So, How threatening are 84 year old “Activists”?

Every time I look in the mirror or try on an old pair of jeans or check my crown for newly sprouted grey hairs, I try to recite the poem ‘Warning, When I Am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple’ .  I probably should just make a copy of it and paste it on my vanity mirror.  It’s hard to stay focused when your hips start to take up entire chair seats.

I’ve done my share of protests.  I’ve done them with now Dr. Daughter strapped to my chest in a baby carrier and with same daughter pushed across the streets around the Nebraska State Capitol in a baby carrier.  I ran for state office when baby daughter was still in Montessori pre-school. (She gets her B.S. in Finance from LSU in May.) Dr. Daughter  was in utero when I interviewed Maya Angelou and when I was out at the Rose and Crown with Kate Millet and Betty Friedan talking about rumors of holding an annual International Women’s Day.  Whenever I get down, I start singing “we will never give up, we will never give up, until justice is ours” which is my life’s theme song after I learned it from from Kristen Lems in the early 80s.  (I learned this with Dr. Daughter in utero and most of my friends hoping that I wasn’t going to give birth in the middle of being the executive director of an activists’ conference). One of these days I will transfer some of this off of a VHS tape to digital and share it with you.  People–including my children–can attest to its existence, however. I fought and worked like crazy for the ERA when I was in graduate school getting my first masters degree.  I go through periods where I can still find the strength to protest and other times when I just can’t believe we could be regressing so quickly.  These days, I am highly discouraged.

I would just like to bow deeply and say  “I’m not worthy” to Dorli T. Rainey.

Dorli T. Rainey described herself as “an old lady in combat boots” in a Wednesday interview with The Associated Press and said she’s a former school teacher. A Seattle police spokesman did not discuss her specifically, instead referring to a statement saying demonstrators sprayed were refusing a police order to disperse.

The department was working with Mayor Mike McGinn’s office Wednesday and a statement on the Tuesday night protest was expected later in the afternoon. Update: McGinn’s statement can be read here.

Rainey in 2007 (seattlepi.com file)

Rainey’s time in the 2009 mayoral race was brief, and Rainey told the AP she quit because she was too old. On Tuesday night, Rainey was on a bus when she heard helicopters and thought she should show her solidarity with New York, where protesters had rallied for Wall Street reform.

Rainey was near Fifth Avenue and Pine Street when she was pepper-sprayed Wednesday night – the most chaotic night of Occupy Seattle protests. An officer using a public-address system told demonstrators to leave.

“Pepper spray was deployed only against subjects who were either refusing a lawful order to disperse or engaging in assaultive behavior toward officers,” department spokesman Jeff Kappel said the earlier statement.

Rainey has been a longtime activist, and wrote several letters to the editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer print edition.

In April 2005 she called for Experience Music Project, which she called an “ugly monster,” to be imploded like the Kingdome. In January 2007, she wrote that there were “interesting parallels between what happened in 1944-45 in Germany and what is happening today in the United States.” She complained of former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ influence on Seattle Public Schools and opposed the tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

In June 2007, Rainey was outside the Westin Hotel in Seattle protesting a visit by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In November of that year, she wrote in a letter of an “eerie similarity” between a government crackdown on protestors in Pakistan and a crackdown by Olympia Police Department and others “on peaceful and unarmed protesters at the Port of Olympia.”

Ms. Rainey was pepper sprayed in Seattle along with a 19 year old pregnant woman and a priest.  I would certainly like to know how any of them threatened the riot police.

The Seattle mayor Mike McGinn has apologized and asked for a police review.

McGinn said in a Wednesday afternoon statement that he had spoken with Rainey, and had also directed police leadership to review the incident.

“To those engaged in peaceful protest, I am sorry that you were pepper sprayed,” he said. “I also called in Seattle Police Chief John Diaz and the command staff to review the actions of last night. They agreed that this was not their preferred outcome.”

The mayor said police officers are facing difficult circumstances trying to maintain order the many Occupy protests throughout the city. He said police are developing procedures to make sure there are enough commanders on the scene at future protests.

McGinn referenced the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, at which there were mass arrests, a nighttime curfew in parts of the city and the deployment of National Guard troops to maintain order, as well as 2001 riot during Mardi Gras celebrations that left a young man dead.

“In both instances insufficient attention and preparation led to severe public safety issues,” McGinn said.

McGinn said “tensions appear to be getting higher” as the local Occupy movement stretches into its sixth week.

The police response to these protest really worries me.  Oh, and who would do such an inhumane thing as this?

Publicola reported that a short time after the pepper spray was fired, the protesters were lectured by a man in a suit who described himself as a “professional investor.” He told a group of protesters, including a young woman who said she has a job at Safeway but is underemployed, “I’m in the 1 percent; I’m not like you.”

The man also asked the woman, “Who is John Galt?” That question is the first line of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” and the phrase is commonly used by devotees of the book to signal their allegiance to its free-market ideology.

The Publicola report continued, “A young man wearing a black ’99 Percent’ shirt responded: ‘Go take your tie somewhere else.’”