The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy
Rocco
of the US governments complicity with the brutality being waged
against OWS.
Rocco
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy
Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 November 2011 12.25 EST
US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images
of unparallelled police 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 with law
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 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 was appearing 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 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.