Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for many things: my job, my house, my amazing partner (who wore a 'Yale Feminist' shirt to Harvard/Yale!), and my family, to name a few. I am thankful that I can pay my bills and my rent and still have plenty to eat. I am thankful for homemade pumpkin bread, butternut squash soup, and apple cider on cold, wet fall nights. I am thankful for the crunching sound that golden leaves make under my feet.

But I am also profoundly sad and angry. I'm sad that the war on women rages on decades after Roe v. Wade, that so many people are unemployed, and that so many people are hungry and homeless. I'm angry about the brutal treatment of Occupy protestors by police around the country. I'm disgusted by and angry about this:



(In case you have any doubt about the peaceful nature of the Occupy UC Davis protest, watch this longer video of the event from different angles, which clearly shows that the police pepper sprayed a bunch of students sitting on the ground.)

I'm angry that police at UC Davis opened a peaceful protestor's throat and sprayed pepper spray down it.

I'm angry that a woman miscarried after being sprayed with pepper spray and hit in the stomach by police.

I'm angry that a protestor, and three-tour veteran, was beaten by police and left with a lacerated spleen (video).

I'm angry that police pepper sprayed this 84 year old woman at an Occupy Seattle protest.

This brutality has to stop.

Stay strong, Occupiers! Because this year, thousands of people are thankful for you.