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The most surprising thing I saw in there was that he broke no laws; come on guys, we're more creative than that. Surely we can come up with something to charge him with?

The OWS people are idiots for not replacing all their signs with this story yesterday and focusing everything on a call for his head. This is what people mean when they complain about their lack of organization.

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Yes, and it's far from as functional as it should be.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Perhaps they were too busy getting arrested for peaceful protest in a public park (LA edition).

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Agreed, but who cares about charging him? All we need is to have the issue raised to the level of, say, Penn State, or Syracuse. The Treasury Secretary suborns, if not encourages, insider trading, and the story goes nowhere. A couple geriatric coaches might lose their jobs because assistants have molested children and... holy motherfucking shit! Front. Page. News.

It's easy to say, "The masses have always been obsessed with the circuses." True. But I think it goes beyond that. I think the masses are now engaged not in diversion, but in outright reshaping of their narratives of what's actually going on around them. They know the deck's stacked by interests with which they will never compete, they know we've turned into a crony capitalist joke, and they know that none of the parties, or institutions, in which they're asked to place their faith are credible. So they've decided, "Fuck it. If I don't read the bad news, or the stories of corruption, it will somehow disappear. Or at least I won't have to consider the ugliness of what's at hand. I don't want to read about Hank Paulson engaged in defrauding me because I want to believe things will get better and that decency will win out. I want to hold on to the belief in the dream, and that good will prevail. So I'm not reading any more of the math, or the investigative journalism. I'm going to hold on to hope. Believe this will pass."

This thinking concerns me, and it should concern you, because when these types of thinkers - and they are the majority of lower-to-middle-class-Americans - are finally forced to react, they will flip out. The pendulum will shift so radically in favor of redistribution, we'll all be in horrible tax brackets for the rest of our lives.

We need to start focusing on the individual miscreants involved in acts like Paulson's. Change the narrative from masses v. elites to one of "a few thousand bad apples." Because when the angry decide to lash out, the politicians will placate them with tax policy. And when they do, they'll find there aren't enough rich people to tax to give the angry 75% what they feel they deserve. So they'll look a few rungs down the ladder. To the doctors, the lawyers, the small businessmen with upper middle class income, etc.

And it won't be a mere few thousand a year. Pendulums shift radically.

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I have nothing against peaceful arrests of peaceful protestors who are breaking the law - when I've done civil disobedience it's what I expected to happen.

As long as they weren't pepper spraying them, arresting press and legal observers who weren't breaking the law, and doing other bad stuff.

But if the method gets in the way of the message, they are doing somethign wrong.

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I mostly agree, and have no outrage over what happened in LA, based on what I've heard so far.

But I'm still not sure what purpose is served by arresting them, even peacefully, nor am I sure that hanging out in a public park in front of city hall for a political protest should ever count as breaking the law. Can you think of any purer definition of protected political speech in a public forum?

eta: I'm a little amazed that he LAPD was able to act without resort to violence though. Maybe all the protesters were white?

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I'm quite happy Menino seems fine with just letting them hang out and be a tourist attraction. I don't know what anyone is eager to arrest them.

I also don't know if they just arrested everyone or actually looked for things they did that broke the law (e.g., starting a fire would pretty clearly break the law in the Boston encampment). I'm betting NYCLU gets most of the arrests there thrown out, and what does that say about the City?

If nothing else, OWS seems to have given the LAPD some real training. They should get paid for that.

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Minneapolis is really dwindling, at least as to the main protest in the government plaza. Maybe there are 10 or 15 people left at a time.

Although some of them have moved to occupying houses that are facing foreclosure. As that's not outside my office window, I have not followed it as closely.

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The City has been very patient. They had a deadline for them to vacate about a week ago, so that the park could be cleaned and the protestors ignored it. The mayor even offered them free office space (unfucking believable).

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I guess I don't have a problem with temporarily closing public forums so they can be cleaned. The mayor told them they could come back the next day then?

Also, what good is office space for protesting?

I guess I fundamentally bristle at "he ordered them to and they ignored it" as a grounds for arrest, even accepting that the order was legal and justly motivated.

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I don't get assembling at Dodger Stadium to move into City Hall. Aren't they miles away fro meach other? Plus, who cares about city hall? does anyone work downtown anyway?

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So you are essentially for anarchy? There were public health concerns that the mayor believed needed to be addressed. This seems rationale to me. Those camps, from what I have read, have become disgustingly unsanitary over the last few months.

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The police assembled 1200 officers pre-raid at Dodger Stadium (which is a few miles away), I assume for planning/organizational purposes. Yes, people work downtown - it's actually had a pretty successful revival since the Staples Center went up.

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There are more than 13,000 homeless children in LA. Would that their health concerns aroused the same sense of urgency as the health concerns of political protesters.

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Uh, no. But I don't think a peaceful protest in a park is exactly the first step in that direction.

Really? Were they endangering anyone but themselves? If not, doesn't that sounds like a pretty convenient pretext to you?

But again, if they weren't a pretext, why wouldn't the city tell them they can come back after things are cleaned up?

All of these raids seem pretty blatantly meant to get the protester to go away, and again, I'm not terribly comfortable with arresting people only for that reason.

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If they were all aggregated in the same public place, along with a bunch of other hooligans, drug dealers, derelicts, etc., yes.

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I don't know LA geography really at all, but you're saying there aren't places where groups of homeless congregate that don't get raided and cleared out by the police? I find that REALLY hard to believe.

Well, as long as they are people you can look down your nose at, then fine, imprison them for their politic speech.

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It's not the protest, its the refusal to abide by the law.

Um, yes. Have you ever heard of disease? No this doesn't sound like a pretext to me. We have laws, some of which require protestors to get a permit and to comply with it.

The pretext is that these protests have anything to do with free speech. They do not. When I was in SF, the protests over Iraq were essentially an excuse for the anarchists to cause trouble, and I do not see anything different here.

Please tell me, what exactly are they protesting?

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There is skid row, which is the most awful place I have ever been. It is truly horrific, like being on a different planet among walking cracked out zombies in utter squalor. The down and out have essentially been aggregated there more or less under the theory that it's better than having them spread out around town. The police roll through there to keep the peace, but that's about it.

I don't look down on the protestors, but I think they are dangerous. They are also killing local industry downtown. This isn't about free speech.

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Can anyone really say public health concerns anymore without laughing? Come on. Some lawyers figured out that was a way to get around free speech issues, and now it's used every time ten kids show up on a quad.

Perhaps if there is someone doing drugs, the police should arrest that person rather than the twenty people around him.

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Fair enough -- but is there any point at which you say that the encampments and occupation of a central part of a city (which, in some places at least, has completely fucked the small and family businesses that are not exactly avatars of Wall Street) have gone on long enough? It's easy to criticize the police but less so to say what should be done. Do you really just let the Occupy protests continue forever if there is no violence?

You and Adder have an easy option -- it'll be too goddamn cold soon, where you live. Not as true where I live, vastly less so for club.

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What's the law here? And why is it something other than "we don't want you to protest that way?"

What diseases were spreading through the camp? Which of them risked spill over outside the camp?

None and none?

Since when are you so credulous of government? Is it just because they're just cracking down on dirty hippies (I'm sorry, "hooligans and derelicts")?

To protest in the park in front of city hall? I really can't square the notion that you need permit for that with the concept of the first amendment at all (but you might be right that the supreme court can).

But was there a violation of a permit here? I've not seen any mention of permitting issues in the press coverage.

Seriously? People with signs, drum circles and meetings have nothing to do with free speech? That's completely irrational.

Of course, because no one could possibly be sincerely anti-war.

But even if you're right, anarchists have free speech rights too.

You don't? How much rioting and looting has happened?

Everything I've read and seen suggests that they are a disparate group, but the common theme seems to be discontent with a political system that's overwhelmed by the influence of money.

If you went by in Minneapolis, you'd see signs about higher taxes for the rich, bailouts for people instead of banks, some pro-labor messages and a few of whatever the heck Ron Paul supports believe in.

But fine, your ignorance, or their lack of precise coordination and tight messaging makes them merely hooligan out to have a good time by camping out. Uh huh.

I now picture you with a flat top and a cardigan. When's the last time you yelled at some kids to get off your lawn?

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Dangerous? How? Have you been to the protest site?

What other dangerous elements do you support locking up for their political activities?

What's it about then? They are really just rival suburban business men who are trying to reduce competition from the downtown industries they are "killing?"

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Here the County Commission, whose doorstep the now-tiny Occupy camp sits on, has made noises about having to clear them out because it's going to get cold and they could get frostbite.

Um. They are Minnesotans. They know how to avoid frostbite. And if they fail, that's their problem.

As the landowner, you've told them they can't be there and you've told them of the risk. I don't think you need to arrest anyone to avoid potential liability.

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A friend of mine goes down to feed breakfast to the protestors every now and then. He never said anything about it being unsanitary there, though I never thought to ask. I'll ask, the next time I talk to him.

He said the riot police on Sunday were very nice.

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This all started with me saying I've got nothing against cops peacefully arresting someone who is peacefully protesting. As long as that protestor is breaking the law.

In Boston, there is a court process underway to establish the extent of their free speech rights. Only after a court approves it will the city be free to remove them. The city has used force to limit the encampment to a particular area, and within that space has enforced laws against those breaking them, but not attempted some kind of broad clearance.

Seems reasonable.

A never ending protest would be pretty damn tedious, but, then, so was the Fantastix. We've got a couple of them around here, though - don't you?

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How have they done that? Obviously it's going to specific to the location.

But take Zucotti Park. It's an empty square block in lower Manhattan. Did they prevent people from getting to the Burger King and the local deli, or were they extra customers for those places?

Same here in Minneapolis. They are impeding exactly no small businesses, and probably providing more customers.

Is LA different?

I guess I don't get why that's a hard question. Of course. It will fade away eventually, and trying to do something about it almost always pushes that eventually further into the future.

LAPD seems to have handled it well, which is really impressive and might make the raid less counterproductive than the Oakland approach, but it still isn't likely to solve anything.

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Are you basing that on actually seeing the protests, or on seeing news coverage of them?

Back when the first Iraq war broke out, I was in a number of protests. These were huge marches -- I was in one that started at Justin Hermann plaza and reached Civic Center plaza; Civic Center plaza and Market Street were completely packed, and there were still many people in Justin Herman plaza.

And yet, the news coverage of these protests was all about the "anarchists" doing stupid shit. In reporting on one march, with many tens of thousands of people, the TV news showed the same 3 guys running around and knocking over newspaper boxes. Undoubtedly there were people doing stuff like that -- but the fact that they had to follow these three guys, and no one else, was a pretty good sign that it was very minimal and rare.

I stopped watching TV news after, and specifically because of, this idiotic coverage. So I can't say if it was that biased in the run-up to the more recent war on Iraq. But i would not be surprised -- the country was more gung-ho for W's war than for Bush I's, the news has gotten ever-more biased, and perhaps you were watching FOX?

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Right -- it did start that way. I forgot that post.

Would you complain if riot police broke up the Fantastix? Or Cats?

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Don't know about LA. In Oakland, they are. In SF, they are pretty much ignored.

I'm not suggesting that concern for small businesses is what motivated the Oakland cops to start busting heads.



I remember years ago when homeless tents sprouted around SF City Hall. Most people I knew really didn't want to go anywhere near the area. I do think there's a point where you say enough. I'm not convinced that any, and certainly not most, of the Occupy protests have been anywhere near that point.

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I am astonished that the Ghost of TS Eliot hasn't hunted down and killed every damn actor to ever appear in Cats.

I would still not let the police pepper spray them all, but would have no objection if the police stood by while the Writer's Guild went all Atticus on them with police batons.

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The big IMF/World Bank protests in DC (2001? 2002?) were the same way. There were a few "anarchists," who could be easily identified by their clothes, who got a lot of attention and may have been looking for opportunities for vandalism. But there were also thousands of other well-intentioned, if largely poorly informed, others who were sincere in urging "more world, less bank."

I used to circumnavigate the massive set of barriers the police set up that closed off most of central DC to check out what the protester were up to. The "anarchists" were far from representative, but were frequently featured in the news.

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In Houston, the area in front of City Hall was donated by someone who apparently stipulated that people couldn't be arrested for sleeping on that land. The validity of the stipulation on the bequest has been disputed, but the city attorney said no arrests could be made for sleeping there. The city made a deal with the Occupy folk that they could have another park next door (because the area in front of City Hall is used for a lot of non-Occupy stuff). There are probably 60 people there most of the time, and it's not in an area that's used too much. I suspect that nothing will happen to them, because it's just not that big of a deal here.

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I drove by over the weekend, and Boston's occupy had a sizable crowd of tourists around a drum circle, a couple of cops chatting up occupettes, and two stray hairy guys holding signs no one was paying attention to. The sidewalks were all clear and it was a carnival like atmosphere. The drum circle wasn't bad at all.

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Don't you need a permit for assembly like this?

These are idiotic question. Not to purposely channel Hank, but you obviously no nothing about science.

Since I've read the various reports of what's going on at these sites. Human waste, violence (including rape), etc.

I'm no Con Law scholar, but has the S.Ct. done away with time, method and manner?


Ha! You have me all wrong. I actually do not think the 1st amendment has many limits, but I do think the right to assemble needs to be balanced with other interests.

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Dude, you live in Minnesota. My high school had a larger population than your entire state. You've got know clue what goes on in a big city.

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Would be interested to know his take.

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From what I've heard/read about LA, SF and Oakland, they are killing the mom and pop businesses - defecating on walls, scaring away commerce, etc.

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Yes, I was in the financial district during that time and witnessed it with my own eyes.

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Sounds like Venice Beach.