Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

Using the (not-really-)anniversary of OBL's death to clamp down on tomorrow's events?

http://occupywallst.org/article/ows-issues-solidarity-warning/

Chicago in particular is raising my eyebrows--deploying battle dressed security forces armed with nonlethal weapons ostensibly for NATO but coincidentally starting tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ScvAJG51V4

meanwhile, this has (quietly) been going incredibly well: http://oaklandlocal.com/posts/2012/04/my-visit-occupy-farm-gill-tract-albany-community-voices

meanwhile, this has (quietly) been going incredibly well: http://oaklandlocal.com/posts/2012/04/my-visit-occupy-farm-gill-tract-albany-community-voices
--Milton Parker

With any luck I'm gonna have one of their organizers on my show next week!

http://noskulemay1.tumblr.com/post/17980445709/no-school

this makes me lol cause i hear it in the tone of "NO CLAM?!?!" "no clam."

Occlampy

http://www.missionmission.org/tag/riot-on-valencia/

Beyond frustrating

#letsgetit

I am not down with this

1 arrest huh

I just... a strike = okay, yes. a march = okay, yes. smashing up locally owned eateries = uh waht. get a brain morans.

so counterproductive

http://scottrossi.tumblr.com/post/22184158717/notes-from-an-occupation-17-dolores-park-ruckus

So, rather than describe what happened (since 340958345 other blogs and news agencies will do just that), I think it is more important to point out who did this. But as I’m about to explain to you, I don’t know that I can do that. You see, I don’t know who, the people I’ll dub as the ‘ringleaders’ of the march were exactly. Nobody did. Yeah some of the aggro people we always have to deal with were there, but these guys weren’t it. You remember those asshole jock bullies in high school? Well that was who was leading the march tonight. Clean cut, athletic, commanding, gravitas not borne of charisma but of testosterone and intimidation. They were decked out in outfits typically attributed to those in the ‘black bloc’ spectrum of tactics, yet their clothes were too new, and something was just off about them. They were very combative and nearly physically violent with the livestreamers on site, and got ignorant with me, a medic, when I intervened and reminded them that I was there to fix them from police violence, not protester on protester violence. 

I am typically really bad with names, but I am great with faces. I love people. I love looking into their eyes, looking at their smiles and their body language and trying to guess at their life and stuff. I probably will forget your name the first few times I’ve met you, but I will not forget your face. Even people I pass on the street, I’ll remember you for weeks. With that said, I didn’t recognize any of these people. Their eyes were too angry, their mouths were too severe. They felt “military” if that makes sense. Something just wasn’t right about them on too many levels. I’m not one of those tin foil hat conspiracy theorists, I don’t subscribe to those theories that Queen Elizabeth’s Reptilian slave driver masters run the Fed. I’ve read up on agent provocateurs and plants and that sort of thing and I have to say that without a doubt, I believe 100% that the people that started tonight’s events in the Mission were exactly that. 

^^^

It would make sense. It would be a lot easier if you were a genuine left wing anarchist to bust up windows in the FiDi on a Sunday night than engage in nimby anti-latte drinking cultural politics in the Mission and it would make more sense.

that's true

the timing of this (so that the media gets to furrow its concerned nonpartisan brow over it all day today) and the lukewarm police response set off major agent-provocateur alarms when i read about it last night, but i didn't want to underestimate the capacity of kids to be dumb. gonna need better evidence than "they had severe mouths" but yeah, something could well be up. regardless i guess let's just bury it under cool stuff today.

the lack of arrests thing is pretty weird - the Mission station is right there, and from personal experience those cops are total assholes who wouldn't think twice about cracking skulls.

I used to think that blaming agent provacateurs required some tinfoil, like who exactly is commanding them, and why, no one is steepling fingers to defend Capitalism, etc, but I've decided that it's basic cop mentality: they're not there to discredit, they're there to ~expose~ the real badduns.

I'm leery of that explanation too - it's convenient and unproveable - but historically this tactic has totally been used by law enforcement, it's not all crazy conspiracy theories.

like if a single non agent prov hucks a trashcan, it's all the justification needed for a crackdown, "these kids are primed, if it wasn't one of us that sparked them, it would've happened anyways." that it serves to discredit a movement or w/e is almost ancillary to the idea that police gotta be policing.

good timing on 'cleveland anarchist bomb plot' too, keep the news focused on that

sorry if I'm not being clear: I believe it's a tactic! I just don't think there's an explicit reason for it other than its almost built in to the idea of the police apparatus. the powers it serves don't even need to decree that it be done; agent provocateurs are sort of a foregone conclusion, is all. hence: you don't have to believe in conspiracy theories, it's just cops bein cops

just coppin around

In Madison Square Park for the Free University. Such a nice thing, heard lectures from Andrew Ross and Frances Fox Piven. Really glad I took work off.

cute #ochi pic http://lockerz.com/s/205658903

Just a little thought on tactics/media strategy, albeit you can take this with a grain of salt as being from someone who is at best a peripheral supporter -- I thought the whole May 1 general strike publicity campaign was a bit grandiose, and bound to lead to a sort of underwhelming effect in the end. Like you're not going to get a significant mass shut-down of uh, capitalism in general without some serious organizational underpinnings. Stickers won't do it.

agree 100%, but I also think (maybe?) it did a service in (re)introducing the very idea of such a thing at such a scale occurring.

I kept getting frustrated by the campaign from a media relations perspective--"hey guys if we keep talking like this it's gonna be seen as a failure no matter how well it goes because we didn't ~smash capitalism~ in a day, perchance we ought to course correct"

I was surprised (though I suppose I shouldn't have been) that the socialists--who've basically been a nonentity for us in DC for the last 7 months--wound up near-running the march & rally we had today. Not a large march by "nation's capital" standards, decent march by district standards.

We also had 2 counterprotesters, one with an Israeli flag and the classic "communism has only killed 100 million people, let's try it again!" sign. The guy with her had a flag with an iron cross on it, and he spent most of the time he was there explaining why the historical context for his flag made him "an anti-communist, not a Nazi," and why his Jewish lady friend was totally down with his iron cross flag.

yeah and also it just seems unrealistic to imagine that people will just like answer the bat signal of striking. Mass strikes of the past had the force of very-well-organized labor behind them, i.e. unions that could call on their members to act in solidarity. I respect wanting to try a new playbook and I understand that organized labor is not what it was, but I think it would take more than a viral campaign to convince people to leave their jobs for a day.

event was v. big in nyc today, as big as the bigger rallies in ows p1 even

Marched about 4 miles today. Good stuff, annoying diversions on the Union Square-to-downtown leg. Dogs are barkin'.

Was also surprised, as always, that 20somethings know the words to "We Shall Not Be Moved."

more or less agree about strikes but the 'reasonable people who would like to give ows some advice but don't entirely support it because they have a list of problems' are kinda useless, do you know why the movement does stupid things, because all the reasonable people are busy writing blogs posts to themselves

ps morbs was interviewed for local tv news!

was out at union square myself, seemed huge and well organized

couldn't see Das Racist, tho

event was v. big in nyc today, as big as the bigger rallies in ows p1 even

― iatee, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1:57 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah heard on twitter like 6k-ish

I'd say more than that

also several Captain Americas in attendance

we had a bunch of in-uniform metro workers leading anticapitalist chants, which was kinda cool

also all four of my bus drivers nonchalantly let me on without paying today

btw, WABC ran a single 3-second shot of my sign with my head cut off

ha

that's still a lot of exposure!

Meanwhile in Seattle, local "superhero" Phoenix Jones pepper-sprayed protestors, and a few dudes broke a bunch of windows and slashed some tires, helpfully distracting from the peaceful pro-immigrant march.

wtf

almost certainly cops acting as agent provacateurs

A KING 5 News photographer covering the May Day march in downtown Seattle on Tuesday was assaulted by one of the marchers and ended up with a bloody cheek.

Richard Departee was covering the march as the participants made their way through downtown.

“I found myself in with a group (dressed in) black, kinda Gestapo-looking thugs – face masks and dark glasses – I think as soon as they saw me it was like ‘Hey get out of here, you know, scum,’ and started pushing me,” he said.

Departee said he backed off and then three or four of the people turned around and surrounded him and shoved him back.

“Then one guy took his one-inch dowel, a wooden pole with the red flag … he just took it back and popped me in the face,” said Departee.

He said he dropped his camera but then later decided to take pictures because there were about 20 people.

“The same thing happened,” said Departee. “They came swinging their poles again at me and that time I bolted.”

Departee has worked at KING TV for more than 30 years.

video here