(Each Tuesday during Occupy Fringe, Jeff Questad will bring us a roundup of the latest Occupy news.)

—— In the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 15, police in Manhattan raided the tent city in Zuccotti Park, arresting hundreds of protestors and dozens of journalists.  It was two days before the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a Day Of Action planned to commemorate the day.

The park was dirty, says the City Of New York. Have you ever been to New York? The city is filthy. But Wall Street is clearly a very special street; cleaning it requires pepper spray, batons and hundreds of armored police officers descending on sleeping people in the middle of the night.

If New York is a city of stories, the Zuccotti Park evictions, their aftermath and the Day Of Action on Thursday are the source of most of them this week. Here are a just a few:

• New York City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was knocked around and arrested.
• The Daily News editorially endorsed the raid; before one of their reporters was arrested, which they found it “alarming.” (Welcome to the 99%)
• Churches in New York have given refuge to protestors. The NYPD is now watching those churches:
• When they’re not protecting and serving by destroying books:
• Or charging horses directly into the Zuccotti crowd; which, if true, is both an abuse of the human demonstrators and the horses themselves.
• The Day Of Action resulted in 200 more arrests and ended with a peaceful march to the Brooklyn Bridge. There were solidarity actions in Occupy cities all over America.

—— This Mother Jones report, which includes a transcript of Twitter posts from Josh Harkinson, is a powerful read.  Harkinson may have been the only reporter who managed to avoid the NYPD’s “press pen.” His real-time observations about what was going on in the park are gripping, with the teargas and the pepper spray and the shoving and the riot gear…

—— Big Labor, the CWA and the AFL-CIO, were quick to come out in support of the 99% after Zuccoti.

Fasten your seat belts, America. Labor has avoided the streets and played the Washington game for decades. They’ve worried money and effort were not well spent on President Obama. This is an important development. If support of Occupy indicates labor making a return to direct action, things will heat up fast. It would be the most transformative thing to happen in American politics in generations.

You heard that here first. Or maybe second, if you hang out in the same bar I do.

—— When reporters were being arrested, assaulted and otherwise blocked from reporting on the Zuccotti Park action, they stepped around media restrictions by using Twitter. The hash tag #mediablackout began the week with posts from reporters in New York and ended it with posts from and in support of this weekend’s protests in Egypt.

Authority using strong arm tactics to shut down protest, forcing people and press to turn to social media? Who could have predicted such a thing? #Tunisia #Syria #Egypt

—— Speaking of social media, are you following your local Occupy group on Facebook? Go say hello to Portland, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, St. Louis, Oakland, Boston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, and one my personal favorites, Marfa, Texas.  This high desert West Texas desert town has 906 Facebook fans and a population of 1,981.

—— Does Obama’s statement that the cities need to decide for themselves how to handle protestors, especially coming the day after New York, mean he endorses violence? Ask Egypt. In January, the U.S. condemned violence toward pro-democracy demonstrators there. There were hundreds injured and a handful killed in new demonstrations in Egypt this weekend and the world is condemning the violence in no uncertain terms. Our voice is conspicuously absent. You’re on your own, Egypt, and anyone else who decides to stand up this year. For Obama to condemn violence there while turning the blind eye to it at home would strike even his most doe-eyed supporters as false.

Disclosure: I’m an Obama supporter, contributor, volunteer and voter. But let’s not mince words. The President is showing no leadership. Or perhaps he is showing all-too-typical Presidential qualities, avoiding taking a position until he feels he absolutely has to. At best, he is behind the curve and will regret not doing the right thing. I’m not the only one who wonders why the President won’t step in and remind Americans the right to protest is among our most valuable rights, that protestors have raised valid and important questions, and we don’t beat unarmed, peaceful Americans.

(Or do we?)

—— Matthew Salesses asks how to explain all this to his daughter.

Here’s a question my son asked me today: If we’re on the fence and don’t stand alongside our friends and neighbors or pressure the President to do the right thing, do we share responsibility when someone gets hurt? If the situation here means the U.S. can’t or won’t intervene in other countries, is our indifference a factor when people die standing up for their rights in those countries?

—— I hate to dwell on it, but violence by police has been the theme this week, and we can’t let these moments be forgotten. Let’s do a quick run down of some of the moments that will live in infamy.

• In Portland, an image no one will forget soon.
• Off to Berkeley, where this beating handed out to students on a campus known for its activism may have been a turning point for some Americans watching at home.
• In Oakland, when Kayven Sabeghi was hospitalized weeks ago with serious injuries, it was said police had nothing to do with it.  New video shows that is not the case.
• Then at UC Davis, the big one.  This is an amazing moment with an astonishing ending.  When I have something that you really must see, I will indicate so by saying something like “must see.” This is a must see.

If you want to tell your grandkids about it, it goes something like this:

Once upon a sidewalk, in a park at a major university, police officers casually and sadistically sprayed chemical irritants in the faces, eyes and throats of peacefully demonstrating students.  The students, without violence, surrounded the outnumbered police force, chanting, “Shame on you.”

Ultimately, after several minutes of chanting, the officers appeared chastised and surrounded, unsure what to do. The students changed their chant to “We are willing to give you a brief moment of peace.  Take your weapons and go.  Please do not return. You can go.”

The police walked away.

Later, facing calls for her resignation, the chancellor of that university barricaded herself in her office, surrounded by hundreds of students  When she finally emerged from her office, the crowd said not a word, but allowed her to walk to her car untouched and without a sound.  Even she, out of respect for drama of the moment, whispered, promising to take responsibility, address the students and make things better.

Not quite The End.

It was, boys and girls, a powerful display of what non-violent protest is capable of. You can see the whole saga in two videos at NPR.  These two incidents will be taught in schools some day.

There’s a happy ending.  Two of the officers were suspended.  And a new internet meme was born.

—— Norm Stamper is the Seattle Police chief who lost his job after his military-style response to the 1999 WTO protests resulted in widespread abuse of protestors.  Writing in The Nation, he now sees police in Occupy cities making the same mistakes he did.

“More than a decade later, the police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland—where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police projectile—brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law enforcement.”

Norm Stamper? In The Nation? Telling police to tone it down a notch?

It’s the militarization of the police, Man.

—— Scott Olsen, the protestor who suffered a serious head injury when shot by Oakland police, left the hospital and made his first statement to the public.  The injury temporarily robbed him of his ability to talk – “My freedom of speech was quite literally taken from me” – but he’s making a comeback (like leg warmers), and the city of Oakland is going to squirm uncomfortably as he reclaims his ability to free speak. He’s a former Marine who talks in sound bites and is dedicated to the 99% movement. He promises you’ll see him soon back in the streets.

Oakland, we love you, and we love stories of people with conscience crossing sides. Dan Siegal was the chief legal advisor to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan.  He isn’t any more. He quit, condemning the violence in Oakland. “The city sent police to evict this camp, arrest people and potentially hurt them,” Siegel says.

Reading things like this, we wonder what is going on under those black Darth Vadar helmets.  How many of the officers participating in these actions are wishing they weren’t, but can’t make the stand Siegal did?

—— Get a load of Ray Lewis, a former Philadelphia police captain who was arrested protesting while in uniform.

—— This is spirited. Chris Hedges says “This Is What Revolution Looks Like.”

—— And now it’s time for the Lightening Round.  Go!

We may have to start referring to the 99.1%.  These millionaires are lobbying for tax increases. — Natasha Leonard, formerly of the New York Times, tells Salon why Occupy compelled her to leave mainstream media.  – Senator Peter King (R), who owes his career to his strong support of the militant IRA, says the Occupy movement is violent. – Newt says the dirty hippies should take a bath and get a job.  That’s original.  – Nicholas Kristof asks if the police are helping the protests with their strong arm attacks.  – Even Forbes says police are out of control.

Shall we make the Celebrity Occupier a weekly thing?  We’ll see.  But I can’t say no to Alec Baldwin.

—— Finally, who are the people police feel they have to subdue so forcefully?  This picture of an elderly Seattle woman seems poised to go down in history. She was pepper sprayed by Seattle police. I deliver all this news with a plentiful helping of snark. But there’s nothing funny about what’s going on in this picture, or in America.

About 84 year old Dorli Rainey: She’s a retired school teacher who briefly ran for the job of Seattle mayor a few years ago. She’s a long time activist who was there for the WTO talks in Seattle in 1999 and has been involved in people’s causes for much of her life. She’s committed.

Occupy developed quickly because it emerged from networks of activists formed in opposition to the Iraq War, the disruptions in Seattle, the demonstrations against neoliberal policies of the ’90s (my first time in the streets), and every other time people stood up for each other and against government and business.  You could say all of these events were Occupied.

So now, if someone says this is just a phase, you can point to Dorli Rainey and say, No. Occupy has been here for at least 84 years.