Seriously, this is how ows is getting beat--by letting this get ows off income equality and Citizens United.I think this is totally right on. And we need to keep saying it, because this stuff is distracting as hell.
Just get back in there and push the economic message.
during the negotiated management period, police stated that their highest priority was to respect the First Amendment even for those that expressed unpopular messages (McPhail et al. 1998). Now, when applying strategic incapacitation police openly declare that only protesters who agree in advance to engage in the permitting process and follow police-determined guidelines will be accorded protection of their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. . . . Preemptive arrests neutralize both individuals and organizations whose actions police cannot predict with certainty. . . . Such pro-active policing detains potentially disruptive actors from protest situations and sends a message to all others that regardless of their actual actions they are targets for arrest if they fit the profile of a transgressive protester. . . . [regarding specific post-9/11 cases] police appeared to pre-emptively use non-lethal force to neutralize threats, perceived or actual, posed by transgressive protesters. Quite often bystanders and contained protesters acting within the limitations of their protest permits were also incapacitated as the effects of such non-lethal weapons spilled over beyond their intended targets . . .[emphasis mine]
Does [strategic incapacitation's] use make our society safer or merely cultivate the perception of reduced risk? Does the profiling, labeling and sorting of activists favor some messages over others? To what extent does police management of both space and the media affect public opinion? Does the normalization of strategic incapacitation have a chilling effect on protest or drive it underground where it becomes more radicalized?
The Police Executive Research Forum, an international non-governmental organization with ties to law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been coordinating conference calls with major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs to advise them on policing matters and discuss response to the Occupy movement.And
Speaking to Democracy Now! On November 17, PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler acknowledged PERF's coordination of a series of conference-call strategy sessions with big-city police chiefs. These calls were distinct from the widely reported national conference calls of major metropolitan mayors.And
The coordination of political crackdowns on the Occupy movement has been conducted behind closed doors, with city officials and PERF refusing to say how many cities participated in the conference calls and the exact nature of the discussions. Reports of at least a dozen cities and some indication of as many as 40 accepting PERF advice and/or strategic documents include San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Portland, Oakland, Atlanta, and Washington DC.
PERF coordinated a November 10 conference call with city police chiefs across the country – and many of these cities undertook crackdowns shortly afterward.I don't think it's really that far fetched. The lines drawn are pretty clear -- PERF conducted conference call strategy sessions with police chiefs around the country, provided research about how to handle the protests, and then the police departments in these various cities went to work breaking up the Occupy protestors in those cities.
The paper argues for police enhancements of many different kinds of surveillance and information sharing technologies, using findings from a survey it distributed to hundreds of police departments nationwide in order to gauge the level of technology already in use by these PDs and those PDs desire for new tools.I compare it to the revised press release by JP Morgan (original; revised current), which looks like this if new content is in italics and removed content is striked out:
Beginning in 2010, JPMorgan ChaseGenerally what the revision did was make it less immediate (not in October, but in the beginning of the year before OWS) and removed menion of the same technologies mentioned in the PERF/Lockheed paper. They are pretty aligned in their goals, and JP Morgan has the money to make it happen.recentlydonated technology, time and resources valued atan unprecedented$4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation, including 1,000 new patrol car laptops. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple.The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.
I’ve wondered about this for a week or two. And I haven’t known quite what to make of it or how to express it. It didn’t start with this pepper spray incident at UC Davis. But that sort of crystallized it further in my mind: the core message about economic inequality is being overwhelmed by a distinct story about (depending on your perspective) street violence and police brutality or excessive militarization of crowd control.posted by Ironmouth at 1:33 PM on November 21, 2011
Last week I met a person heavily involved with OWS in New York. And I told him that something seemed to have changed in the previous couple weeks — basically that the dominant imagery had become about confrontations with the police rather than the core economic messages which had been more dominant previously. In most cases it didn’t seem to be the fault of the OWS protesters. It was peaceful or mainly peaceful protests getting met by excessive police responses. But still, at the level of imagery and message, the end result can be the same. And in this case, I’m not talking about the ridiculousness and movement-character assassination on Fox News. I’m talking about coverage that lacks that sort of committed bias.
Something similar is at play with this pepper spray incident at UC Davis. Yes, this is horrific. And in my mind at least it puts a spotlight on a more general trend in the country — which is increasingly tech-based and/or militarized policing strategies. But how much do the acts of the campus police at UC Davis have to do with economic inequality and the ownership of the state by the super wealthy? Unless you’re up for a Chomskian analysis of our present moment, pretty little, I think. And a lot of the people I talk to in OWS totally get this. After all these are the public employees whose pensions and benefits are on the line across the country.
I can see the argument about how they’re connected. But I think it’s far more theoretical than real.
I wonder if there are many who've received injuries under police brutality or who've had valuable items destroyed by the police who'd be willing to present what has been done to them -- with the message that this is nothing next to the hundreds of billions worth of fraud on Wall Street that no one's gone to jail for.It was argued that this is already being done but I asked for links and so far haven't found any.
Or next to the corrupt campaign finance system. Or the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
I don't blame anyone though if personal injury takes first place in their minds.
The following year, a longstanding critic* of King delivered an address that focused on an alternative way for black Americans to secure progress in civil rights. Dr. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, was known as "the black pope" because of his leadership of the largest religious organization of blacks in the United States. Jackson thought King's civil disobedience and nonviolent but confrontational methods undermined the very rule of law that black Americans desperately needed. Appealing to the historic contribution of blacks to the development and prosperity of America, Jackson counseled that less controversial and provocative means should be adopted in the struggle for civil rights. He also encouraged them not to neglect their "ability, talent, genius, and capacity" in efforts of self-help and self-improvement. Citing the 1954 Brown decision and 1964 Civil Rights Act as important signs of progress and hope for black Americans, Jackson argued that to advance in America, blacks had to work with and not against the structures and ideals of the nation.posted by Miko at 5:25 AM on November 22, 2011 [2 favorites]
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posted by Blasdelb at 8:34 PM on November 19, 2011 [9 favorites]