose an awful lot of credence with me. If you want to raise awareness, maybe begin by being aware of the differences between being a mistreated white protestor who was detained for 24 hours and a fucking prisoner of war. Yes, handcuffs hurt. I can tell you, as someone who was arrested and detained not so many years ago, that those “Abu Ghraib Handcuffs” are the handcuffs police use, period. They’re not special “Hurt the Protestors” handcuffs; they’re just handcuffs. They’re not supposed to be comfortable. Some of the things covered in Levine’s piece are, indeed, horrible and unjust and disgusting. Some of them, however, are simply - for better or worse - standard procedure during an arrest and detainment, and, were the Occupy Movement not comprised so heavily of privileged, white kids who turned a blind eye to injustice until it directly impacted their bank accounts, they’d know that already.
Don’t do that, please, Yasha. Don’t compare your experience to Abu Ghraib because the fucking handcuffs are the same.
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