All around the country, police departments are using violence and coercion to rid cities of peaceful protesters who are practicing the very universal rights that you referenced when addressing the protests in Egypt.
“I want to be very clear,” you said back in January, “in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.”
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The hypocrisy has got to stop. As a nation that has set out to set the example for the rest of the world in the way it treats its citizens we are drowning in hypocrisy and violations of Constitutional rights. There will always be anomalies during peaceful protests - we’re only human - but it is not the job of sworn peace officers to lash out violently and mercilessly at the very people they took an oath to protect and serve.
When we hear that police officers are only reacting to violence bestowed upon them, we can only look back to to 1962 and former President Kennedy’s words: “Those who make peaceful protest impossible, make violent protest inevitable.” We call upon other nations around the world to stand up for the rights of their people, then let the very atrocities that we are addressing occur to our own citizens.
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Mr. President, the American People demand that the actions of the police officers around the country are addressed. The American People need to know that their President will not stand for this kind of treatment of his Nation’s citizens, especially since we have fought so long and hard to preserve the very rights that all of these peaceful protests are exercising.
Mr. President, the Police Officers who are documented in photo and video all around the internet need to be called to justice. This is not a nation of extrajudicial punishment, this is a nation of free speech and peaceful assembly and one that is tired of watching its sons and daughters fight and die in far off lands for the very rights that American citizens are having suppressed.
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