DATELINE: 11.15.11 13:13 pm
Editor’s Note: The situation remains very fluid, so we have collated various reports.
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By Dave Lefcourt Early this AM police raided OWS & forcibly removed protesters sleeping in tents. Dozens of arrests were made. Earlier Monday police closed down the Occupy Oakland encampment arresting 33 there. What these authorities fail to understand is their actions will only galvanize protesters resolve to continue their protests which are based on ideas, problems and issues which can’t be destroyed by dismantling their encampments. Early this morning starting around 1:00 AM, police in riot gear raided Zuccotti Park in New York, home of Occupy Wall Street and forcibly removed protesters sleeping in tents. Dozens of arrests were made of those who refused to leave. Sanitation workers came and dumped belongings into trucks and cleaning crews from the owner of the park, Brookfield Properties followed using power washers. Protesters who left the area vowed to meet up later this morning in nearby Foley Square to plan their next move. Earlier on Monday police closed down the Occupy Oakland encampment saying nobody will be allowed to sleep there anymore. Some 33 protesters were arrested there. Later in the day protesters returned to Frank Ogawa Plaza, the site of the encampment and held a rally and a march. One would think the Mayors and police chiefs in the two cities were in close collaboration, keeping tabs on each other and seeing what methods and procedures their counterparts were using in order to shut down the encampments within their respective cities. In both instances, health, safety and fire hazards were the primary excuses used to justify the dismantling of the encampments. What all these authorities fail to understand, whether in Oakland, New York, earlier in Denver, Boston, Atlanta et al is their actions only serve to galvanize the protesters resolve to continue their protests. The occupy movement is committed to non-violence and is based on ideas, problems and issues which can’t be destroyed by dismantling their encampments. These tactics only make the movement stronger, gain more adherents and cast a greater light of shame on the authorities for rousting and arresting peaceful protesters. To Mayors Quan in Oakland and Bloomberg in New York (and all other mayors considering similar methods in their jurisdictions) your strong arm tactics against the occupy movement in your cities are backfiring and will have and opposite effect than the one you intend. |
By Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet
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I am too old to be a provocateur. I am just tired of watching the cops roll up the sites with no resistance at all. I come from a tradition that says “do you deserve a brick today,” not this whiney, ‘please give us a place in the park officer’ crap. I realize the younger generation today is not as radical as when I was a kid, and that means they will be much more passive than we were. Its too bad. Remember all those great riots in the 60’s, back then we knew how to fight back, and look at all the social programs that came because of it, the Great Society for one. Now the politicians just laugh.
—Gary
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Cornet Joyce wrote:
The Provocateur’s Manifesto?
Police Raid Occupy Portland& Oakland November 14th, 2011 Time for the Occupy movement to move indoors. Or at least to ground that the authorities will have trouble sweeping. As it is occupying parks make for easy targets. The police can isolate and surround easily. There have been no battles to defend the territory, like the famous “Battle of Tompkins Square Park or People’s Park. But these are symbolic occupations by people without vested interests in the turf they are occupying. The real militants have been submerged in the general willingness to go along with whatever the authorities say or do. Those battles of the past were people defending their turf with real militancy and some idea how to fight back. Where are the Genoa style catapults? The Seattle militancy, or anything close to the Italian or Greek willingness to do battle with the cops?
The Occupy movement needs to get serious and be willing to defend turf, otherwise, the occupations are no more than waves on the beach. Now if there was a willingness to come back every time, like a wave on the beach, eventually you will wear the opposition down.
Whatever tactic, it seems that if this Occupy movement is to be more than a minor irritation on the surface of the corporate world, it needs to get more militant. Remember the blood on the draft board files? Blocking war train tracks? Blockading highways? Rethink and prepare to act. Remember the militancy of only a decade ago? This may not be the time for a Days of Rage type action. Certainly that was a tactical failure. But there are actions that can be done nonviolently that are certainly more effective. Disruption of business as usual is an important tactic. Looking for a redress of grievances, sometimes means you have to take a stick and hit the donkey on its head, just to get its attention.
LA Daily News Police move in on Portland park; protesters remain
By TERRENCE PETTY and JONATHAN J. COOPER
Associated Press Posted: 11/14/2011 01:36:39 AM PST Updated: 11/14/2011 01:36:39 AM PST PORTLAND, Ore.
In a tense escalation of the Occupy Portland protest, police in riot gear Sunday surrounded demonstrators in a downtown park area after hundreds of people defied the mayor’s order to leave the park by midnight. By early afternoon, officers had mostly surrounded the camp where the protesters were holding a “general assembly” meeting to discuss their next moves following the eviction order. Some officers used nightsticks to push people away from the encampment and used loudspeakers to warn that anyone who resisted risked arrest and “may also be subject to chemical agents and impact weapons.” Demonstrators chanted “we are a peaceful protest.”
Police could be seen carrying at least one protester away from the park. Another man was taken away on a stretcher; he was alert and talking to paramedics, and raised a peace sign to fellow protesters, who responded with cheers. There was no immediate word on arrests. “We were talking about what we were going to do and then they just started hitting people. Seems like a waste of resources to me,” protester Mike Swain, 27, told The Associated Press.
In other cities over the weekend:
— In Salt Lake City, police arrested 19 people Saturday when protesters refused to leave a park a day after a man as found dead inside his tent at the encampment. The arrests came after police moved into the park early in the evening where protesters had been ordered to leave by the end of the day. About 150 people had been living in the camp there for weeks.
— In Albany, N.Y., police arrested 24 Occupy Albany protesters after they defied an 11 p.m. curfew in a state-owned park. State police officials hauled away the protesters after warning them with megaphones that they were breaking the law in Lafayette Park. They were charged with trespassing.
— In Denver, authorities forced protesters to leave a downtown encampment and arrested four people for interfering with officers who removed illegally pitched tents, said police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
— In San Francisco, violence marked the protest Saturday where police said two demonstrators attacked two police officers in separate incidents during a march. Police spokesman Carlos Manfredi said a protester slashed an officer’s hand with a pen knife while another protester shoved an officer, causing facial cuts. He said neither officer was seriously hurt, and the assailants couldn’t be located. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_19331407?source=rss
From New York Times
Police Raid Occupy Oakland Camp
By MALIA WOLLAN, OAKLAND, Calif. — Hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided the Occupy Oakland encampment downtown on Monday morning, making arrests and flattening tents after city officials had issued several warnings for protesters to abandon the camp in the wake of a fatal shooting near the camp last week. The early-morning raid was the second on the encampment, one of hundreds of tent cities inspired by Occupy Wall Street that have sprung up around the country. When the police arrived at the encampment, at Frank Ogawa Plaza, in the predawn darkness, they set up metal barricades between the camp and a crowd of protesters marching in a nearby intersection. Then they moved into the plaza, arresting 32 people as police helicopters with spotlights circled overhead. Despite increasing tensions between the city and the campers, there were no injuries on Monday. By midmorning, there were only about two dozen protesters left in the streets around the plaza. City workers, in white coveralls, worked to clear the plaza of tents, tarps and other belongings. At a news conference, Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland said that dismantling the encampment was necessary to protect protesters, citizens and nearby businesses. “We had to bring the camp to an end before more people were hurt,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/us/police-raid-occupy-oakland-camp.html?src=mv&ref=us
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From Copwatch
US: Letter from Inside the Black Bloc
by Mary Black, AlterNet July 25th, 2001
(Original) Editor’s Note: The following story was sent to us anonymously (Mary Black is a pseudonym) two days after a violent protester was killed in Genoa, Italy. While we may not share the author’s opinion about Black Bloc tactics, it is a perspective that hasn’t been fully covered, even in the progressive media, and as such deserves publication.
I’m running as fast as my asthmatic lungs will allow in the midst of what can only be called a mob. My friend from back home and I hold hands so that we won’t loose each other, but I’m holding him back a little. He’s in much better shape than I am and he’d probably be out of range of the tear gas by now if it wasn’t for me. A phalanx of riot cops is getting closer and I let go of my friend’s hand, so that at least one of us can get away. He darts ahead of me onto a side street. I’m small, and now I’m by myself, so I’m not attracting much attention from the cops. I raise my hands in the air to show that I’m giving in, and let the cops push me in the direction that they are pushing all of us — conventional protester and black clad rioter alike — down a blocked side street. Probably there is no way out of this alley; it’s a trap, but the tear gas is too thick at this point for me to resist. I’m fumbling for my gas mask, but I’m going where I’m being told to go.
I’m aware that some folks I’ve been marching with are being picked out of the crowd and thrown to the ground. Folks are trying to pull people out of the hands of the cops. One guy gets yanked back from the police line and runs; he gets away, but the friend I came here with is tackled. The last time I see him that day he’s face down on the cement, two big undercover cops straddling him. Like most of the folks around me, I run. We’re retreating, but only as much as we have to. And in a few minutes we’ll find our group again and advance back toward the area that the cops have declared off limits to all but a small group of extremely wealthy, extremely powerful, mostly white, mostly men.
If words like “advance” sound militaristic in tone, that’s probably because I’m a part of a group that at least appears paramilitary. Our clothes are uniform issue and intentionally menacing: black bandanas, ragged black army surplus pants, black hooded sweatshirts (with optional red and black flag or slogan-covered patches) and shiny black boots (or for the vegans in the crowd, battered black converse). I’m part of a loosely affiliated international group of individuals known as the Black Bloc. We don’t have a party platform, and you don’t have to sign anything or go to any meetings to join us. We show up at all kinds of demonstrations, from actions to free Mumia Abu Jamal, to protests against the sanctions in Iraq, and at just about every meeting of international financial and political organizations from the WTO to the G8. Although most anarchists would never wear black bandanas over their faces or break windows at McDonalds, almost all of us are anarchists. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=47
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From Anarchist News.ORG
Anti-Globalization and “Diversity of Tactics“
By Chris Hurl worker – Sat, 2005-04-23 12:33 INTRODUCTION
The recent wave of protests that have swept across the world under the banner of “anti-globalization” have recaptured the left’s imagination, shattering the illusions of inevitability cast by neo-liberal magicians. The images and slogans from Seattle, Québec City, Prague, and Genoa have become an important legacy, a fresh inspiration to replace the fading images of Weathermen in football helmets. The “new activism,” as exemplified in the anti-globalization movement, appears as a paradigm shift away from the politics of stale social democratic parties and small Marxist-Leninist sects awaiting their turn to play vanguard. In contrast to the homogenizing impulse of global capitalism, resistance appears irreducibly plural. While the anti-globalization movement is often celebrated for its apparent diversity, it often remains unclear how this diversity manifests itself in practice.
The ambiguous boundaries of the movement serve to obscure its specific social relationships. Insofar as “diversity” is treated as a thing residing beyond specific social relationships, it is fetishized. In the fragmented and episodic movement of “anti-globalization,” diversity is often treated as universal, serving to supplant the organization of specific social practices. I will explore how a “diversity of tactics” emerged as a viable tactical orientation within this new anti-capitalist movement and eventually turned against itself, when the conditions for such diversity no longer existed.
The expression of this “diversity” in the anti-globalization movement has been fundamentally tied to its strategic and tactical orientation. Between the years of 1998 and 2001, hundreds of thousands of people converged on high profile meetings of the ruling elite to protest their neo-liberal program of “free trade” and structural adjustment. Large militant actions exploded from city to city, acronym to acronym, the G8 in Birmingham, the WTO in Seattle, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, the FTAA in Québec City. http://www.anarchistnews.org/?q=node/3
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