Re-Occupied! Thousands of activists clash with police in New York as May Day protests spread across dozens of U.S. cities

• At least 30 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested after clashes with NYPD
  
• In anticipation of protests, NYPD stormed activists' homes on Monday
  
• Tear gas launched in Oakland, California - 4 arrests made
  
• 12 arrested in Portland, Oregon and 10 in LA
  
• Black-clad protesters in Seattle used sticks to smash small downtown shop windows and ran through the streets disrupting traffic
  
• Comes after Occupy called for a general strike, urging workers and students across the U.S. to stay at home today in an act of defiance
  

May Day Celebrations Continue in Oakland, San Francisco
Tuesday, 01 May 2012 17:32
By Susie Cagle, Truthout | Report

Last fall's General Strike in Oakland was a historic event, as thousands of Bay Area residents converged on downtown from the very start of the day. Protesters ruled the town and police were relatively hands off until the evening.

Today, a fraction of that crowd - several hundred at its peak - has attempted to shut down the town, while police have been more aggressive.

A few minutes ago, I was going to file a story for Truthout about how this morning's fierce but relatively small Oakland march felt like far less of a "general strike" than that warm November day. But that was a few minutes ago, and things change fast here. As I write this, about 100 police are ordering several hundred Occupy Oakland May Day marchers to get out of the streets and onto the sidewalks. They've fired tear gas and flash bang grenades to disperse the crowd that converged when a small squad of police moved swiftly and aggressively into the march to detain one protester who was on a bike.

There was talk of last night's anti-capitalist march in San Francisco "setting the tone" for the rest of the Bay Area's May Day to come, but things started slow in Oakland this morning. Occupy had organized three "strike stations" around the city: one for anti-gentrification actions; one for anti-capitalist actions; and one for anti-patriarchal actions, to protest and shut down Oakland's Child Protective Services (CPS). Crowds of five turned into crowds of 100. Anti-capitalist marchers shut down a Bank of America and Wells Fargo. One protester, Zachary Frasier, wrote "Love > Money" in blue-green chalk on the Wells Fargo brick facade, and was quickly detained by police. The crowd chanted for his release, and police finally let him go.

It was an auspicious start to the day - the first arrest, undone! - and the crowd continued to march in high spirits. Not long after, Amtrak police in an off-road "Arctic cat" vehicle ran up on protesters on the sidewalk, running over and destroying one person's bike in the process.

But marches continued, lurching and pausing around Oakland throughout the morning, meeting up with one another at various points to raucous chants and drumming.

"It went amazingly well," said Oakland Occupy Patriarchy's Michael Clemmons of the action on CPS, where 150 to 200 protesters converged for a speak out on child protective services and foster care.

On the anti-capitalist march several blocks north, Gricelda Gutierrez, a member of Occupy Oakland's Tactical Action Committee, grinned and gripped her trash-can as she told me: "It's wonderful. It's so wonderful." Nearby, some protesters wore masks and carried corrugated metal shields past several banks. One shield read: "Gender Strike." Throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, protesters chanted, "A! Anti! Anticapitalista!" and anti-police slogans when they came upon riot squads throughout the city.

"I think there's a lot of good energy, and a lot of young people out," said Andrew Kenower. "I wish there were more people out, but I think it will pick up later in the day. It seems like the more we march, the more it grows." We passed banks where protesters pounded on windows, but didn't break them. One group tore into a Bank of the West while Michael Jackson's "Beat It" blasted from a rolling sound system on the street. "I think people have been pretty restrained," said Kenower of the crowd and its lack of, as Oakland calls it, "smashy smashy."

Just then we turned down Broadway. Two minutes later, the police were running into the march; five minutes after that, the first flash bang went off. There was at least one arrest and one head injury in the ensuing melee. Protesters pushed police a couple blocks north, where they finally backed off the crowd, who remained in the streets.

A taste of what is to come: Oakland is just getting started. But though it's early for the tear gas, the flash bangs, and the bloody head beatings, police favoring targeted arrests over their past attempts at kettling large groups of protesters could mean today's actions may end differently than November 2 or January 28's failed "Move In Day."

A large march from east to downtown Oakland is planned for 3 p.m., to arrive at city hall plaza at 6 p.m., where the Occupy Oakland camp once stood. Across the bay in San Francisco, occupiers will be converging in a 2 p.m. march on the new SF Commune at an as-of-yet undisclosed location.

Occupy May Day protests across US as activists and unions link up

Occupy Wall Street movement regroups for largely orderly demonstrations in New York and skirmishes elsewhere

Demonstrators march down Broadway during a May Day protest in New York City. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

The Occupy Wall Street movement has attempted to breathe new life into its campaign against inequities in the global financial system with a series of May Day across around the US.
Thousands of people turned out in New York for a day of action that culminated in a confident march down Broadway in the evening sunshine towards Wall Street, the crucible of the protest that began last year with an angry backlash against banking excess.
The stated aim of bringing business in the commercial capital of the US to a standstill went unfulfilled, but as rain gave way to a bright spring afternoon, traffic ground to a halt in lower Manhatttan as the Occupy movement's most anticipated day of action in months took hold.
There were some clashes with police as officers clamped down on perceived violations, and the NYPD said they had made 30 arrests by the early evening. There were also flashpoints at protests in other cities.
Police officers fire tear gas to control a group of Occupy protesters near City Hall in downtown Oakland. Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images In Oakland, California, scene of violent clashes between activists and police in recent months, police fired tear gas, sending hundreds of demonstrators scrambling. Four people were arrested.
Officers also fired "flash-bang" grenades to disperse protesters converging on officers as they tried to make arrests, police said. Four people were taken into custody.
Black-clad protesters in Seattle used sticks to smash downtown windows and ran through the streets disrupting traffic. The city's mayor, Mike McGinn, made an emergency declaration allowing police to confiscate any items that could be used as weapons.
In San Francisco, the Occupy movement was blamed for a night of violence in which cars and small businesses were vandalised. Protest organisers later attempted to distance themselves from the disruption.
In New York, threatening letters containing a white powder that appeared to be corn starch were sent to some institutions in the city. Three letters were received on Tuesday: two at News Corporation headquarters and addressed to the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, and one at Citigroup. The message in the letters said: "Happy May Day".
Seven letters were received on Monday at various banks. One was sent to the New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
But in all, Tuesday's disruptions amounted more or less to a series disparate incidents in a day that was far less violent than some of the scenes witnessed when the movement was at its peak last year.
In New York, the day of protest began in morning rain at Bryant Park where demonstrators gathered before setting off on marches around the area.
Occupy Wall Street supporters are corralled by New York police officers as they march through Midtown Manhattan on May Day. Photograph: Andrew Katz Outside a branch of Bank of America protesters chanted: "Bank of America, bad for America". One participant, Jason Ahamdi, said he was ready for a long day of demonstrating. "I'm prepared for the whole day," Ahmadi told the Guardian, saying he had been involved in preparations for weeks.
As demonstrators marched past the headquarters of News Corp, the Fox News ticker read: "May Day, May Day, May Day, police set to deal with Occupy crowd that vows to shut down the city", and "NYPD and big corporations braced for trouble".
In Bryant Park, there were many of the staple elements of Occupy's original encampment, including a library with works from Thoreau, Alice Walker and F Scott Fitzgerald.
A screenprinting table was set up where participants could "up-cycle" their clothing, adding Occupy logos and imagery to them.
"Why buy something new when you can improve something you already have?" said David Yap, who was volunteering at the stand.
Eileen Maxwell arrived in New York on Saturday, motivated by the influence of corporate money on the political process. She dismissed the idea that the protest movement had declined in relevance. "People think we're invisible. We're not," she said.
An Occupy Wall Street activist with a bloody nose is arrested by New York City police during a May Day demonstration. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters There were some clashes with police during the day, particularly during attempts to break out of the park on marches that did not have police permits. During one such attempt, at around 1pm, demonstrators, most clad in black and many with their faces covered, faced off against scores of NYPD officers.
Shortly after 1pm, the demonstrators attempted to begin their march amid chants of "a-anti, anti-capitalista". Moments after they stepped off the sidewalk, attempting to cross an intersection, police moved in to stop them. A physical confrontation ensued and one young man was pulled to the ground by his hair. With his face pressed against a sewer grate the man was handcuffed and arrested along with several others. Officers attempted to pull a banner from the demonstrators. One senior officer yelled in the face of the protesters: "I fucking got it!"
The march tore through China Town and SoHo, with demonstrators darting down streets and sprinting to stay ahead of police scooters in pursuit.
As he watched the rowdy march pass, Jason Rose cheered in support. "I think they're doing the right thing," Rose said. Seth Carter, another bystander, agreed: "I think this is the best thing."
But reactions were mixed. "Is this Russia?" asked Harold Barksy, as he watched a contingent of chanting protesters pass. "It looks like a communist country. All this bullshit. I think they should get jobs instead of fucking around."
During the afternoon the focus switched to Union Square. Again protesters took the street. "They were powerful," said Paul Moore, who said he saw demonstrators push through a "football line" of police officers.
Once gathered in Union Square, Occupy Wall Street supporters converged with thousands of union members and community activists for a free concert. With a police helicopter circling low overhead, Grammy-award winning guitarist Tom Morello opened with his Worldwide Protest Song.
Morello told the Guardian that he "flew 3,000 miles" to aid the movement in its effort to "push a social justice agenda".
After the concert, which also included performances from Immortal Technique, Das Racist and Dan Deacon, thousands of protesters marched south down Broadway, closed to traffic by the police, to the financial district.
Led by several New York City taxi cabs and scores of union members, the protesters arrived to Manhattan's southern tip with plans for a long night to come.
"I hope it turns out beautifully," said one protester, who called herself Anne F, as the remaining demonstrators gathered at a Vietnam veterans' memorial for a popular assembly.
As a police helicopter circled above, Occupy Wall Street organiser Nelini Stamp gave details of May Day events around the country and the world to the crowd. "I think the day was a success," Stamp told the Guardian.
Noting widespread and diverse participation throughout the day, Stamp added: "We showed that we are a force to be reckoned with."
Roughly an hour after Stamp addressed the crowd, scores of New York City police officers with riot gear moved in to enforce a 10pm curfew at the memorial. Roughly a dozen clergy members and veterans some of them having served in Vietnam locked arms and attempted to block the eviction. They were arrested and the NYPD proceeded to clear all remaining demonstrators from the area.
Herded through a series of winding streets by police officers chanting "Move! Move! Move!", protesters were repeatedly commanded to stay on the sidewalk and told to keep moving so they were not blocking pedestrian traffic. Several violent arrests, some of which took place on the sidewalks they were told to walk on, added to a sense of confusion among protesters. Some complained they were unfairly targeted for their political beliefs.
"I'm allowed to stand on a sidewalk!" shouted Anthony Zenkus.
Zenkus said that after the New York Giants' recent Superbowl victory he saw far more disorderly behaviour but police turned a blind eye. "There were drunk people jumping up and down on cop cars," he said.
"The only reason the police presence is what it is, is because the mayor doesn't like our message."

Across New York City, People Honor May Day
Tuesday, 01 May 2012 16:35
By JA Myerson, Truthout | Report

Protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement during a march in New York, May 1, 2012. (Photo: Ozier Muhammad / The New York Times)
Walter Hillegas marches with a scale-model of the former World Trade Center. "I was there for the first five days after the tower came down," he tells me, "doing debris-recovery and victim-removal. I got sick and lost my job." Hillegas is beset by sarcoidosis and lower lumbar spondylosis, both of which he attributes to his first responder work in the days after September 11, 2001. "These guys taught me how to stand up," he says of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters in whose midst he marches. Hillegas had his day in court this week and won: "I'm here to honor them."

As I write this, Hillegas and thousands of other New Yorkers continue to stream into Union Square for this year's May Day celebration, for which OWS has called for a General Strike. As the afternoon draws on, we approach the day's biggest action, a march from Union Square to Wall Street that will have the endorsement and participation not just of the thousands already participating, but of a large list of labor unions and activist groups to boot.

A lot happened this morning, much more than any one person can cover. Early in the morning, in the cool rain, the earliest protesters assembled at Bryant Park, in midtown, a short walk from a number of corporate offices where, for the first several hours, self-organized groups split off to go picket. Targets included Chase, Bank of America and Newscorp, whose right-wing tabloid, The New York Post, published a front page headline today calling OWS "bums" who would "foul up working folks in NY"

Protesters from the Newspaper Guild stood outside the McGraw-Hill Companies building, protesting Standard & Poor's (S&P), the Wall Street ratings agency. They were not protesting the corrupt arrangement by which ratings agencies accept handsome remuneration for favorably rating junk assets a critical component in precipitating the financial collapse at the end of the Bush years but rather the internal labor practices of the company.

S&P, according to a Newspaper Guild leaflet, "is looking to outsource thousands of good-paying McGraw-Hill jobs to India." Elizabeth, who has worked at the company for 39 years, told me that those in Statistical Services will be gone by the end of the year. Terry McGraw, whom the leaflet dubs "Standard & Poor's Fat Cat" serves as President Barack Obama's appointee on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy & Negotiations. "The irony," Elizabeth said, "is that if you're at Trade Policy, you should try to keep jobs here." Still, it is not her own job that most concerns Elizabeth. "I'm just worried about the young people coming out here," she says. "How are they going to get a job? "

At Bryant Park, a "pop-up" occupation included theatrical performances, face-painting, sign-making, food, teach-ins and workshops, and a free store with clothes for those who needed some. One of the larger early marches was an immigrant workers' justice tour. May Day, being an international celebration of labor, has acquired significance as a celebration of immigrants, though the holiday started in the United States, in commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket massacre, when a bombing at a labor demonstration provided the impetus for a lethal police crack-down.

As the march down to Union Square progressed, the sun emerged in earnest for the first time today, and strikers forsook the sidewalk and took Broadway for their own. Even now, they come…

Occupied Oakland's May Daze
Friday, 04 May 2012 14:27
By Susie Cagle, Truthout | News Analysis

Protesters face officers during an Occupy movement march outside City Hall in Oakland, California, on May 1, 2012. (Photo: Jim Wilson / The New York Times)

Occupy Oakland talks about itself as the vanguard of the Occupy movement, which may or may not be true, and which may or may not be relevant. In American politics, Occupy is the vanguard. It has made every other act of protest seem more reasonable in comparison, by pushing forward and, at times, creating a point of crisis so immediate and vital that it forces the populace to address it - and then allowed it a space from which to do so. The success of those on the left who wish to create reforms - which are sometimes sea changes that smash the system in a different way than the "smashy smashy" of protest by property destruction - rely on those trash cans and bandanas. Vanguard or not, what happens in Oakland's Occupy circles still has the potential to reveal the movement's character, and the nation's politics, on a larger scale.

May Day 2012 in Oakland was not, in fact, a general strike. That was never made more clear than when occupiers on an anti-gentrification march went in to a downtown restaurant and some of the workers pushed them out - because they wanted to work.

Much has changed for Oakland over the past six months. Last November 2's general strike brought tens of thousands to downtown Oakland, shutting much of the city and the Port for work or business with a constant and joyful parade. That wasn't a general strike in the strict sense either, but it was the will of the populace. When protesters in masks smashed bank windows and a Whole Foods on a mid-day anti-capitalist march, some marchers attempted to stop them, and loudly decried the action - and then, peaceful protest and work stoppage continued for another eight hours.

When protesters in masks marched on Bank of America on Tuesday, the people using the ATMs didn't even look up as they finished their business.

May 1 was in many ways a success: a Workers' Day with new potential facilitated by Occupy's call for a general strike. Many unions, including Golden Gate ferry workers, registered nurses and Port longshoremen organized strikes; a few businesses closed down in solidarity. But on the whole, in Oakland, the framework was not clear; it felt unfinished. And the passion to create something in its place was missing - organizers even used the same tactical map they had last November 2. Occupy Oakland's morning events drew less than 1,000 people to the streets. Still, protesters told me they thought it was "wonderful."

How do we measure a movement's success, especially in its infancy? What metrics could we possibly use? And how do we hold it accountable?

Today is the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing, where someone threw a stick of dynamite at police attempting to disperse a labor demonstration; the ensuing melee killed seven police and four demonstrators. It is also the anniversary of the Kent State massacre of 1970, where National Guardsmen used live ammunition to disperse a student protest, killing four and wounding nine others.

It is also Oakland's 160th birthday. A city founded by squatters who staked a claim to land owned by rich conquerers in the first half of the 19th century shares its origins on the calendar with two points of America's most violent domestic political history. I can think of no better time to recount its current state at the nexus of radical politics and militarized police. Exactly 160 years later, this is still the Wild West.

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Despite a history of radicalism, the perception of the Bay Area has long been that the real political momentum lived in San Francisco, not Oakland. But over the past two decades, the cost of living in San Francisco has pushed much of its working class to other parts of the Bay Area, including Oakland.

The demonstrations following the police shooting of unarmed Oscar Grant on January 1, 2009, at an Oakland BART station put the city on the map in a way it hadn't been before. Nearly 50 years after its Black Panthers claim to fame, mass arrests and downtown vandalism became synonymous with Oakland street politics.

Building occupations and demonstrations against austerity measures at UC Berkeley in 2009, protests to shut down BART in San Francisco following more police shootings on regional transit in 2011 and the Bay of Rage demonstrations in Oakland set the tone for Occupy in the Bay Area: confrontational and anti-police from inception, down to the renaming of "Oscar Grant Plaza," as occupiers rechristened the grass and paved park in front of City Hall.

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Most stories about Occupy take a basic tack of recounting conflict between protesters and police. This is how Occupy enjoys most of its attention from the general public: the violence of the protesters versus the violence of the police.

This creates clear narratives where, to be fair, there are none. May Day was incoherent. May Day was a man playing a banjo with a slight smile on his face while protesters banged on corrugated metal shields yards away, taunting lines of police in riot gear. It was flowers thrown at those skirmish lines, the sting of tear gas in the air. It was yellow paint on an Oakland police officer's face, and blood dripping down the face of a slight, teenaged Occupy Oakland protester. But the blood came first.

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There were great expectations for Occupy on May Day. May Day was supposed to mark a rebirth of the movement, the return of thousands to the streets, the recapturing of the nation's imagination. Hopes were high. For a six-month-old movement, perhaps they were too high.

Many in Occupy deny that, at its core, the movement at this stage is a war of public relations. But the media is what brought attention to those first tents at what became long-term encampments; it is what rallied the world around Scott Olsen after the raid on Occupy Oakland in October; and it is what helped to energize the public around the November 2 general strike.

Occupy Oakland's reasoning against fighting the PR war is mostly: "We won't win, anyway."

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One week before May Day's planned events, the Oakland police held a press conference to announce that they were "reforming" their crowd-management strategies around Occupy prior to May 1 demonstrations.

"We are looking at changing our tactics in terms of how we approach [the protests] to be much more assertive in terms of not allowing unpermitted marches throughout the city," Chief Howard Jordan told reporters at the conference. Jordan spoke of using "small teams" to extract "unlawful" individuals from the crowd; these kinds of "surgical arrests" have been called for in past police operations plans for Occupy demonstrations.

Jordan stated that crowd control provisions had been, "updated to meet current state standards." Those provisions were a result of a lawsuit brought by civil rights attorneys and protesters who were injured and arrested at an antiwar protest at the Port of Oakland in April 2003. Some of these claims specifically mentioned Jordan's involvement in the 2003 protest.

When attorneys expressed concern over the policy changes, an Oakland city attorney said that the new policy as written had not, "in any way modified or changed the policy requirements respecting the use of force" and that the changes would be, "postponed until after the May Day events."

The Oakland police, for all the criticism they have received, responded with new tools, tactics and, it seemed, confidence, as they marched into the middle of Occupy's first large peaceful convergence of the day to arrest a woman for an unknown crime. The mood of the crowd changed instantly.

The old crowd-control policy indicates that officers in charge of crowd management should first ask, "Will police action likely improve the situation?"

As police made their arrest, the crowd gathered around them, chanting and throwing paint-filled balloons and eggs. Police set off tear gas and flash-bang grenades; they later called these deployments "very effective," though they ultimately had to make several more arrests before backing out of the crowd.

A public information officer confirmed to reporters in the afternoon that the department was indeed using its new crowd-management strategies.

The standing Oakland Police crowd-control policy also bans the use of motorcycles and other vehicles as tools of force against crowds.

"Motorcycles and police vehicles may not be used for crowd dispersal," it reads. Throughout the day, Amtrak police using off-road vehicles charged crowds of protesters on the streets and on sidewalks. Later in the evening, an Oakland police officer on a motorcycle charged up onto the sidewalk and chased me as I ran for about 400 yards.

Chief Jordan has maintained that police go after "violent" offenders at Occupy events. On May 1, there were 39 arrests made in Oakland, most of them for "willfully" obstructing police officers.

On May 1, occupiers often chanted, "This is what a police state looks like." But to a large extent, I think this is what a confused state looks like. Some see conspiracy; I see mostly chaos.

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In the weeks leading up to Occupy Oakland's May Day, posters began appearing around town. There were few, if any, large banners. The painted street art was clearly executed quickly: "May 1 General Strike" scrawled at random points in West Oakland by an inexperienced hand, the letters wobbly. It seemed an indication of how much energy was being expended on planning.

The week just prior brought several bigger May Day disappointments. First, an initial plan to blockade the Golden Gate Bridge with workers there was cancelled without explanation. "Our situation has changed," said Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition organizer Alex Tonisson. On Monday, a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) "Wisconsin-style" occupation of San Francisco City Hall similarly began with big talk and ended in a fizzle, when union members left after only three hours "occupying" the building. Later that night, a "ruckus street party" in San Francisco's Mission District smashed restaurants, residences, the police station and several cars parked on the street.

Organizers "wanted to set the tone" for May 1. In the ensuing confusion - black bloc? provocateurs? Why smash low-income housing and working peoples' cars? - they may well have done so. On Thursday night, Occupy SF split as a result, leaving two general assembly decisionmaking bodies: one for Occupy SF, and one for "nonviolent" Occupy SF.

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The crowd grew heated again around 8:30 PM, when police arrested an occupier for violating a restraining order that kept him away from City Hall. Protesters with shields moved to the front of the crowd, chanting and rattling their gear. When they moved toward police, police charged and grabbed the shields away. An unlawful assembly was declared, and five minutes later, police charged on the entire crowd, pushing them north and arresting anyone too slow to get away.

I caught up with one occupier a few blocks north, who told me, "When you push forward with shields, you should make sure there are people behind you."

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The three "strike stations" Occupy Oakland organized for May 1 were the group's main contributions to the day of labor activism. The anti-gentrification station, ostensibly organized to receive calls on a hotline from people facing problems at their workplaces, ended up on a circuitous march around local businesses before meeting up with the anti-capitalist station, which had protested and shut down several branches of national banks throughout the morning. The best organized of these stations was put together by Oakland Occupy Patriarchy, which organizes separately from Occupy Oakland. Their action targeted Child Protective Services (CPS) for what they called patriarchal criminalizing of non-heterosexual nuclear families. Despite a loud counter-protester, the event was focused and effective.

The strike stations framework left large gaps for passionate autonomous actions, but the passion that ran Occupy Oakland in those early months has given way. For some, it was a fall fling and a bad breakup; for others, that early infatuation has become a deep love - one which requires work to maintain.

Throughout the day, there was a significant presence of black bloc protesters, masked up, wearing gloves and carrying shields, but no property was damaged early in the day. When bank and CalTrans windows were smashed later that night with poles, wrenches and skateboards, the protesters in question were not all masked, were not all wearing black and were likely not all anarchists.

Chaos over conspiracy.

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Oakland has been hosting a permitted immigrant rights march every May 1 since 2006 as part of a national move to make May 1 a day of undocumented worker resistance. This year's Dignity and Resistance march was organized by a large coalition of activists from many different groups, including Occupy and groups such as Decolonize Oakland, which had broken away from Occupy in prior months over differences in tactics, identity and philosophy.

Several thousand marched this year from Fruitvale, where Grant was killed in 2008, to San Antonio Park in East Oakland. From there, much of the crowd continued on to meet Occupy at City Hall Plaza - but many did not.

The largest crowd in downtown Oakland on May 1 reached about 3,000 people. Toward the end of the rally, a woman came on the sound system and said she planned to camp in the plaza that night. There were only scattered cheers.

Occupy has received criticism for co-opting the Dignity and Resistance march with its own message. The anarchists and the labor movement owned May Day 1; they bought it with that dynamite in 1886, for which they paid with their lives. Arguably, the labor movement paid for it with its teeth. Everyone since then has co-opted their day.

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The Occupy movement in many ways is transparently postmodern. The media has been both its success and its downfall, expecting it to grow and sustain beyond its youthful means.

Occupy, though, is not always representative of what has come to be the brand-like identity of "Occupy," and nowhere is this more true than in Oakland. Organizers inspired by the movement have been breaking away over the course of months to pursue their own projects within their own structures.

But Occupy's sometimes allegiance to its brand over its ideas stands to hinder the movement more than pundits on the left decrying smashed windows. The power of decentralized organizing is ostensibly to inspire the masses beyond a central hierarchical point. Even in Oakland's Wild West, many still want to follow what they perceive to be rules of the group, to ask for permission.

Occupy describes the movement as "leaderful," but most of Occupy's May Day in Oakland was a series of reactions.

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"Diversity of tactics" has come to be a code for what Occupy Oakland most often calls "smashy-smashy": focused and less-focused property destruction that often takes the form of broken windows and painted graffiti. This practice set off a protracted debate about what constitutes violence and protest, a debate that took place both within and outside of Occupy Oakland after the destruction of the November 2 general strike.

There were several corrugated metal and plastic garbage-can shields at Occupy Oakland and dozens of masked protesters. Critics say these people kill the movement's credibility, that they must be "purged" in order to keep Occupy a peaceful movement focused on economic inequality and that evil 1 percent. Occupy Oakland has remained about as radical as it was on November 2 when protesters smashed those bank windows - the destruction has not escalated. They just have more shields now.

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I asked one Oakland activist recently about Occupy's power to reform, though its stated goal is revolution: "It has the power to push the center, but it could also create a conservative backlash," I said.

"Sure," he said. "But that conservative backlash will in turn create another backlash that will push the center, too. Either way, we win!" He grinned.

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We wouldn't expect Occupy to get the vote out for Barack Obama or Buddy Roemer or whoever else were this not an election year. Occupy does not need to elect candidates they approve of to public office because Occupy cannot and should not be everything to American political reform. But this fall, Occupy won't be the crisis; election politics will. That is what stands to eclipse interest in Occupy rather than stand beside it and create more space for a broader range of politics. America may well be occupied, but it also just doesn't have any more room.

The People's Bishop

From the article Keith cites....

Quote:Packard's moral and intellectual courage stands in stark contrast with the timidity of nearly all clergy and congregants in all of our major religious institutions. Religious leaders, in churches, synagogues and mosques, at best voice pious and empty platitudes about justice or carry out nominal acts of charity aimed at those bearing the weight of resistance in the streets. And Packard's arrests serve as a reminder of the price that weespecially those who claim to be informed by the message of the Christian Gospelmust be willing to pay to defy the destruction visited on us all by the corporate state. He is one of the few clergy members who dare to bear a genuine Christian witness in an age that cries out in anguish for moral guidance.

Arrests are not arrests anymore," Packard said as we talked Friday in a restaurant overlooking Zuccotti Park in New York. They are badges of honor. They are, as you are taken away with your comrades, exhilarating. The spirit is calling us now into the streets, calling us to reject the old institutional orders. There is no going back. You can't sit anymore in churches listening to stogy liturgies. They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows. They are a caricature of what Jesus intended. Jesus would be turning over the money-changing tables in their vestibules. Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world. It is only outside the church that you will find the spirit of God and Christ. And with the rise of the Occupy movement it has become clear that the institutional church has failed. It mouths hollow statements. It publishes pale Lenten study tracts. It observes from a distance without getting its hands dirty. It makes itself feel good by doing marginal charitable works, like making cocoa for Occupy protesters or providing bathrooms from 9 to 5 at Trinity Church's Charlotte's Place. We don't need these little acts of charity. We need the church to have a real presence on the Jericho Road. We need people in the church to leave their comfort zones, to turn away from the hierarchy, and this is still terrifying to a lot of people in the church and especially the church leadership.

Occupy," he went on, is a political movement. Let's not be naive. But it also has a moral core. We are in the midst of a reawakening of a spiritual anthropology. All of the groups that have risen up, across the globe, have this reawakening. Those who took to the streets in the Middle East were not simply unsettled. They were called together because they had a connection with each other. Many, many people have reached a point where the only option left is to place their bodies, their beings, in a location where they can finally have some say and some control over their own lives. As Carne Ross points out in his book The Leaderless Revolution,' people have lost their agency; they have lost control of their lives. The only control many have left is the control of their physical being. They place themselves in locations where they can demonstrate that they no longer support current systems of power. If you don't have any money in our political system you not only have no say, you don't have any dignity. And the only way left to reclaim our dignity is to occupy, to reinhabit the environments that have been taken away from us."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/08/t...on-occupy/

Nasty as They Want to Be

The Crackdown on Occupy

by KEVIN CARSON

Disturbing news from Occupy circles about NYPD practices these days I mean, in addition to all those other NYPD practices we were already disturbed about.
David Graeber, a prominent anarchist involved with Occupy since its beginning, recounts seeing a woman friend in New York a few weeks ago, her hand in a cast. A cop had grabbed her breast, she said.

When she raised a fuss and screamed about the groping, the cops dragged her out of sight and started working her over. "Stop resisting!" they continued to shout, as they repeatedly slammed her body into the concrete. At some point she told them she was reaching over to get her glasses, which had come off in the scuffle. In the reptilian police mind, this justified pinning her hands behind her back and bending one wrist until it snapped.

Those familiar with police riots versus anti-globalization demonstrations and the more recent Occupy demonstrations, or who follows Radley Balko and CopBlock, is aware that sexual assault's the only thing unusual about this case. As Graeber says, "arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new."

Of course sexual assault itself is hardly new as a weapon of social control, in historical terms. It appears in the arsenals of most authoritarian regimes large-scale, premeditated use of rape for ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces in Bosnia, Egyptian troops using "virginity inspections" to humiliate female demonstrators taken into custody, and so on.

But it's new in the recent American context. Graeber notes he heard no complaints of sexual assault by the NYPD before March 17; but there were several on that day (one woman reported being grabbed by five different officers), and they've continued since then. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a newly adopted "unofficial policy" of the police rank-and-file just like covering badge numbers.

What we're witnessing is the reality behind that Officer Friendly mask. This is what happens when the state perceives the general population as a threat, and drops the pretense that The Policeman is Your Friend.

People in predominantly black and Hispanic inner city neighborhoods where police hardly bother to hide the fact that they see the local population as an occupied enemy that must be cowed by superior force have seen this ugly face for decades. But in recent months, the radical upsurge in police violence at Occupy demonstrations, combined with ubiquitous cell phone video, have introduced the naked face of power to many in the white middle class public for the first time.

Lt. Pike of the UC Davis police force, methodically directing pepper spray into the upturned faces of peaceful (and predominantly white) college students, was a revelation to many in the burbs. But while it was the first sight for many, it won't be the last. Because this is what the state looks like when it can no longer afford to maintain the facade of democracy. All that nasty stuff that used to happen to "those other people" beyond that Thin Blue Line "It's Giuliani time!" is coming soon to "people like us."

The American state has operated in a manner, if not lawful at least "regular," toward most white middle-class folks most of the time, because it could afford to. It showed its nasty side to racial minorities and radicals, because they were less successfully socialized into consensus reality and nobody "who counted" would listen to them anyway. But most of the public absorbed its conditioning in a more-or-less satisfactory manner. They believed this was a "free enterprise society" in which people with great wealth mostly earned it, giant corporations got that way through superior performance, the state represented all of us rather than some "ruling class," and if you didn't like the law you should work for change within the system all that Pleasantville stuff. Constitutionalism and legality's comparatively no-muss no-fuss but only so long as the cultural reproduction apparatus successfully manufactures consent.

Now the conditioning's starting to wear off. A dangerously increasing number of people understand that the system's rigged in the interest of the 1%, and folks like us are playing in a crooked game. The state and the corporate ruling class that controls it have been stunned as measures that ten years ago would have gone through without a hitch, like SOPA and ACTA, suffered unexpected losses to networked movements. The system can't work when too many people notice the man behind the curtain.

The state's functionaries are beginning to realize how high the stakes really are. In response, its shock troops are dropping the Officer Friendly masks. So get ready: The state, before it's over, will be as nasty as it has to be.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society. his written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available online.

NYPD must have been trained by the Uganda security forces.....

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/12/...-on-earth/

Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, sits atop a hillside in an undisclosed location in Canada, watching a reporter and photographer make their way along a narrow path to join him, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement.
It's been a few weeks of encrypted emails back and forth, working out the security protocol to follow for interviewing Doyon, one of the brains behind Anonymous, now a fugitive from the FBI.

Doyon, who readily admits taking part in some of the highest-profile hacktivist attacks on websites last year from Tunisia to Orlando, Sony to PayPal was arrested in September for a comparatively minor assault on the county website of Santa Cruz, Calif., where he was living, in retaliation for the town forcibly removing a homeless encampment on the courthouse steps.

The "virtual sit-in" lasted half an hour. For that, Doyon is facing 15 years in jail.

Or at least he was facing 15 years in jail, until he crossed the border into Canada in February to avoid prosecution, using what he calls the new "underground railroad" and a network of safe houses across the country.

Thanks to his indictment, Doyon is one of the few Anonymous members whose real name is now publicly known.

But as the leader of the People's Liberation Front a hacker group allied with Anonymous and the second-most wanted information activist after WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, he prefers not to show his face, and instead dons the ubiquitous Guy Fawkes mask, to wear with his Sunday best: a sweatshirt with the Anonymous calling card, "We do not forgive … We do not forget."

Terrorists to some, heroes to others, the jury is still out on Anonymous's true nature. Known for its robust defence of Internet freedom and the right to remain anonymous Anonymous came in first place in Time Magazine's 2012 online poll on the most influential person in the world.

Fox News, on the other hand, has branded the hackers "domestic terrorists," a role Anonymous has been cast to play in the latest Call of Duty Black Ops II, in which Anonymous appears as the enemy who takes control of unmanned drones in the not-too-distant future. (That creative decision may have put Activision, the creator of the video-game series, at the top of the Anonymous hit list.) For its part, much of what Anonymous does and says about itself, in the far reaches of the Internet, cannot be verified. Nor do all Anons agree on who they are as a group, and where they are going.


Q: As strictly an online army of hackers, how powerful is Anonymous?
A: Anonymous is kind of like the big buff kid in school who had really bad self-esteem then all of a sudden one day he punched someone in the face and went, "Holy s I'm really strong!" Scientology (one of Anonymous's first targets) was the punch in the face where Anonymous began to realize how incredibly powerful they are. There's a really good argument at this point that we might well be the most powerful organization on Earth. The entire world right now is run by information. Our entire world is being controlled and operated by tiny invisible 1s and 0s that are flashing through the air and flashing through the wires around us. So if that's what controls our world, ask yourself who controls the 1s and the 0s? It's the geeks and computer hackers of the world.

Q: What does it mean to be a leader of a leaderless organization?
A: We don't sit around and elect a president but that doesn't mean there aren't leaders within Anonymous. Naturally Commander X or Barrett Brown or Peter Fein, whether they have names or are still anonymous, they take a leadership role and are looked up to. The average Anon is not like me, working 12 hours a day dedicating their life to this. He's an IT guy or a cable installer with a few hours to spare and he wants to be told what to do. It takes organizers to get things done. Anyone in Anon can be a spokesperson but my ability to speak is based on how much what I say squares with the consensus of the collective.

Q: It seems like there's a war going on between hacktivists or information activists and law enforcement. (At least 40 alleged members of Anonymous have been arrested around the world in the last year.) Who do you think is winning right now?
A: I think it's a stalemate at the moment. I think eventually we'll win. I've always believed that right will always prevail. But at the moment the arrests have had a chilling effect on the movement. For a 30-minute online protest I'm facing 15 years in a penitentiary. For the moment that's the only indictment against me but I expect there will be more. And it's not just about the potential penalty but it's the trial itself for which they delivered a terabyte of discovery. That's about 150,000 pages for a 30-minute protest. That means my trial will be two years long and during that time I'm under strict surveillance by the FBI. I can't access Twitter, Facebook or IRCs (Internet Relay Chats) I can't contact any known member of Anonymous who are about 50,000 people around the world.

So basically it shuts me down as an activist. Even if I prevail in court, I'm still shut down for two years. Well, I'm unwilling to do that and that's why I'm Canada. In Syria and Tunisia, Libya, Egypt in Nigeria in the Ivory Coast, we have saved so many lives I can't even count activists and journalists and bloggers and people who come to us to keep themselves safe in these extremely hostile environments and I'm unwilling to lay that kind of work down.

Q: Now that you're in Canada for the foreseeable future, do you feel relatively safe?
A: Yes. We have a lot of contacts in the Canadian government. We were well prepared when I came here, we have an underground railway, and safe houses in Canada. We might be wrong, but our understanding is that the Canadian government is about equally concerned with Anonymous and the United States. Their approach will be: "Step lively, don't stay long, and you'll be fine." So we're in negotiation with several countries in Europe to try to get a permanent political asylum situation set up for myself as well as for any other Anons and information activists who might need it. … It's too bad Canada will not find the political courage to protect information activists from America like they did in the 60s with the draft dodgers. That's the reality of it, but they will probably not actively seek to track me down.

Q: Do you think the general public is not concerned enough with online surveillance or real-life surveillance?
A: I think the general public is beginning to learn the value of information. To give an example, for a very long time nobody in the U.S. or the world was allowed to know the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan or Iraq. There were wild guesses and they were all over the ballpark figures, until a young army private named Bradley Manning had the courage to steal that information from the U.S. government and release it. Now we know that despite their smart munitions and all their high-technology they have somehow managed to accidentally kill 150,000 civilians in two countries. … As these kinds of startling facts come out, the public will begin to realize the value of the information and they will realize that the activists are risking everything for that information to be public.

Q: What do you say to people who believe Anons are just cyber-terrorists?
A: Basically I decline the semantic argument. If you want to call me a terrorist, I have no problem with that. But I would ask you, "Who is it that's terrified?" If it's the bad guys who are terrified, I'm really super OK with that. If it's the average person, the people out in the world we are trying to help who are scared of us, I'd ask them to educate themselves, to do some research on what it is we do and lose that fear. We're fighting for the people, we are fighting, as Occupy likes to say, for the 99%. It's the 1% people who are wrecking our planet who should be quite terrified. If to them we are terrorists, then they probably got that right.

"Information terrorist" what a funny concept. That you could terrorize someone with information. But who's terrorized? Is it the common people reading the newspaper and learning what their government is doing in their name? They're not terrorized they're perfectly satisfied with that situation. It's the people trying to hide these secrets, who are trying to hide these crimes. The funny thing is every email database that I've ever been a part of stealing, from Pres. Assad to Stratfor security, every email database, every single one has had crimes in it. Not one time that I've broken into a corporation or a government, and found their emails and thought, "Oh my God, these people are perfectly innocent people, I made a mistake."

Q: What do you think of the student protests in Quebec?
A: Wherever I go, especially in the last two years, I have found protests. I had no idea this was going on in Canada and the day I arrived in Montreal I was in a coffee house downtown on the corner of Ste. Catherine and St. Hubert. And there was a protest right there at that park across the street. The entire intersection became inflamed, I watched police absolutely brutalize these kids, spraying can after can of tear gas, launching off pop-bang grenades, tear gas grenades, and the worse thing I saw these kids do, one of them threw a snowball, and one of them threw an orange rubber cone at these cops. I mean these cops are in full body armour for God's sake, that's not violence. But what was done to these kids was so violent that the coffee shop manager locked us all into the coffee shop. Locked the doors while all around us, literally in these glass windows all around us, we watched the kids get beaten down. Wherever I go whether Oakland, San Francisco, Montreal, everywhere I go I see the same stuff. I see people rising up demanding justice and these brutal, paramilitary police departments being used to crush them and sure, I get involved.

Q: Anonymous started out as online pranksters but has gotten a whole lot more serious in the last two years. What happened?
A: I believe Egypt was really a turning point for us emotionally in Anonymous. Obviously there was always that sort of prankster edge to us. But people often ask me, "Why are you so mean nowadays?" It started in Egypt when you work for days to set up live video feeds and the first thing you watch through those feeds is people killing your friends with machine guns that becomes personal. And then it's not just Egypt, it's Libya, Tunisia, over and over again these Freedom Ops are really what gave us a sort of take-no prisoners attitude. We get to know these people. It may not be the same as you and I sitting here, but when you Skype with people and spend hours and hours talking with them on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and they share their hopes and their dreams with you for their country, their future, when they tell you how they're risking their lives so their children can have a better future in some far-off land, you bond with those people and they become your friends and family.

Q. What's next for Anonymous?
A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It's a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn't hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don't run anything anymore. It's the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody.

Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they're not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they're coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they're giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned.