Police violence against protest organizers turned leadership figures into martyrs

Evidence

From behind the barricades Beck saw his wife Judith Malina being manhandled. He led the crowd (estimated as over a thousand and including, as described by the New York Times, numerous “beatniks”) in screaming: “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Scores of protestors were arrested, including Malina and Beck, who suffered a punctured lung in the melee and was taken to Bellevue Hospital. The Village Voice, which put Beck’s condition on page one, was a forum for dissident views, including that of peace activist David McReynolds, who blamed the rally’s organizers for losing control, and a letter from an Upper West Side shrink who theorized that the entire event was a “psychodrama” orchestrated by “conflicting groups of lunatics.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 368

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A single viral image of police brutality converted ordinary citizens into protesters — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 335; Crackdowns traumatize protesters so deeply that false alarms trigger terror — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 534; Security-force killings of activists triggered escalatory cycles of mourning and reprisal — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 603 (+5 more)