Re: Occupy America I think what a lot of of mayors/lawmakers/etc fail to understand is that the movement is a pure "throw your bodies on the gears" moment. These protestors aren't interested in showing up from 9-5 and hoping a subcommittee will pass a nonbinding resolution to study the issue. They regard the system as so broken that it has fundamentally undermined the legitimacy of the authority of the system. They no longer see themselves as part of a social contract, because they regard the contract as broken, and they fully intend to grind the system to a halt as much as they possibly can to force a new contract.
Re: Occupy America Can we get a poll up? I knew we've been fucked for a while, but I think it would interesting to see the numerical breakout of how people feel about this occupy movement.
Re: Occupy America "Distracting us from the mission to occupy Charter's pants" Who is Charter? I hope she is hot.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/11/84-year-old-woman-becomes-pepper-sprayed-face-occupy-seattle/45035/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national ... tle/45035/</a> It ain't just Bloomberg. Fuck you, Grannie. Seriously, that picture is horrendous. Why the fuck would a police officer do that?
I think these raids will end up throwing away the best card the higher ups had in dealing with this, that is, people will eventually get bored and go home. Honestly, how long could they sit there watching nothing happen? Eventually they would have to get up and do something else. Now the anger is rekindled and all sorts of images can be used as rallying cry. I don't mean to suggest that I don't like what the protesters are doing, though I do thing they are a bit misguided. There are plenty of reasons to be annoyed with certain groups of people for their role in the recession, but I think they shouldn't be protesting Wall Street. They should be protesting the Fed.
There have been several articles about the militarization of police recently. Here's one from 2007 to a House subcommittee on crime: <a class="postlink" href="http://reason.com/archives/2007/07/02/our-militarized-police-departm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://reason.com/archives/2007/07/02/o ... ce-departm</a> My question is this: how do the police officers justify this kind of action? How is this upholding the peace? I can't quite wrap my head around people who are sworn to protect and defend using this kind of brutality against unarmed civilians. It seems like the police response is the exact same if you are trying to arrest AK wielding meth-heads or teachers protesting a pay cut.
Think about it, a large chunk of them are unemployed recent college grads living at home. They can either sit at home by themselves/with parents or be in NYC with a bunch of other young, unemployed, like-minded people in a pre-concert type environment. I'm not even saying that to be critical, if those were my options I'd be at the protests.
Militarizing our police departments IS a serious problem. It started back in the early 80's with Reagan and his deputies freeing up money for heavier weapons than revolvers for Police Departments. The Depts. which suddenly had oodles of money, outfitted themselves with SWAT teams and heavy armor and assault rifles and snipers. And much like that old adage about how having a hammer makes all your problems seem like nails... If the police departments stopped spending money on their SWAT teams, they would lose the money outright. So they started using SWAT teams for minor police actions. All too often the team will kick down Grandpa's door and gun him down. And then they find out that it was a bad tip by a drugged up informant, or they were accidentally on the wrong side of the street. All of which could have been solved by sending a single uniformed officer to knock on the door. All that being said... What is happening to these protesters is NOT the result of the militarization of police forces. There is no calm, peaceful way to deal with piles of dirty ingrates who refuse to follow lawful orders and refuse to act peacefully. If you send Sergeant Joe Smith to the camp outs by himself and have him forcefully tell these protesters in his best mean voice that they need to leave, they would laugh in his face.
Spot fucking on. I think at some level the protesters want to push the police into resorting to the tactics they have so that they can point out the horror of an old lady getting caught in the mess or any of the assorted "terrible" acts.
Say what you will about the source, but this is an interesting article comparing the success in ousting Occupy St Louis against the failure of the other police actions. Worth reading.
I hear more and more protestors referencing Egypt and Arab Spring in their protests. Give me a fucking break. America's economy is far from fair, but in a comparison to living in a third world dictatorship, you are in the elite minority. Fuck you for trivializing their cause. I respect your overall message, but your planning and execution are shit and may possibly reflect your work ethic and the predicament you're in.
I don't know, man. I've seen far too many images of people being beaten while sitting, standing non-violently trying to hold their ground, pepper sprayed while standing in a closed-in pen, police shooting rubber bullets and tear gas into a crowd standing passively still, etc., to believe that the police are "doing what they have to do" to make people follow the law. If you want to arrest a non-violent protester, pick him/her up and carry them to the van. I haven't seen a single image of a protester actually fighting back - I'm sure it's happening, but the disparity is pretty overwhelming. There's just far too much violence coming from those charged with upholding the law against people who are NOT staging a protest that includes any violence at all.
St Louis vs Oakland - I'm sure there are protesters who want this shit to escalate. Who want violent confrontation and direct action and all the news that it brings. I'm pretty sure those aren't the ones who've been shot in the face with 'non lethal crowd control devices'.
There are always those types of shit disturbers in practically ANY protest that want to make "The Man" look like a monster. They act like pussy soccer players that go down in a hail of pain and crying over the slightest brush with security, all for the show of onlookers (and the cameras). The classic trick is the "Knocked Out Dude" who pretends to be out cold as if to show he got his lights put out by a baton as his friends who are in on it shoulder him back to safe grounds (and to dissolve into the crowd). However, you only need EYES to see what shit is wrong and what isn't. For instance, a five-foot-fuckall Asian girl that's just standing there does not deserve to be speared in the torso by a nightstick. Pretty much anybody on this board can't account how fucking much that hurts, I'll take red pepper spray as an alternative any day of the week thank you: Isn't Berekeley one of those "Do what you want" schools?
Jesus Christ. Gassing people who are trying to give medical aid to the wounded (0:43)? Clever tactics on a hostile battlefield, highly disturbing against your own civilian populace.
It just begs the question, what do you want the police to do when people refuse to respond to lawful orders? Would it even be plausible to mass arrest the entire crowd? And from the footage Ive seen though few protesters have resorted to violence they have used the crowd mentality to create a super charged atmosphere where the cops become keyed up and on edge and eventually either make poor decisions or are forced to resort to crowd dispersal methods that are non lethal but do create huge headlines when accidents happen.
Guy doesn't give the movement that much credit for tenacity. I agree that was a brilliant strategy that worked out well. Having listened to different podcast on the subject it seems like OWS' goal is to outsmart the police tactics. OWS' tactics evolve real time at these events with social media. How long do you think double fakes and late hour police sit ins would work? Im not advocating police beat downs at all either. I'd much rather see crowds dispersed like described in the article, but it's no guarantee it'll work every time as situations and circumstances will vary.