The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy

8/3/2019 The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy

1/3

Printing sponsored by:

The shocking truth about the crackdown

on OccupyThe violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence.Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

Naomi Wolf

guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 November 2011 17.25 GMT

larger | smaller

Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes with police over the eviction of

OWS from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelledpolice brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities

across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the

scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of

riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women targeted seemingly

for their gender screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures

of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record

of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture was this crazy police and

mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? the picture darkened.

The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a

Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement withlaw enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times

reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground

and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were

asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully

did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering,

and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing

press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being falsely informed by

police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were

beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was


2/3

beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and

Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the

Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call

advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of

government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or

militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I wasappearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a

leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy.

Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top.

This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal

overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit

together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed,

inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and

others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping?

As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding

chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so

surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this

hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I

simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from

Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to

blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the

campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation,with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act the Depression-era

law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from

commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as

investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin

air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently

allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations

in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list and especially the last agenda item the scales fell from my eyes.

Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland

Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS

cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS

is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King,

head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his

fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly,

above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of

command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of


3/3

2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces

pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS to make

war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its

own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of

Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper

middle class) but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the

"scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few

hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn

lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are

legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known and if the books were to

be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we

do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on

non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating a

form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police

informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look

like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to

the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake

derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed

members of Congress to profit personally and immensely from their own legislation,

are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement well,

you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the

first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing

violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American

president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to

represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams.

Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are,

those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters

of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see

their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making

war upon us.

Documents

The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy