Feds Helped Coordinate Occupy X Crackdowns 803
Lawrence_Bird writes "The Feds helped break up the Occupy protests by providing advice and assistance from the FBI and DHS. From the article: 'Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said on Monday that her city and others across the country coordinated their crackdowns of Occupy Wall Street camps. Rick Ellis, a Minneapolis-based journalist for Examiner.com, reports that these cities also had the help of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation." In related conspiracy news, apcullen wrote in with a story by Time Magazine guest columnist Naomi Wolf who claims: "Instead of imminent safety issues, the timing of the crackdown was far more likely to do with the fact that the Occupy movement was planning something media-savvy at last: a 'carnival' on Wall Street on Thursday in which protesters would telegenically tell their individual stories of hardship, job loss and disenfranchisement. It is that event that posed a 'safety risk' — to the efforts of Wall Street and the Bloomberg administration to manage the narrative."
New boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Suprised they went on as long as they did (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you really think you could threaten the powers-that-be and not have them turn the full force of the government they control on you at some point? Did you really think that just because they supported protests in the Middle East that they would tolerate them HERE against THEMSELVES? Come on.
Re:New boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, I'm sure he'll be giving us a fresh new round of bullshit promises in the Fall when he needs us to vote for him again.
Re:Occupy... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't understand a thing about this protest do you?
I think you can blame the protesters for that
Re:This begs an interesting question... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? How is it even possible for a small group like that to be "threatening the economy"? No, don't answer that. Real terrorists might read your answer and use it against America.
How could crime have "ramped up" when there were so many cops standing around watching them?
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:4, Insightful)
They have disrupted wall street
They are gaining support, and crime ins't 'tamping up'. That's hyperbole generated by the media and repeated by people who take what the media says at face value.
When adjusts for the increase in population, crime is the same or lower.
No, they didn't.
Re:How is that possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask the folks in Oakland [chron.com]. Starting a bonfire in the middle of a street is not exactly brilliant, and neither was the vandalism.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
I've never seen so much negative press directed at a group of Americans exercising their first amendment rights. OWS clearly scares a lot of people. Even the Westboro Baptist Church doesn't generate this kind of negative publicity.
Re:Mayor Quan Denies This (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they just all did it at the same time (including Toronto). It was just a big coincidence, like telco SMS rate increases & bandwidth capping...
This was a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
having an organized approach and being advised by experts was a lot better then every group of police doing it themselves.
Re:New boss, same as the old boss (Score:3, Insightful)
"threatening the economy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Occupy... (Score:3, Insightful)
How much did Michelle Obama's last vacation cost?
Less than GWB, the most frequent vacationer president of all time?
Re:How is that possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy, if that small group is a small group of bankers, they can very easily threaten the economy of a whole country. Heck, they can even threaten the economy of the whole world.
MF Global (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suprised they went on as long as they did (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm fairly certain the constitution says "... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It doesn't say anything about turning a public park (privately owned I know) into an encampment for the convenience of the protesters.
Why can't they protest, then go home and come back the following day. Convenient, no, but that's the price of admission.
Don't misunderstand, I fully support those advocating the fight against corp and govt corruption, cronyism etc.
I just don't agree they should be able to take over a public park and deny the rights of the other citizens access to it.
I also find it highly ironic that some of the protesters relying on the 1st amendment to enable their protest, also take offense
to the very same freedom of the press that amendment enables.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
During a war, our military can "embed" reporters with front-line combat units.
But with what appears to be a peaceful protest (in NYC), the police have to remove the media from the area.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to live in public or private spaces at the inconvenience of others, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Oh...there it is.
civil disobedience (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't this pretty predictable? I can't see how anyone participating in these protests could have imagined that they would be allowed to stay indefinitely without getting rousted by the cops. It's a form of civil disobedience. What is the point of arguing about whether DHS and FBI are involved, about details of the law, about various mayors' secret motivations, etc.? If you do civil disobedience, you expect to get hauled off to jail.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:4, Insightful)
OWS protesters don't scare people. What scares people is what OWS protesters are doing to cities.
What Occupy protesters have done to our cities is insignificant compared to what those on Wall Street have done to our country.
However they aren't just protesting Wall Street, they are protesting capitalism.
Because they understand that in capitalism money makes money faster than honest labor. Capitalism will always end up pooling resources in the hands of the few. This will always give them undue influence in the political process. You can't have a government for the people when you have an economy for the few.
We tried democratic capitalism, it didn't work. We tried totalitarian socialism, it didn't work. We tried totalitarian capitalism, it didn't work. Isn't it about time we tried democratic socialism?
Re:Occupy... (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that as if it's a bad thing. Ponder it for a moment and realize how much more he could have messed up this country if he wasn't a slacker.
Re:New boss, same as the old boss (Score:4, Insightful)
The sad thing is that the health care program he created is probably actually worse than nothing at all. It's just a big handout to insurance companies. It pisses people off with insurance mandates. And it doesn't even guarantee coverage. All it has *really* guaranteed is that now we'll never have a true single-payer government-backed system in the U.S. Thanks to that hand-out to the insurance industry, we just lost our best, and likely last, chance at the superior (and cheaper) kind of system they have in Canada and the UK.
Just fucking sad.
Re:Occupy... (Score:5, Insightful)
The utter refusal of the Occupy protesters to become politically engaged--as in, organizing, canvassing, petitioning, fundraising, and eventually voting--is what dooms them far beyond anything else.
The Tea Party would've been a footnote if not for the fact that they became highly politically organized and actually went after elections. I'm not going to hold my breath that Occupy protesters will try something novel like, say, primarying Congressmen next spring.
But they don't want to change the system from within, they want to destroy it and rebuild from scratch. Whether one agrees with that as a goal or not, it's simply not something that is going to happen by staging street rallies and sit-ins and camping in parks.
Re:How is that possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two wrongs don't make a right, but if you punch someone in the face, don't be surprised when they hit you back.
Re:Suprised they went on as long as they did (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you really think you could threaten the powers-that-be and not have them turn the full force of the government they control on you at some point?
I believe both Gandhi and Rev. King counted on just that full-force response. It's rather the 'point' of a protest to get the powers that be to acknowledge you...and that acknowledgement, going back millennia, is usually full force/too far and results in the protesters getting some semblance of what they want, eventually anyway.
The OWS movement will need to do what the Tea Party did...actively influence election outcomes. Granted they have to do it without massive funding of the Koch's and Fox's relentless propoganda. But it can be done.
The mantra of the temperance movement back in the day comes to mind. "We don't need to win the election, just swing it to someone else". Once they show enough force to knock off a few incumbents, then the power starts flowing.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that the first amendment has no qualifiers such as "as long as you never inconvenience anyone", right.
Re:Occupy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do us a favor, watch any news source that is not Fox News and come back to the table.
Either your satire is lost on me or more likely given what I've heard from a lots of folks, people actually believe what you're saying and think that is what they are protesting. They are protesting corruption on a never before seen scale, companies that have grown too large for even the federal government to control. Bringing attention to the laws that have been bought and paid for is a noble goal and I'm not sure why you feel the need to belittle people that have the audacity to stand up and speak about the core issues of what is wrong with America these days. Wallstreet has unprecedented control over the country but of course they are not alone which is why you are seeing protests happen all over the place. There are many guilty people.
You don't have to be jobless to see how banking laws have stacked the deck against American citizens. You don't have to be jobless to understand the ridiculous debt required to go into almost any professional field these days. Hell, I went almost 100k in debt to get my degree. I had no trouble paying it off because of a number of factors that simply don't apply to most people. When you are relying on the right people discovering you, landing a good job that actually let's you pay off a targeted college degree becomes like getting picked for the latest NBA draft when they aren't striking that is.
This I got mine so fuck off attitude is extremely prevalent these days and it makes me sad to see what was one of the most generous nations on earth turning on itself because times are tough due to retarded policy decisions targeted toward Reaganomics which was a concept proven false even before it was ever deployed. You have 30 years of bad laws that have been building to this point and a congress unwilling to do anything for the President even when the President is proposing Republican ideals. We're one country, we're supposed to be on the same team, not fighting each other. I hear class warfare again and again from the likes of Fox News and Rush, forgetting that the war has been going on for decades and only now are people disenfranchised enough to speak up about it.
Instead of drowning out their words try listening to them. It's a rally with lots of people so yeah, there are nut jobs, but that doesn't change the heart of the issue which is very real regardless of your membership status in the middle class or above.
Re:This was a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because when stamping out freedom, you want to do it in the most professional and organized way possible.
I suppose this is "a lot better" from the perspective of the fascists who want the protestors to disappear, but from the perspective of someone who's tired of the robber barons running the show, this is definitely worse.
Re:How is that possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
They were planning disrupting Wall Street. In other words, they were threatening the economy and even Bloomy can't allow that.
Huh? How is it even possible for a small group like that to be "threatening the economy"?
I think it's be adequately demonstrated that a small group of people in control of Wall Street can, in fact, utter destroy the economy.
Re:Interesting, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course. If the police are about to do something they know is going to lead to violence and protest, they sure as hell don't want anybody there to report on it. They don't want an abundant supply of evidence to demonstrate that they violated laws and/or people's rights -- which that action is almost guaranteed to provoke.
For the same reason that "free speech zones" aren't intended to foster free speech.
My bet is that most of the people who got arrested will never be charged because there is no grounds for the arrest in the first place. Just some heavy handed police intimidation.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:4, Insightful)
> They had a coherent agenda that a child could understand
It's amazing how eloquently that sums up everything that's wrong with the Tea Party.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless, you know, people actually pay attention to the behavior of their elected representatives, and refuse to vote for people who go to Washington and promptly start sucking at the corporate lobbying teat. We have ways of removing corrupt officials. We have more than 2 parties in the US. If "The 99%" ACTUALLY WANTED to elect somebody other than the same corporate shills and whores that we keep re-electing to office, it would happen. I don't care how rich the Koch brothers are, if 99% of the population voted for something, and 1% of the population votes for the opposite... by my count, that's a historic landslide win for the 99%.
But something like 60% of the voting-age "99%" don't bother to cast a vote. Because it's easier to bitch than it is to be informed, and involved with the political process.
If people exercised the merest shred of rational thought when it comes to politics, and exercised the barest iota of follow-through on holding their candidates accountable for results, then the government simply wouldn't be for sale to the rich, because it wouldn't matter how rich you are if you're always outvoted.
The root of the problem is the climate in Washington that allows corporations to run amok with impunity, and by extension, the problem is the self-satisfied laziness of the vast majority of "The 99%" that keeps electing the same cast of crooks, whores, and shills to run the government with the same results term after term.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
OWS protesters don't intend to scare people. What should scare people is that the protesters are RIGHT.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1 [businessinsider.com]
They aren't protesting capitalism - they are protesting the government having been totally corrupted by capitalism, to the point where the entire game is rigged. You can malign the OWS as much as you want, and please, by all means, have fun telling whatever stories you want about them. But if some kind of change doesn't happen, the situation for the 99% is only going to get worse.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This was a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Freedom of speech doesn't include freedom to shit all over the streets, block the free movement of others, and create a health hazard. I 100% support their right to speak, primarily because so much of their speech is anti-capitalist, and want them to be seen and heard for exactly what they are. But Jebus, the areas where these guys have been have become a health hazard.
Truth be told, the police have screwed up some, but overall, have been pretty damn accommodating when it comes to allowing them to express themselves. And they should be. Mistakes or no, the protesters have been given every reasonable ability to protest, and still are, but at some point, everyone elses freedom to walk up and down the street without fear of dysentery should get accommodated as well.
Crack open a history book and read about Kent State if you want to hear about oppression in America. This is not that situation, and overwhelmingly the protesters have had the ability to express themselves, and still do.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
This is part of why you're polling worse than the tea party right now. No one listens to an argument while being insulted, even if the argument is correct. Also, nice use of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Re:civil disobedience (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do civil disobedience, you expect to get hauled off to jail.
Exactly. To add, the only way civil disobedience "works" is if people can get enough like minded people together so that when the arrests happen, there is not enough space to hold everyone in the jails and the cost of prosecuting all of the arrested people outweighs the benefits of prosecution.
What the OWS folks really need to do is organize a huge, jurisprudence education campaign to inform people of their rights to judge the law itself. That way if the state decides to prosecute, they will find themselves saddled with juries who will not convict. THAT will deliver the message that the people stand with OWS and their goals. Once the state loses control of the judiciary and their ability to enforce unpopular laws, then we will have real change.
Re:New boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Just off the top of my head, he's broken promises regarding:
- Ending the wars. Regrettably Bush was responsible for the draw-down in Iraq. Obama just held to the agreement.
- Human rights. He's deporting people in droves. He's murdering citizens based on the decisions of a secret council.
- Transparency. His administration is seeking to weaken the Freedom of Information Act. He doubled-down on prosecutions of whistle-blowers. He's stonewalling on Solyndra and Fast-n-furious.
- Guantanamo. Still going strong.
- Medical Marijuana.
Hell, he just added a new foreign base in Australia. Do we really need to expand our military into Australia?
There are 3 pages of broken promises over at politifact: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/promise-broken/ [politifact.com]
Sure, other presidents might have been worse. I don't care. I voted for a guy who promised he'd be different. He wasn't. He lied.
Re:Suprised they went on as long as they did (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't say anything about turning a public park (privately owned I know) into an encampment for the convenience of the protesters.
It doesn't say anything about NOT turning a public park into an encampment. Camping in a public park is a peaceable assembly, therefore Congress can make no law prohibiting it. End of story.
Don't misunderstand, I fully support those advocating the fight against corp and govt corruption, cronyism etc.
No, no you don't really. If you did, you'd realize that the inconvenience caused by OWS is negligible compared to the evil done by those on Wall Street. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brothers eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
I just don't agree they should be able to take over a public park and deny the rights of the other citizens access to it.
OWS protesters are citizens too. You're advocating that they be denied use of the park. Do you not see the hypocrisy?
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you stupid or do you just don't care? I've seen the videos of the "peaceful" OWS protesters shoving police riding motorcycles to the ground and then yelling "Police Brutality" when the cop arrests them.
There is no Constitutionally Protected right to fuck up the environment and crap in the streets, riot and commit vandalism, is there?
Re:The question practically answers itself. (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you link the video? The one ive seen-- the much lauded one about that veteran who got hit by something (we dont know what) thrown by somebody (we dont know who) had a bunch of protesters throwing a bunch of stuff at the cops-- including what looked like molotovs.
Not exactly what you would consider "innocent victims". I can believe that some cops got out of hand, but when the protesters then try to claim that they are completely innocent, my BS meter goes wild. Especially when the one case that theyre making such a big deal of relied on the word of Scott's friend, and there didnt seem to be any other evidence or videos.
Incidentally, Im in favor of people being allowed to protest for as long as you want, but public property doesnt mean you can set up a residence there. Darn right theyre going to prohibit tents and whatnot, its not your personal space and apparently even the people who owned the park wanted it ended. In fact even this heavily biased report [theatlantic.com] doesnt deny that it was the park owners themselves who wanted an end to the tents.
Re:civil disobedience (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't civil disobedience. This is a constitutionally protected peaceable assembly. The ones breaking the law here are the city governments and police.
Protesting too much - (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going go to out on a limb here and say that the level of animosity directed at OWS is more telling about Slashdot than about the movement itself. Take a look in the mirror for a moment - have you all really had bad firsthand experience with "hippy rapists crapping in the streets downtown" or whatever - or is it more true that OWS has hit a nerve here?
The honest answer is a lot of Slashdotters are either IT people or programmers (or IT people wishing you were programmers) and you ARE part of the 99%. Your jobs CAN and HAVE been outsourced, to a large degree. Your current income level IS a product of outsourcing and capital flight. How much IT support comes from offshore?
How many of you paid a big chunk for a CS degree and are now wondering how you're ever going to pay it off? Still renting? Living with friends? Living at home? Living without health care? Not yet confronted down-the-road looming expenses like kids, a mortgage, your parents' end-of-life care?
Maybe put aside, for a moment, your epigrams about dirty hippies, and think about how OWS is relevant to your own situation.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:5, Insightful)
I beleive Wall st trading closed briefly when a carraige bomb was set off at the front doors. Since then, I don't think anyhting that's happened physically to the building has mattered, it's all electronic any more (though the 9/11 disaster did cause a great many failovers, the process largely worked).
Only the imagery would be relevent, and it's not the businessmen who would have been lauged at, believe me.
The NY OWSers were rousted because local businesses had had enough. That's how the world works - no vast conspiracy, just local cops knowing who's important when it comes to avoiding a stink.
Re:Suprised they went on as long as they did (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe both Gandhi and Rev. King counted on just that full-force response. It's rather the 'point' of a protest to get the powers that be to acknowledge you...and that acknowledgement, going back millennia, is usually full force/too far and results in the protesters getting some semblance of what they want, eventually anyway.
Yes. I'm blown away by the lack of understanding of how protest and civil disobedience works. It's SUPPOSED to be inconvenient, it's SUPPOSED to attract attention and disrupt society, it may very well involve BREAKING LAWS, so long as the law-breaking is non-violent, and it is SUPPOSED to elicit government response, perhaps violent response.
Protest is not about politely asking for X, Y and Z, and the government saying "Hmm, let me think about it." Protest is about putting yourself in harms way to demand X, Y, and Z, and if you have to *non-violently* break laws to do that, then that's just part of the package. It's impossible to overstress how critical the "non-violent" part is. You? You're just standing there. The police? They're beating the crap out of you, spraying you, possibly shooting at you. No matter how much you disagree with somebody, a normal person will have a serious problem with the government brutalizing people who are doing nothing violent.
Re: Communism failed: class warfare alive and well (Score:2, Insightful)
It is my opinion (just that, no more) that someone making $24K and no safety net has no business going to a $30K/year school. There are cheaper schools that are perfectly fine.
Re:"threatening the economy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Protesting too much - (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure lots of individual OWS protesters would benefit from some lifestyle coaching. On the other hand, if you look closely, you'll see that lots of people like lawyers, doctors, technology people have also been contributing time to the movement - it's not just a big party for unemployed people.
But that doesn't really address my point - the level of anger here at Slashdot has less to do with negative interaction with hippies, and more to do with the fact that they've struck a nerve. It's far easier to make fun of the pictures on Fox News than it is to sit down and consider what the real message is, and how it might relate to your own life and prospects. There's very few people here who are going to get rich in some new startup or writing the next Angry Birds. There's a lot of people here who are going to scrape by on part time IT, freelance work and occasionally installing WiFi for the neighbors, and wish they had a 40-hour-a-week developer job with benefits and a path forward. (Or actually working that developer job, and finding out that to hold it really requires something like 60 hours a week.)
It's easier to be angry at or make fun of the protesters than to admit they have a point.
Re:Go with the simple over complex theory (Score:2, Insightful)
> they probably won't get it right the first time.
The Tea Party was mostly new to politics as well. They managed pretty well. Difference was most of them were older grown ups with a little real world experience instead of college students and hippies. The problem is more in what each group wants. The Tea Party (see all those Gasden Flags?) mostly wants the government to stop screwing things up and return to the jobs it was designed to do. The OWS people want to finish the job and go the rest of the way to a People's Republic.
Re:Protesting too much - (Score:5, Insightful)
There's very few people here who are going to get rich in some new startup or writing the next Angry Birds.
Nobody wants to hear that. Most people cherish the fantasy that one day they'll be rich, especially while they're young. After they've been in the workforce for a few years, been at startups, or have tried to start their own small businesses, they learn the details of how societies and economies work. They slowly realize that the accumulation of great wealth is very hard to do by strictly legal or ethical means. Very hard. Very very hard. So hard in fact that one comes to question whether it is even possible at all via strictly legal or ethical means.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the students who were shot were indeed unarmed. The truth that they shot unarmed students remains. That is not in dispute. It's just not acceptable to open fire into a crowd of unarmed civilians even if there is a nut with a gun somewhere. You also left out that the prime suspect for firing that .38 was a paid FBI mole photographing protesters.
Absolutely none of that alters the fundamental truth that government forces opened fire on unarmed students in any literal or figurative sense.
You also left out the part of the analysis that caught an actual order to fire.
So yes, it is entirely possible that the guardsmen were telling the truth about hearing a gunshot, but that doesn't really alter anything that matters.