This is What A Police State Looks Like
Required reading: Church Committee Reports
"Liberty Plaza" (Credit: AP/Seth Wenig)
[Update: 11/18/11 – Despicable. The New York Times reports that police are spying on churches. Caught red handed, police spokesperson denies that and claims cops were taking a piss. end update]
The police crackdowns across the country on the Occupy Movement are being directed and coordinated by Homeland Security:
“Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict “Occupy” protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night’s move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.
Read full story here:
[Update:Â here’s a good explanation of why this repression is happening now.
Here’s a great piece on the repressive police tactics and media blackout
(credit: Margulies)
Police Plaza
Required reading:Â Church Committee Reports
Thanks Bill. Yes, it does have that feel. The OWS folks in NYCity were outflanked on field tactics yesterday, and even if they had a faster and larger rapid response force ready to go at five minutes notice, the NYPD seemed to have an answer by completely blocking off the area – and that was an extensive operation. And of course, 1:00 AM was the right time to mount it, not 11:00 pm or 6:00 am when it would have been easier to get reinforcements there.
In military terms, this was a Nathan Beford Forrest example: tactical advantage to whoever gets there “firstist with the mostest.” It would have taken 5,000 protestors willing to be physically hauled off to have deterred it…how that many could have been summoned quickly…probably impossible without a tip-off, and we know who does the better job of infiltration, don’t we.
But if any of your readers think Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD are all the “right stuff” upon this operation, they ought to visit Pam Martens October piece on the joint Wall Street- NYPD and other agencies camera surveillance operation for the whole of the City, mid-town on South, with the private sector folks – Wall ST. and others, sitting right at he publicly funded intelligence center – destroying all the proper legal boundaries between law enforcement and surveillance and who has access and who can do what with the info…I still haven’t seen a rebuttal to her accusations….http://www.alternet.org/story/152875/wall_street_firms_spy_on_protesters_in_tax-funded_center?akid=7780.204700.0-BY1D&rd=1&t=1
@Bill Neil
Bill – you are right, it would have taken a massive presence to block the poise raid.
I saw a Youtube recently (forgot the city, maybe Portland?) where protesters pushed cops back and successful held space. That had massed a wall of people and simply slowly moved the cops out.
When I was in Pittsburgh at G20 a few years back, the cops’ tactics scared the shit out of me. They lined up across the street, sometime 2-3 cops deep, in full riot gear.
As they slowly advanced in these weird half step , they tapped their plexiglass shields in unison. It was like something out of rome or Nazi Germany – terryifying actually.
And sometimes they were backed up by this sonic device, that emitted ear splitting high pitched sound!
I saw exactly the same tactics deployed in a Toronto G20 protest.
I am not surprised that there is so little media coverage of the story I linked to out of Minnesota. That reporter documented Homeland security coordination of a national crackdown.
That goes way beyond Nixon and Cointlepro!!!!
But I am surprised that it seems to be getting little traction in internet
@Bill Neil
and thanks for that link to the Wall Street spy center – I’m sure that’s where lots of intel is coming from:
http://www.alternet.org/story/152875/wall_street_firms_spy_on_protesters_in_tax-funded_center?akid=7780.204700.0-BY1D&rd=1&t=1
Bill, I posted this comment under today’s editorial about the Park Eviction at Bloomberg News, which wants the protestors to enter a new phase, towards more conventional politics and tactics:
“The protestors were caught tactically off guard by the better planning of the Police Department, and Mayor Bloomberg, who learned from their clumsy first attempt to close the park down. Most of the other arguments are bogus, esp. the health and safety ones, because any such urban encampment will be subject to the overall trials and tribulations of urban America: some violence, the homeless, some drugs, some sexual abuse – this is certainly a societal failure of 20th century America’s political economy, not the fault of the OWS managment of the encampment.
Such confrontations with the ruling authorities were inevitable, so we should soon see OWS’s reaction and the next phase. I’ve read the “Declaration” carefully, with its 23 or so complaints, and they could easily be transalted into “what we want.” But for the sake of argument, let’s say, as I have urged, that the OWS folks make as their #1 demand the right to a job, the first right in FDR’s Second Bill of Rights from 1944. Is the Mayor, or any of the editorial writers at this publication, or any of the leaders of the two parties willing to meet that demand, other than say “wait for the private sector” to stop feeling “uncertain.” So don’t kid yourselves, you have no intention nor do your economic institutions have the ability under the dominant ideas, of meeting such a basic human right, whether OWS issues it, or FDR!!”
tomorrow should prove interesting…
@chris_from_trenton
Thanks Chris – I agree.
So I’ll be on the NJ Transit 3:54 am out of Hamilton to witness.