Close Reading 6

Though we as a nation may not support the movement, we can easily agree on how horrifying the numerous injuries and assaults that have resulted from the police brutality. 

The blogger behind Occupy Allstreets keys into our intuition that humans hurting other humans is wrong in this article about a woman stripped down into her underwear and helplessly left in the middle of the street. 

He uses candid imagery to depict how malicious these cops are, and how the woman was "violently stripped of her protest costume and disgarded on the ground in her bra and panties." Even after the cops had destroyed her costume, "The remaining severed costume was violently torn from her body while the protester herself was disgarded, semi-naked and crying on the ground." From his imagery, we can truly see how powerless the woman is and how the police victimize her to utter humiliation. 

His detail further heightens the imagery, as he talks about how the police mutilated her costume. He mentions that "a knife was requested and used by MCC Officers as the Protest Costume was cut from her body," infuriating us as we can picture the police pick up that knife and ruthlessly stabbing the costume. He finishes nothing that "NO EFFORT was made to assess her health," further infuriating us. 

The language is extremely dry, in that the blogger simply puts the situation out there as it was. He adds none of his own personal opinions, allowing us to decipher our own opinions from what has been presented. Readers often do not like opinionated papers that are suggesting their own sentiments are wrong, and this way the blogger appeals to a broader range of people rather than a targeted group of readers.