Occupy: Do Not Go Gentle Into That New Year

As we bid 2011 good riddance, let’s take a few moments to gird for the battles ahead in 2012:

* It’s an election year: the president, a third of the Senate, and the whole House, plus various state governors and legislators and others. Meantime, a vocal minority is still holding our national government hostage to its revolutionary cant and its pledges to everyone but the American people.

* The assclowns who wrecked our economy are still in their high towers, still looking down on the 99%, still snapping their fingers for their pet government officials.

* The militarization of our municipal police departments proceeds apace.

* The wars on drugs, terror, immigrants, gays, women, workers, and free speech continue unabated.

I hold increasingly little hope for the American experiment our forebears set in motion, but I tend toward pessimism. We are not, in fact, preparing for a civil war, and many of our problems are perennial or even cyclical. And as one of the great book editors of our era, Marco Palmieri, tells us, “Pessimism is a misuse of imagination.”

So let’s be imaginative as we look ahead.

John Lennon said, “As soon as you react with violence, they know exactly what to do with you. Using humor and creativity in protest are the only things the establishment are not prepared to deal with.”

The establishment has gotten pretty good about using pepper spray to deal with peaceful, creative people. But we can still out-think them and bring them to heel.

Norman Lear urges us to use our creativity and our patriotism and our sense of right and wrong to stand up for the Constitution and for human decency. The country we save may be our own.

Occupy: An Arrest in Los Angeles

Take good note of this first-person account of being arrested at an Occupy Movement event in Los Angeles. Note that the brave, dedicated men in blue did what they could to inflict violence and pain and humiliation on unarmed, peaceful people whose crime was sitting down and exercising their First Amendment rights.

Three points:

1) The men and women who nearly collapsed the global economy are still at it, still employed by organizations deemed too big to fail, still receiving enormous paychecks and bonuses.

2) Those who peacefully protest against the oligarchy are brutalized and given the maximum sentences possible for misdemeanors. The protestors are dangerous to the economic elites, and what the elites order the police to do is a direct measure of their fear.

3) That the police commit such acts of barbarity shows us that they are no longer members of the communities they are sworn to serve and protect; they are militarized in mind and body, and all they care about is taking down the enemy. By which they mean us.

Occupy: A New Purpose for Catsignal

You see the new category here at Catsignal: Occupy.

Since I first relaunched Catsignal as a place to share my writing, I have been almost relentlessly apolitical. By and large, I have restricted my occasional political or social observations to my stories because this is a writing blog, and that is a time-honored method of bringing concerns to people’s attention.

That has changed. The unconscionable attacks against peaceful protestors in the Occupy Movement, the use of riot police, pepper spray, batons, beanbag and rubber projectiles against American citizens who are exercising their First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble, to petition their government for a redress of grievances” cannot be ignored.

Catsignal is not going to become the go-to source for all your Occupy Movement news; this remains, first and foremost, a writing blog. But I will repeat – for the sake of doing what I can from the hinterlands of a red state – word of the outrages so that you, too, may be outraged. That you, too, will speak out. That you, too, will do what you can where you are to make a difference.

“Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.”
– Edward Yashinsky

Occupy: More Violence, Wall Street Scheming

More news from the burgeoning police state. (With thanks to the good people at BoingBoing for their coverage.)

The chancellor of the University of California at Davis called on police to remove peaceful protestors – students, faculty, a former poet laureate of the United States – from the campus. The police gleefully did their work with their batons and all the pepper spray they could muster.

Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the Department of English at UC Davis, has written to the chancellor demanding that she resign. It’s a powerful letter that I’m sure will have no effect on the chancellor’s stunted conscience, but it may well prove to be be a springboard toward her removal. (Update: Here’s the chancellor’s response, to wit: I’m so sorry this terrible thing happened, but it’s their fault for breaking the rules.)

Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, a Washington, DC, lobbying firm sent a memo to one of its clients, the American Banking Association, outlining a plan to discredit the Occupy Movement. The memo clearly demonstrates that the 1% is terrified of Occupy’s political power, which is a pretty impressive admission since the movement is constantly pummeled for “not having a clear agenda.” Story and video here, PDF of the memo here.

And New York’s billionaire mayor, not content with evicting the protestors from the park where they had set up shop, had the OWS library destroyed in the process. I hardly need to add my own outrage here for my fellow word lovers.

The 1% is fighting back with egregious force, and they will continue to do so. Historically, this marks the beginning of the downfall of the dictators. Even those who disagree with the Occupy Movement cannot possibly (I hope) approve of the Nazi-style tactics being used on peaceful citizens. Of course, I could be wrong, and then the Constitution is just words on paper.

“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.”
– Rod Serling, “The Obsolete Man,” The Twilight Zone

Occupy: And Then They Fight You

Remember the saying: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

* * *

A Timeline of Force Used Against the Occupy Movement

September

1: First day of OWS
4: First arrests using 1845 law banning masks at demonstrations
24: 80 arrests; police use tasers and mace on peaceful crowd; police officer caught on video macing a young woman (he lost 10 vacation days as punishment)

October

1, 2: Police arrest demonstrators on Brooklyn Bridge
8: Police pepper spray protestors in Washington, D.C.
10: Boston police arrest 140 protestors
15: Police across the nation arrest peaceful protestors
25: Oakland, CA, police attack peaceful protestors en masse with teargas, beanbag grenades, rubber bullets; Marine veteran of Iraq War shot in head with rubber bullet, hospitalized in critical condition
29: Denver, CO, police attack Occupy demonstration, fire pellets filled with pepper spray
30: Portland,OR, police arrest two dozen peaceful demonstrators

November

3: Riot police attack peaceful Occupy Oakland protest with teargas, flash-bang grenades; more than 100 arrested, another Iraq War veteran seriously injured by police
14: Police clear out Occupy Oakland protest site, arrest 20 peaceful protestors
15: Beginning at 1 a.m., NYPD officers carry out surprise raid, cordon off OWS site, keep residents of area inside, prevent journalists from observing, arrest more than 70 people. Journalists barred from area even hours later, including CBS helicopter prevented from entering airspace above protest site; NY’s billionaire mayor ignored court order to let OWS protestors back on site; NYPD continued to arrest protestors, journalists; NY mayor says if he has to choose between people’s rights and safety, safety wins. Another judge sides with city to remove protestors. Oakland mayor says attacks on Occupy Movement in 18 cities coordinated. Seattle police use pepper spray on peaceful protestors, including a pregnant woman and a blind woman, make arrests.

* * *

Continue reading “Occupy: And Then They Fight You”