A video posted Monday at Seattle Weekly shows an Occupy Seattle protester defecating on a public sidewalk. As the video indicates, the protester could have used a portable toilet that was nearby, but chose not to.
Curtis Cartier writes at the Seattle Weekly:
Today's Comment of the Day winner shares a video that we sort of wish didn't exist. It's not so much we wish the video didn't exist as the thing that happens in it didn't exist.
On Friday, Cartier wrote:
If you believe KING 5's mainly-one-sided report from last night, then the Occupy Seattle camp at Seattle Central Community College has devolved into a Satanic bacchanal of intravenous drug use and open defecation. Now it seems that the college and the Attorney General are teaming up to put the kibosh on the camp.
In late October, Seattle Central Community College gave permission for the protesters to camp out, but now want the protesters gone, citing health and safety concerns.
"We're finding needles, hypodermic needles, in our child care center area," said SCCC spokeswoman Judy Kitzman.
According to Capitol Hill Seattle, "the school says it is working with the Washington Attorney General's office to boot the Occupiers from Broadway and Pine."
The blog post adds:
Occupy took up residence at Pine and Broadway at the end of October and many organizers have done their best to keep the camp functioning and maintain a "good neighbor" set of rules. But introducing a settlement of 60-some tents into a constricted space means constant challenges for anybody trying to be a good neighbor. And incidents involving activities that are clearly not neighborly at also occur, of course. Some are unsafe. Some are unsanitary. Some, like the video sent to CHS of a man leaving the camp and defecating on the sidewalk nearby, are just gross. (Yes, it's not the first time somebody has taken a crap on Broadway.)
Public defecation is not isolated to the Seattle protest.
A photo showed one Occupy Wall Street protester using a police car as a public toilet in New York, and Occupy Eureka protesters were accused of defecating on a US Bank branch in Eureka, CA.
Business owners near New York's Zuccotti Park have repeatedly complained of finding human excrement on doorsteps.
"Of course, one should keep in mind that if all the poops that have been taken on Seattle streets were video taped, it would probably make enough footage for a several-weeks-long film festival," Cartier concludes.
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