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Policing the Prophets of Wall Street
The Occupy Wall Street protest grows daily, spreading to cities across the United States. “We are the 99 percent,” the protesters say, “that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.”
The response by the New York City Police Department has been brutal. Last Saturday, the police swept up more than 700 protesters in one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history. The week before, innocent protesters were pepper-sprayed in the face without warning or reason.
That is why, after receiving a landmark settlement this week from the police departments of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as the U.S. Secret Service, my colleagues and I went to Liberty Square, the heart of the Wall Street occupation, to announce the legal victory.
On Labor Day 2008, the “Democracy Now!” news team and I were covering the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Thousands protested outside. I was on the convention floor, interviewing delegates from what that week was the hottest state, Alaska. Blocks away, my colleagues Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were covering a police assault on the dispersing crowd of marchers.
The riot police had hemmed the protesters into a parking lot, along with credentialed journalists. The police charged at Nicole, shouting “On your face!” She shouted back “Press, press!” holding up her press credentials in one hand and filming with the other, video-recording her own violent arrest. She screamed as they brought her down on her face, a knee or boot in her back, dragging on her leg and bloodying her face. The first thing they then did was pull the battery from her camera, if there was any question about what they did not want documented. As Sharif tried to calm the riot(ing) police, they pushed him against a brick wall, kicked him in the chest twice, threw him down and handcuffed him.
I got a call on my cell phone and raced from the Convention Center to the scene of the arrests. The riot police had encircled the area. I ran up to the police, my credentials hanging around my neck. I asked for the commanding officer to get my journalist colleagues released. It wasn’t seconds before they tore me through the police line, twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me. Finally brought to stand next to Sharif, as fully credentialed journalists, we demanded to be released, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped the credentials from around our necks.
We filed suit. This past week, the St. Paul and Minneapolis police and the Secret Service have settled with us. In addition to paying out $100,000, the St. Paul police department has agreed to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the First Amendment rights of the press and public with respect to police operations—including police handling of media coverage of mass demonstrations—and to pursue implementation of the training program in Minneapolis and statewide.
As we move into the next conventions and cover protests like Occupy Wall Street, this largest settlement to come out of the 2008 RNC arrests should be a warning to police departments around the country to stop arresting and intimidating journalists, or engaging in any unlawful arrests. We shouldn’t have to get a record while trying to put things on the record.
But do police actually pay the price? Before the 2008 Republican and Democratic national conventions, each party bought insurance policies to indemnify the convention cities from any damages resulting from lawsuits.
Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told me: “St. Paul actually negotiated a special insurance provision with the Republican host committee so that the first $10 million in liability for lawsuits arising from the convention will be covered by the host committee. ... It basically means we (the city) can commit wrongdoing, and we won’t have to pay for it.”
Jump forward to today. The bailed-out Wall Street megabank JPMorgan Chase gave a tax-deductible $4.6 million donation to the New York City Police Foundation, which has protesters asking: Who is the NYPD paid to protect, the public or the corporations? The 99 percent or the 1 percent?
Marina Sitrin, part of Occupy Wall Street’s legal working group, told me that the protest was going to be based at Chase Plaza, but the NYPD pre-emptively closed it. The protesters moved to Zuccotti Park, which they renamed Liberty Square.
According to an undated press release on JPMorgan Chase’s website, in response to the $4.6 million donation: “New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing ‘profound gratitude’ for the company’s donation.” Given the size of the donation, and the police harassment and violence against the protesters, we must question how Kelly shows his gratitude.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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Show All"But do police actually pay the price? Before the 2008 Republican and Democratic national conventions, each party bought insurance policies to indemnify the convention cities from any damages resulting from lawsuits.
Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told me: “St. Paul actually negotiated a special insurance provision with the Republican host committee so that the first $10 million in liability for lawsuits arising from the convention will be covered by the host committee. ... It basically means we (the city) can commit wrongdoing, and we won’t have to pay for it.”
are these the same insurance companies that just profitted from obama care ?
...peace...
"are these the same insurance companies that just profitted from obama care ?"
Yes. Yes they are.
These are also the same insurance companies that benefited from TARP and other financial services industry bailouts.
I'm thinking back to this past March, and the near 24-hour coverage of the 'Arab Spring' in Egypt, and the feigned outrage of the network talking heads when the Egyptian Police and Military (funded and equipped by the US) slammed again and again against the bulwark of the protestors in Tahrir Square.
Compare that with the near zero coverage of the current protests in the US, and protests happening again in Egypt because the people there realize that handing power over to the corrupt US backed Egyptian military is NOT what they want, plus the open mockery of the Occupy Movement by the US Media.
I guess it's only 'Democracy (tm)' when it's other people who want to be free.
" In addition to paying out $100,000, the St. Paul police department has agreed to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the First Amendment rights of the press and public with respect to police operations—including police handling of media coverage of mass demonstrations—and to pursue implementation of the training program in Minneapolis and statewide."
I find it strange that hasn't been part of their training all along. Exactly what sort of training have they been receiving? Police are not aware of First Amendment Rights??? Just what level of education do they have? In California we have to study the constitution in the eighth grade.
So the Republican National Committee and J.P. Morgan are actually, openly, paying city police departments to brutalize protesters. They're covered. Nothing will really happen to them. Bash away, fascist cops! Wall Street and the Republicans have your back. If this isn't bought and paid for fascism, what the hell is? Of course, if there's any protesting at the Democratic Convention next year, you can bet your ass the Democratic National Committee will take out a similar insurance policy to cover the police so they can bash, brutalize and haul off as many protesters as they desire. And naturally, it's all LEGAL. Anything money can buy, no matter how unethical or basely criminal, is perfectly legal under a fascist capitalist totalitarian regime.
Support the Wall Street Occupiers!
The Dems 2012 convention is in Charlotte NC, Bank of America's headquarters.
You can safely bet your last nickle that the City of Charlotte will demand indemnification.
alright we can get two for one when we shut them both down!!and if we can get our acts together and get ,lets say 5million of us there,not to worry,the pigs will not be able to do a damm thing to us if we have the numbers !!so put that date in you head for next summersfun!!! ho ka hey/it is a good time to live
BTW, New York City is still being sued for the unlawful arrests at the 2004 RNC. Seven-plus years and still no justice for the 1800 RNC arrestees who spent days in an asbestos infested shit hole called Pier 57. Fascism? Yeah.
will try one more time
doubt the commissioner is sharing any of that loot with the cop on the street
they are just trying to do their job and support their family
they are also being screwed by the 1%
i think the best strategy is to remind them of that, and respect them, rather than calling them pigs and fascists etc
but then the ones calling them such names, just like in the 60's aren't about changing things, they are about showing how "superior" they are, by claiming membership in a group...... and THAT is the seeds of "The Mass Psychology of Fascism"
Police officers ought to be siding with the protesters because of their economic interests, but they often don't. I was raised in a law enforcement families and I remember the visceral angry disgust my father and his law enforcement friends had for demonstrators. That much contempt means that, on one level or another, the demonstrators are "pushing the buttons" of the police, nagging at them in ways they can't quite protect themselves from. Which means that the message is being sent and received, the violent blowback response is an attempt to avoid awareness.
Unfortunately, that doesn't help the demonstrating messengers when the clubs start coming down.
Pushing the buttons of bullies, these people do just what the cooperates want and shove abuse the very people they should be protecting.
After losing many of their members on 9/11/01 as a result of terrorists being attracted to NYC to revenge the global financial industry's evil deeds you would think the NYPD would connect the dots and realize that the banksters are not just oppressing the 99%, they are making the job of the NYPD much more dangerous.
Indeed they "should" and "you would think" they'd be able to see where their true interests lie, but their hatred of anything they see as off the reservation radicalism brings out the hatred they hold within.
Police are authoritarians. They follow orders and they hate people who question authority.
An interesting thesis, but with two flaws.
First, the commissioner IS sharing in the form of 'new toys' (surveillance equipment, weapons, etc.) some of which are viewed in a similar light as compensation (reinforces the 'power' principle). Moreover, loyalty is rewarded with 'cake' second jobs (mall security). I know several LAPD (most corrupt dept in country) cops with million dollar homes.
Second, the "superior" argument is a typical red herring. It seeks to ignore the message by questioning the motives of the messengers. You obviously have not spent a lot of time around cops. There is no group more interested in showing their "superiority" than these, and they get to do it with (sometimes brutal) force, and only by the societal consent of those being brutalized, a fact which, I can assure you, most, if not nearly all, remain unaware of their entire careers.
It may be counter-productive to call them " fascist pigs", but the fact remains that they work for fascist pigs, and, in fact, make the class of fascist pigs viable within the greater society. This is another way of saying that, but for the cops protection, the fascist pigs might tread more lightly.
You said yourself, "they are just trying to do their job and support their family".
That, of course, is precisely what they tell themselves in order to block out the notion that the fascist pigs they protect have taken homes and jobs away from the people they are supposed to protect. Thereby leaving these people UNABLE to 'do their jobs and support their families'.
You think you can make these people understand that "they are part of us rather than part of them". Have at it. I can tell you this. If you succeed, you can become president. Because without the shield of the 'thin blue line' or the military, the fascist pigs would run for cover faster than you can say 'Wall Street'.
Amy, you've been in this game for a long time, and I appreciate all the hard work you've done and the hard times you've gone through. Yet look where all that by yourself and others have achieved. Almost nothing.
Likewise, all the hard work and hard times of the '60s, what did it achieve. Almost nothing.
Looking back in history at the Luddites in Britain, what did they achieve. Almost nothing.
Looking back at the Declaration of Independence where there's a long list of things oppressions against the English King, what happened: "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."
Isn't it time to suspect that "protests," "demonstration," even "repeated petition" doesn't achieve anything of consequence unless the force of change is more powerful than the force behind "repeated injury."
What's important here is to define what is meant by "force" which doesn't necessarily mean military of physical force. Think about it ...
Don't be ridiculous. Like hell the protests of the 60's achieved "almost nothing." It's doubtful you were there, or you wouldn't be so ignorant. All those protests, and the civil rights protesting at the same time, achieved plenty. They finally got us out of Vietnam and got meaningful legislation passed for equal rights. Even the early Luddites weren't entirely unsuccessful. If we all had your hopeless attitude, there's no way anything at all would be achieved. Just what sort of "force" do you have in mind? The force that fatalistic pessimism exerts when it "knows" nothing can come of protesting and demonstrating?
The problem with both FDR's New Deal and the 60s progressive movement was not that they didn't achieve anything...they achieved a lot.
The problem is that most Americans quickly forgot what it took to get there, became complacent and fell for Raygunomics propaganda that lead to Ronny Raygun and his successors undoing much of the progressive legislation.
The undoing continues as we watch Obama's super catfood commission dismantle FDR's Social Security, LBJ's Medicare and Medicaid programs.
You are right. That's how I fell for the libertarian think-tank propaganda rags in the 80's & some of the 90's. I apologize to the departed spirit of my father, a "New Dealer"/ FDR/JFK democrat. He was right, the libertarian agit/prop was just OLD CRAP from the robber-baron era, through the "roaring 20's". The New Deal swept all of that old crap away. What was that about forgetting history and therefore condemned to repeat it?
Ephraim, another thing: Richard Nixon, as bad as he was, was far to the left of Obama. It was the Nixon administration that established the EPA. Even so, there were HUGE, serious and violent protests against the Nixon WH. Those protests, the peace and justice movements, civil rights, women's rights, the right of the poor to go to college without going into serious debt, environmentalism, all of it was moved forward as a result of the 60's progressive protest movement. It wasn't the only factor but it certainly pushed things in the right direction. Although Carter made many mistakes (Iran), he did show some progressive tendencies. Clinton triangulation and a lack of serious protest against it slowed the progressive dynamic, while Obama has virtually turned it upside down.
The big problem is that we didn't stay vigilant, not that there weren't major accomplishments.
The one thing nixon did to launch our "ship-of-state" into the financial "iceberg": he took us off of FDR's fixed exchange rate system of currencies in 1971, allowing for speculation, wherein the dollar became completely the plaything of the private money-changers' "Empire", and our nation was sent down the road to re-colonization by huge, transnational, de-facto "imperial", private "trading companies" (think british east india TRADING COMPANY; those redcoats were THEIR EMPLOYEES).
Sure, the 60s movements may have had some successes, but if you look at the general trajectory of history, it's clear that things just get worse over time. More corruption, more wars, more environmental devastation, more socio-economic inequality. In that way, I think it is generally correct to say that nothing was really achieved. I suppose it depends on your perspective.
Protest doesn't achieve anything? Ask members of the 30s labor movement, the ones who got their heads based in so you could enjoy weekends off, work in a safe environment, and take home wages you can actually live on. Tell that to women who protested for their right to vote. Richard Nixon, as bad as he was, was far to the left of Obama. It was the Nixon administration that established the EPA. Even so, there were HUGE, serious and violent protests against the Nixon WH. Those protests, the peace and justice movements, civil rights, women's rights, the right of the poor to go to college without going into serious debt, environmentalism, all of it was moved forward as a result of the 60's progressive protest movement. It wasn't the only factor but it certainly pushed things in the right direction. Although Carter made many mistakes (Iran), he did show some progressive tendencies. Clinton triangulation and a lack of serious protest against it slowed the progressive dynamic, while Obama has virtually turned it upside down.
The big problem is that we didn't stay vigilant, not that the protests and demonstrations didn't accomplish anything.
@rvrwalker "The big problem is that we didn't stay vigilant, not that the protests and demonstrations didn't accomplish anything." In other words, the fact that we didn't stay vigilant resulted in a flash-in-the-pan accomplishment. Two steps forward and two steps back doesn't sound like real accomplishment to me. If the change had been successful we couldn't be repeating the process now.
Congrats to Amy, her colleagues and her legal team for having the tenacity to follow up and follow through with her civil rights remedies for some of the police misconduct which took place in Minneapolis during the Republican national convention.
Excessive force/false arrest litigation is difficult in both state and federal court. There are all sorts of legal hurdles (sovereign immunity, legal authorization, etc.) to overcome, and all sorts of financial obstacles in the way of obtaining meaningful relief. At ever stage of the proceeding, there is an insurance carrier for the police and municipal defendants somewhere out there, paying the freight for the powers-that-be while the lawyers' time clocks merrily run. If the plaintiffs can avoid the lawsuit being dismissed by a hostile judge, then the name of the game is to nickle and dime the plaintiffs' money damage calculations to death.
Also good to see that settlement of this case included some sort of remedial training guarantees. You can bet Bull Connor never had to worry about such blowback. That's progress of a significant sort.
Bill from Saginaw
Absolutely, that is a real accomplishment. Cheers Amy Goodman!!!!
"The bailed-out Wall Street megabank JPMorgan Chase gave a tax-deductible $4.6 million donation to the New York City Police Foundation..."
"The response by the New York City Police Department has been brutal. Last Saturday, the police swept up more than 700 protesters in one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history. The week before, innocent protesters were pepper-sprayed in the face without warning or reason."
Silence is golden.
This is not a Koch brothers or fox news bought and paid for tea party event so the police can do as they want. No doubt these cops are republicans and fat man Limbaugh and Bill'o will be in favor of getting rid of any protesters that are not for sale. Police abuse is normal when every day people speak.
Quote
a number of sympathetic NYPD officers treated those arrested with respect and extraordinary leeway, some expressing support.
C. Valenza, participant
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Occupy-Wall-Street-Day-10-by-Chaz-Valenza-110926-785.html
===
“We are not against the cops,” he said. “The cops are part of the 99 percent. The cops, we would like to believe, are on our side. Because we understand that they have families, they have children, and with budget cuts they could be losing their jobs and pensions as well.”
protester Kelly Heresy on Countdown with Keith Olbermann
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/occupy-wall-street-protester-cops-part-of-the-99-percent/
The cops with white shirts appear to be non union bullies, the Koch brothers are not going to donate to their Xmas party and fox news is not going to cover them so just smash that ladies head into that car and put your boot into her back while pulling her arms back, aren't you a twisted fuck! Proud to serve and protect! If this would have been the tea party, the people would not have been herded onto the bridge for a forced arrest.
The cops with white shirts appear to be non union bullies, the Koch brothers are not going to donate to their Xmas party and fox news is not going to cover them so just smash that ladies head into that car and put your boot into her back while pulling her arms back, aren't you a twisted fuck! Proud to serve and protect! If this would have been the tea party, the people would not have been herded onto the bridge for a forced arrest.
del
These 'police' tactics (pepper spray, duping protester into the street, etc.) will continue for the un-invited, non-paying public, and the reason is obvious. Those in power want the protesters to be labeled violent so they will be discredited in the MSM. Heck, those in power don't want to hear anything the average guy has to say. Just look at Paul Ryan - he now charges admission to his townhall meetings. Pay to play at all levels. We are being forced into the street.
Pepper spray, tasers, kick the people in their crotch, this isn't the Koch brothers, fox news tea party so beat the fuck out of them. stupid liberals, why should they be able to talk, force them into violence, then we can prosecute them and scare the hell out of the rest of them. These liberals are so stupid we can fuck them and they can't do a thing about it! They will never be able to get an education, health care, jobs, food, clean air, solar power, electric cars, just tax the fuck out of them, the rich and insurance companies shouldn't have to contribute at all, we own these poor bastards. We even own the Roberts court. Says the right. You won't see it on fox news, they won't cover reality!
POLICE BRUTALITY!! please read/watch/spread
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/occupy-wall-street-nypd-police-brutality-video_n_997414.html
Guillotine them! It worked in France...