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Feds Helped Coordinate Occupy X Crackdowns
Lawrence_Bird writes "The Feds helped break up the Occupy protests by providing advice and assistance from the FBI and DHS. From the article: 'Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said on Monday that her city and others across the country coordinated their crackdowns of Occupy Wall Street camps. Rick Ellis, a Minneapolis-based journalist for Examiner.com, reports that these cities also had the help of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation." In related conspiracy news, apcullen wrote in with a story by Time Magazine guest columnist Naomi Wolf who claims: "Instead of imminent safety issues, the timing of the crackdown was far more likely to do with the fact that the Occupy movement was planning something media-savvy at last: a 'carnival' on Wall Street on Thursday in which protesters would telegenically tell their individual stories of hardship, job loss and disenfranchisement. It is that event that posed a 'safety risk' — to the efforts of Wall Street and the Bloomberg administration to manage the narrative."
Yeah, but this happens in Oakland even without the occupy protests.... its a shithole (I've lived there.)
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Squatting on property that isn't yours isn't a speech issue, it is a trespass or theft issue.
That's simply a bogus argument:
1. The reason the protesters were on private property rather than public property is that they'd been barred from using public property.
2. The owners of the private property never objected to the protester's presence there. In order for being on someone else's property to be considered trespassing, the owner has to not want you to be there (e.g. if I walk through a church parking lot and nobody complains, that's not trespassing).
3. The private property in question was actually required, by city ordinance, to be open to the public at all times, so even if they had objected they weren't allowed to do anything about it.
No permits
You don't need a permit to stand on a sidewalk holding a sign, unless you are planning on blocking something. The initial protests were in places the protesters had every right to be without a permit. The police responded with pepper spray.
paid for portapotties, etc.
The Occupy Wall St general meeting which is more-or-less in charge requested permission to have portapotties brought in, paid for by the protesters. The police refused to allow that.
Hell, most left the place cleaner than when they arrived.
When Bloomberg first suggested that people would have to leave the park so it could be cleaned, the protesters responded by cleaning up the park before the deadline.
I am officially gone from
Because the right of the people to assemble peaceably doesn't have a time-limit? "You may assemble, but not at night. Limit your protests in public spaces to ten hours a day" isn't in the Constitution.
No, but just because you are protesting doesn't allow you to violate the law. If there are laws in place restricting the ability to set up a camp in a park, bring in generators, create health code violations etc., it must apply equally to all citizens.
I also find it highly ironic that some of the protesters relying on the 1st amendment to enable their protest, also take offense
to the very same freedom of the press that amendment enables.
I don't know what you're referring to here, and I'm curious about it.
Here's a few examples
http://www.pixiq.com/article/occupy-wall-street-activists-assault-and-threaten-videographer
http://www.pixiq.com/article/reporter-assaulted-investigating-who-pooped-and-peed-on-the-bank
http://www.pixiq.com/article/occupy-dc-activist-threatens
Granted, these idiots are the 1% of the 99% that really give the well meaning protesters a bad name
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
GAH! You are willfully ignorant if you don't know what their agenda is at this point.
They are NOT! pissed off about people making money. Communists are the extreme minority of the protesters.
They are pissed about corruption in the system that disenfranchises the vast majority of people for the personal gain of a handful of plutocrats.
The vast majority of them don't give a damn about rich people being rich. The problem is that being rich means you can make other people poor.
What do we want done about it? Campaign finance reform for one. Balancing the budget by eliminating tax breaks and raising taxes on those most capable of providing the burden. Cutting graft and corrupt influences from the government.
Not an occupier, but have been down there at Occupy Portland on and off almost since it began.
>Drug overdoses in the camp went from none, to one per week, to multiple per week.
This could be true. It reflects Portland's general drug problems, and is not really high for the number of people there. Trying to pin it on the protest is not really honest.
>Reports of sexual assaults in the tents and makeshift structures were coming out almost daily.
Were these reports from within the camp, or from opponents outside of it? We are talking about regular camping tents set up in a public space, not really the kind of place where sexual assault would go easily unnoticed.
>Vandalism to the parks and surrounding businesses went out of control
I saw one spray paint graffiti on a wall, which is unfortunate but not out of character for the area. The protesters brought plenty of cardboard to make signs with, and almost all the messages and art were done on boards, not surrounding structures.
>I haven't gone down there myself
Well, that explains a lot
>the parks will require major repairs and some businesses were closed
The grass in the park died due to the tents, and I think the restrooms were clogged. However, the occupation did set up a fund to pay for that, I have no idea whether they have paid out of it though. As for businesses, I don't know of any that closed, though the 7-11 reported some shoplifting.
>The last straw was the elements in the camp seeking confrontation stock piling shields and weapons including molatov cocktails, rocks, sticks and homemade frag grenades made with glass and fireworks.
Where did you hear this, on Fox News? I did not see anything of that sort going on. The fuel for the generators was placed in a locked cage at the suggestion of the fire marshal a couple of weeks ago.
>I heard people starting to talk about forming an angry mob with their own sticks and rocks to go down and confront the camps if the police didn't do anything.
Do your friends beat up homeless people for fun?
>The mayor was/is sympathetic to the protesters but simply had to go with the national effort to crack down because a mutiny in his own police department and community was brewing.
The mayor and powers that be are simply trying to sweep problems of the city under the rug, or disperse them where they don't have to see them. The homeless problem, the drug problem, the unemployment problem are all problems of the city as a whole, but they want to be able to ignore that so they don't want a single, highly visible concentration of it.