The things police will do to kill an environmentalist....So there's been a blockading effort going on for months to slow the development of the Keystone XL pipeline. Right now they're just clear-cutting the path for construction. Activists are placing themselves in the trees that are marked to be cut, and camping out for as long as possible. Some have managed to stay in them for significant amounts of time, single-handedly slowing down the process for a week or more. Police respond by destroying their platforms and climb lines, so that the activists have only bare tree limbs to perch on and no safe way down. Then they go in with cherry pickers (they look kinda like those platforms power line workers use) to retrieve and arrest the activist.
So activists try and climb as high as possible, out of reach of the cherry pickers. Police respond to this by destroying their platforms and climb lines, and then focusing a battery of floodlights up into the tree to blind and sleep-deprive the activist until they fall. One man has already fallen 40 feet because of this, and they're currently using this tactic against a woman who is perched 70 feet up.
Edit: Also, Jill Stein has been arrested for helping supplies to reach these people.
Edit Edit:
Oh... and this just came across one of my feeds...
IDAHO SPRINGS, CO - Dressed for war, police arrest activists for protesting a woman being evicted from her foreclosed home.
A video clip of the protesters confrontation with the swat team.An first-hand description of the whole event on Occupy Denver's website.Some more photosGoddamnit... I see something like this every single day that leaves me shaking with rage... usually just before I need to lay down and sleep...