Occupy Discussion

[Ellienor]

Vor, sorry for being lazy. Here's where I read it.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlat ... spray.html

My brother works for the Sacramento Bee, so I trust them as a source. (He was laid off due to lack of seniority since they've reduced the newsroom in half since he was hired, but rehired again recently as a contract worker).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks Ellie, but that article, like the one that I linked to, indicates that she did NOT order the police to clear them out, but only to dismantle the equipment. That's a very different thing than what the officers did.

[anthriel]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... tion-.html

So we're not even sure if this guy was acting on orders or not, but someone is publishing his private information and writing “expect our wrath” and “we are going to make you squeal”?

Nice.

[River]

Yeah, that's not helpful. But has Anonymous ever been helpful?

[axordil]

Last I checked, there's a difference between someone's contact information and "private information." Generally, address and land line numbers are matters of public record; cell phones and email addresses are not officially public but can be easily obtained through perfectly legal means.

I also find it unhelpful to suggest an extralegal campaign of action against an individual while there are still legal remedies to be taken.

[anthriel]

Last I checked, there's a difference between someone's contact information and "private information." Generally, address and land line numbers are matters of public record; cell phones and email addresses are not officially public but can be easily obtained through perfectly legal means.

True enough, I need to be more accurate when I write on this board. But how many people would have gone to the trouble to tease out all that information on their own? This "one stop shopping" seems to be provided by Anonymous to make it easier for Lt. Pike to "feel the wrath" and "squeal". The whole retribution feel of this makes me queasy.

a computer-altered voice publicizes the home address, home telephone and cellphone numbers and email address belonging to Lt. John Pike.

Classic cowardice. Computer altered voice, so they can't be held accountable for their actions, while suggesting that Lt. Pike be held personally accountable for his.

[Primula Baggins]

That's despicable. If any harm comes to him, it's criminal. IMO.

[Lalaith]

I think this op-ed piece says it pretty well with regards to these kinds of things in general (not to the specific pepper spray incident):

http://blog.thenewstribune.com/opinion/ ... v.facebook


And taking steps to protect ourselves at home is something most people don't ever think about. Our number is unlisted. Freddy doesn't like to bring a marked cruiser home. We don't have FOP badges on our cars, not even a thin blue line emblem (which most people wouldn't quite get). Firefighters get to brag; police officers tend to try to hide. (Who gets mad at firefighters? But plenty of people have issues with the police because they don't like being held accountable when they break the law.)

Despite what we try to do to avoid it, there's no reason in the world why some ticked off crazy person couldn't follow Freddy home and do us harm.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Do I really need to share video clips of campus police striking a young woman in the lower abdomen with a full bodied, two handed thrust with a night stick? Or the 84 year old woman sprayed in the face with pepper spray? Or the veteran standing alone against a line of police, falling back but still talking until he was felled with massed blows that ruptured his spleen? Or the veteran felled by a tear gas cylinder to the head and when a group of people gathered to help him a stun grenade was lobbed by the police into their midst? Or the young woman trying to leave when police advanced calling out she was pregnant and gettin g a kick to the stomach and pepper sprayed. She lost the child. Or the retired police chief in full uniform cuffed? Or the Supreme Court official observer roughed up as she attempted to stop an uninvolved black woman being beaten?..........................

[axordil]

Lali--

I can't agree with the editorial's fundamental underlying assumption, which is that doing virtuous thing A means one cannot be held accountable for doing heinous thing B.

That's not how it works.

Joe Paterno's decades of trying to "do the right thing" went straight down the toilet the moment he couldn't do it when it most mattered. The Lt. with the pepper spray's record of serving and protecting (granting the benefit of the doubt here) was erased the moment he decided to use a chemical agent on nonviolent protestors. We are only as good as the next really, really bad decision we make.

The editorial seems to imply that protests which try to attract attention are, by their nature, wrong, which is another way of saying only ineffective protests should be allowed, a la the Free Speech Zone, a lovely example of Orwellian doublespeak.

Protests require an audience to be effective, and to some extent, confrontation. They do NOT, despite the lone floating quotation in the editorial, require violence. Confrontation and violence are not the same thing, not if authorities are smart.

[SirDennis]

Like most things, it's a question of context. When police lose it on an unarmed, non-violent protester, or worse a stander by, it is always an illegal act in a free and democratic society. Police know this, regardless of what they were "ordered" to do. (The first act of Ontario's last Conservative government was to dispatch a tactical police force to break up an Aboriginal occupation. The result was one unarmed protester dead by a sharp shooter who was in no immediate danger himself and Ontario landing on Amnesty International's list of Human Rights Abusers. (It was all down hill from there btw.))

Generally police, and especially private security types, are not worried about the legality of the force they use in such instances [when they are told to do "whatever it takes" to disperse a crowd]. As with any crime it is a matter for the courts, and they can always claim they were told to do what they did. (Remembering that the blame for the order usually reverts to the offender seems a blind spot for many.) But the immediate effect, the effect those who order them to do this or that are going for, is to disuade joiners.

It is not simply a question of whether an individual's rights were taken away, but that the intent is to deprive a whole lot of other people of their freedom to assemble and voice their displeasure without fear of reprisal.

Incidentally, the other day some protesters were killed in Cairo by the interim military government that has taken a shine to being in charge.

Also, for the record, I support police officers, soldiers and their families. It is horrible when they are misused by higher ups for any reason. I have found at various protests and actions that police were quite agreeable. The same cannot be said for private security forces.

And to River, I agree with your assessment of that article. I've been looking into the issue informally for a couple weeks and will (hopefully) respond further once I've worked out a few things for myself.

[River]

I'm not sure everyone here appreciates Rachel Maddow (or pundits in general) but there's something very powerful in this segment:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/2 ... ?ref=media

All of it is food for thought, but the meat is in the last 4 minutes or so when the retired cop comes on (the one who got arrested as it turns out, and he says he deserved to be arrested). He makes a point that force will be responded to with force and though it should not be excessive force, the risk is there. He says that standing around shouting at the cops isn't particularily useful. He suggests that, if you want to make an impact, just talk about yourself and he says that, though the cops are trained to act like they aren't listening, they are.

[Lalaith]

Police are also getting hurt in these protests; protestors are getting assaulted by their fellow protestors. I've been looking around for some solid statistics, but I haven't found one source, yet, that has compiled them all. What I'm finding are individual reports from all over the nation.

But I'm not going to change anyone's mind, nor am I really trying to. I'm sure excessive force has been used in some cases. I'm also sure that protestors have broken laws (engaging in violence, sexual assaults, and drug use) and officers have been injured, too.

I tend to disagree with Rachel Maddow, River, though she raises an interesting point. I think, if anything, nonlethal means like pepper spray and tasers have reduced other nonlethal uses of force such as baton strikes, fist fighting, and kicking. Why is that better? Honestly? It increases officer safety, for one thing. For another thing, they have less permanent effects on the people they're being used on. She is right that officers wouldn't have opened fire on the protestors, but they would still have tried to get the protestors to obey the law.

[axordil]

I think there's been a reduction in criminal apprehension uses of physical force due to things like tasers and pepper spray, and the threshold for the gun coming out is likely higher. This is good for all concerned.

I don't think there's been a corresponding reduction in classic crowd control measures: tear gas canisters and baton/shield charges. Tasers are single target and pepper spray only works well on targets that are close. Especially ones that aren't, you know, fighting back.

But the underlying issue remains: why do laws limiting the First Amendment right to peacefully assemble exist? Why do they require force to enforce?

[SirDennis]

but they would still have tried to get the protestors to obey the law

What is missing from your analysis is what laws exactly the protesters are breaking? By and large the worst they have done is to disobey police -- though mostly what I have seen is they are obeying the police regardless of how arbitrary some of their demands are.

Yes in some isolated cases some have attacked police, done drugs, assaulted each other... but I submit that in any similar population those things would be going on anyway. Isolated cases aside, it is still true that police are not a law unto themselves. There is a legal limit to what they can tell you to do.

When they are deployed with nonlethal weapons with orders to clear away protesters they are acting contrary to civil rights. Non-lethal weapons are still weapons and like all weapons are sometimes lethal regardless of design. When they are used to inflict pain without provocation, or not in self-defense, it is a form of tyranny. I believe, even now, that very few police officers signed up to be used by the state in that way.

Yes local authorities could come up with by-laws that snare the protesters on technicalities. Or they could even trot out some laws from the days of slavery or before women could vote that are still on the books for some reason. They might even invoke the Patriot Act and claim that the protesters are hostile to America. But in such cases, in a free society, passive resistance is an acceptable response.

edit: cross posted with ax

[Voronwë the Faithful]

but they would still have tried to get the protestors to obey the law

What is missing from your analysis is what laws exactly the protesters are breaking?

In most cases, the reason why the protests are being broken up is because they are deemed to be a public nuisance because of health concerns involving sanitation, in addition to drug use and violence. Which are all viable concerns. There are also cases where protesters are trespassing on private property.

[Erunáme]

I'm curious to hear what some of you think about these memes floating around:



In regards to tea party protests not being broken up could be the plain and simple fact that they had a permit and weren't camping out some place for weeks. But the gun issue... how some people can think bringing guns to a protest, pretty much threatening the president, etc is okay, yes the Occupy movement is so dangerous... I just don't get it.

[SirDennis]

but they would still have tried to get the protestors to obey the law

What is missing from your analysis is what laws exactly the protesters are breaking?

In most cases, the reason why the protests are being broken up is because they are deemed to be a public nuisance because of health concerns involving sanitation, in addition to drug use and violence. Which are all viable concerns. There are also cases where protesters are trespassing on private property.

Yes, and here in Canada as winter draws closer, there is concern for their safety being expressed as well (in Montreal for instance).

The tent cities aren't exactly the shanty towns and slums of Rio, but they do mirror such; many at the camps are homeless or, lacking jobs, close to it. Are they to just crawl back under the rocks from which they came? Yes in one sense they are choosing to live in a tent city. But on the other for many at OWS it is a question of if not here, where?

And what is it about seeing shanty towns in NA cities that bothers us to the extent police are sent in relatively quickly?

When the Olympics are coming to town, slums, shanty towns, and random homeless are swept away to make room for stadiums that will be used for a season then fall into disuse. We are used to seeing this, over and over and over. Why should OWS be any different? We are used to seeing police being used to do the dirty work lest they join the ranks of the unemployed and get pepper sprayed themselves. Yet every four years we stand and cheer.

As you know Voronwë, part of the issue, especially in New York, is there is almost no space that isn't private. Even the few public spaces that remain can be deemed private as need dictates.

As I implied last time the issue of sanitation came up, shelter, a roof and walls, is not the issue. But access to water, sewer, and now heat, are necessities. Wherever these law breakers being dispersed end up, do you think they will be driven from there as well if there is no water, sewer, or heat?

ps I get that Lalith's partner/husband is in law enforcement. It bothers me that she must worry, and that his job impacts her family in profound ways. My son is studying to join the police and my daughter has been to police leadership camp. My sister is in the military and her husband was military police for a spell. I am not trying to suggest that police are the problem here.

[Lalaith]

but they would still have tried to get the protestors to obey the law

What is missing from your analysis is what laws exactly the protesters are breaking? By and large the worst they have done is to disobey police -- though mostly what I have seen is they are obeying the police regardless of how arbitrary some of their demands are.

Yes in some isolated cases some have attacked police, done drugs, assaulted each other... but I submit that in any similar population those things would be going on anyway. Isolated cases aside, it is still true that police are not a law unto themselves. There is a legal limit to what they can tell you to do.

Voronwë already answered this, but I'll say it again. Some protestors are trespassing due to the fact that they're on private property or blocking private property. Some are obstructing others from going about their business. Some are blocking roadways or causing hazards with public transportation. Some are participating in disorderly conduct, public indecency, drug use, rape, sexual assaults, murder, simple assaults, etc. People have lost their jobs because others cannot get to their place of business. Yes, the protestors have more rights if they're on public property than if they're on private property, but there are still laws that have to be obeyed. Some of the laws that need to be obeyed by a group have to do with not violating the rights of individuals to go about their business.

I suspect, but I can't find any hard statistics, that the numbers of police officers injured would not constitute "isolated cases" any more than others might claim that injured protestors constitute "isolated cases." In fact, in one article on CNN, there was a mention of 1 or 2 protestors injured somehow (possibly not even by the police), while there were at least 7 officers that were injured in the same day of protests.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-17/us/u ... s?_s=PM:US


Eru, I don't think there's any big conspiracy here about letting the Tea Party protestors get away with something. Like you said, it's more likely that they followed the rules of whichever city they were in and didn't have enough numbers to be a problem of any kind. And I have no doubt that if the Secret Service thought there was a genuine threat to the president those people would've been taken down in a heartbeat. They do not screw around with that kind of thing.

I should clarify that I have some sympathy with the Occupy protestors. (I'd probably have more if I could get a clear message of what their protest is all about.) I do think corporate greed is out of control, and I greatly dislike the widening gap between rich and poor. I'm all for social justice and equality. I just hope the protestors haven't lost sight of that as these things have a tendency to take on a life of their own, often growing through a group mentality to "be a part of something big" without keeping focused on what got them started in the first place. (IMO, this is when you start picking up troublemakers.)

[Primula Baggins]

Lali, I really appreciate your posts on these issues. You bring an important perspective in a calm way that encourages discussion and understanding, even where people may disagree.