I’m not a police plant, and I have considered whether there is not a place for protester violence in the upcoming years.

Consider this: If the 1% are willing to use police/military force to terrorize the public and neutralize protests (including “occupations”, “liberations” and the like), and the 99% are unwilling to use force at any time, what stops the 1% from imposing their will on the 99% forever? Some claim that the police and military will undergo some kind of moral epiphany once things get dire enough, but I am not so hopeful; state agent indoctrination programs are reasonably effective at instilling loyalty, and the 1% knows better than to mobilize troops against their own communities (here in Portland, for instance, many of the police used for the camp eviction were borrowed from outside the PPD, and the same has been true at Oakland, LA, NY and so on). Meanwhile, the history of protest here in America and abroad shows that even supposedly “peaceful” revolutionaries frequently acted in self defense – throwing rocks at police, for instance, or disrupting systems.

Occupy has embraced nonviolence as both a strategic matter and a philosophical tenet. As a strategic matter, it makes sense to limit escalation while the revolutionaries are still gathering support and vulnerable to attack by military, police, and propaganda. As a philosophical tenet – well, even within Occupy there’s an ongoing debate over what constitutes “violence” and whether nonviolence in a revolutionary context is distinct from total pacifism.

…having said all that, though, it IS awful early to start talking about bombing and burning things. And yes, the NATO protesters probably were that young and dumb; plenty of activists out there have more heart than practical experience.

China is approaching the point where it could exert some leverage against the US, not militarily (far too early for that) but economically – but why would they? China is no friend of justice and liberty. Europe might have considerable influence, again economically (and perhaps diplomatically – closing military bases and so forth) but they’re currently neck-deep in their own problems, and Europe’s status as a unified power is in question.

Instead, I think that as America enacts more austerity measures and Americans fall out of the “safe” lower-middle-class zone into unemployment, poverty, foreclosure, eviction, etc, with no safety net to protect them, and local governments starved of needed funding become ineffective, we will begin to see a loss of local control by the elite and the existing institutions. Where this vacuum is filled with government troops and martial law, it will generate revolutionary sentiment; where it is not, communities will organize and develop solutions (or die).

In this sense, Occupy could be regarded as the vanguard of the next American revolution, not so much in the sense that Occupiers direct that revolution, but more that they are “early adopters” of revolutionary awareness and action.

Occupy, generally speaking, is populist, and those groups that ally with Occupy tend toward populism. If The People(TM) are going to rise up against American tyranny, then Occupy and its allies can’t afford to run background checks on people, limit information access, etc. as would happen with, say, a secret revolutionary force intent on physically attacking the state. Consider that police and other state agents get paid to infiltrate and investigate these groups, while these groups struggle to even get their message to reach the non-engaged general public; any kind of informational/tactical secrecy that has any chance of fooling the cops virtually guarantees that the public won’t have a clue what’s going on, and paranoia will quickly alienate potential supporters.

So this leaves such groups open to infiltration, preemptive raids, and so on. On the other hand, transparency ensures that (theoretically) everything that goes on is documented, so all those examples of police disappearing people, trumping up charges, etc are exposed to the public – and this is important, because now that the 1% is increasingly demonstrating that it is willing and able to use such measures to suppress dissent, it becomes correspondingly necessary to educate the 99% about just how bad things have become.

So any time you say or do something that a cop doesn’t like, even if it’s totally legal, he has the right to attack you, arrest you, abuse you in retaliation? Don’t get on a cop’s bad side or else you’re toast, and what’s more, you deserve what you get?

Is that how America is supposed to work? I thought we had freedom of speech here – specifically, the right to express an idea or opinion like “fuck the police” without being punished by the government. For that matter, I thought cops were supposed to be public servants who enforce the law, not bullies who take revenge on anyone who pisses them off. I’m pretty sure that what the police did to these protesters is a bigger crime than “fuck the police” could ever be.

Here’s what you’re missing. You’re looking for an excuse to blame the victims and exonerate the police. You want a just world where things happen for a good reason and people get what they deserve, but we don’t live in that world. We live in the real world, where America really is descending into fascism, and things like this are going to happen again and again.

How many people do the police have to attack and threaten before you change your mind?

Your response illustrates the problem perfectly. You are well aware that there are serious issues facing this country that Occupy is trying to address – that corporations have sabotaged our economy (and our environment, and our health) for their own profit, that our rights and liberties are being systematically destroyed, that the common people are being reduced to slaves, and so on. You are also aware that the police charged with protecting this criminal anti-American elite regularly use armed violence and the threat of violence against protesters, the media, and anyone who gets caught in the middle.

And yet, all Occupy has to do is break a window or yell “fuck the police” (a very worthy sentiment, by the way) and suddenly they’re the bad guys?

That’s rather uncomprehending of you.

It’s an easy thing for the poor and downtrodden to radicalize and fight back; they have nothing to lose. Yes, it takes courage to stare down riot cops and throw your bodies on the machine – but it takes just as much courage for the middle class to do it, and they have much to lose besides, a fact which is invariably lost on the more hardcore Occupiers who seem pigheadedly unable to comprehend why someone would rather go home to sleep in a warm bed or avoid an arrest record. One might almost think they were fighting to drag the common man down to poverty level, not raise him up.

There are only three things that are going to pry the middle classes away from their comfortable existences and get them in the streets. One is deprivation, and or those who have so far avoided foreclosure or long-term unemployment have little to fear in the foreseeable future. The second and third are the strength of a mass movement and the development of alternative social structures to provide housing and food security (among other necessities), and Occupy has failed to produce much of either, especially since the camps were smashed by coordinated police violence.

FWIW, I think that Occupy as we know it is a failed experiment, having failed to build the kind of public support and momentum that a populist movement would need to be successful even with the use of the internet.

OTOH, failures can be educational. Occupy identified the right enemy, and they found the right way to scare them, too (take their stuff and disregard their authority). More uprisings are inevitable as long as the elite continue their present course; maybe opposition to the coming war with Iran will be what sparks the next one.

If we have mass strikes and boycotts, and nothing else, then who will be growing our food? Who will be shipping it around the country? Who will be able to buy it once there are no jobs left? Will we all stop paying rent, too? Where will our electricity come from? Your notion that people could “stock up” in advance is laughable. Yes, SOME people could – but the majority can’t afford to buy an extra year’s worth of food, never mind fuel for generators, and have no place to put it anyway.

And then there would be no sanitation either. Lest you forget, the Occupy camps weren’t processing their own waste – they had to use existing sewer systems, and/or have people haul off buckets of waste, not to mention endless bags of trash.

Oh. Are we boycotting the pharma companies, too? Hope no one needs medication to manage a chronic problem.

What you are essentially proposing to do is end civilization and turn America into a filthy, starving third-world slum, and then hope it somehow manages to bootstrap itself without relying on the laws and institutions that created this problem in the first place. Meanwhile, the 1% with their massive wealth can just leave the country, or if for some reason they decide to stay, they can outlast any of us.

OTOH, Occupation is a direct refutation of property and authority. It is a reclamation of civilization, not an end to it. Nothing scares the 1% more than knowing that they can simply be cut out.

I believe that a number of things are true about Occupy’s struggle:

- That the 1% have used and abused our consent to steal our wealth and place themselves at the top of a manufactured power structure;

- That the source of all that wealth and power, and the circumstance that maintains it, is the consent (willing or otherwise) of the people;

- That if such consent is removed, such as by reclaiming property by force and disregarding laws and other direction given by the 1% to the 99%, then all their power and wealth must cease;

- That no other remedy exists to end the power and wealth of the 1%, since they will not give it back willingly, nor allow the 99% to use a system designed to maintain the status quo against them;

- That therefore the eventual success of Occupy necessarily depends on the people’s willingness to engage in such acts.

The mainstream progressives you’re talking about need to wake up and realize that their strategy, although no doubt fulfilling and well-intentioned, HAS NOT BEEN EFFECTIVE. Upward financial mobility is worse in the US than in much of Europe. Income gaps resemble those in banana republics, and labor is nearly powerless. We still don’t have socialized healthcare. Every populist institution or safety net we have is under constant attack; the Constitution is being reduced to toilet paper. Progressive political third parties may as well not exist for all the influence they have in Washington or even state and local elections.

Consider that the reason why Occupy groups across the country have attracted such overwhelming oppression isn’t because they’re doing something wrong, it’s because they’re doing something right. Their ideas and actions are dangerous – to the 1%, not the 99%!

Once the people understand that what Occupy does is necessary, actions like the one in Oakland won’t COST social capital, they will GENERATE it.

I expressed some of the same concerns for Occupy Portland re: substance abuse and mental illness when they made the decision to include and shelter the homeless, questioning whether they really had the resources or expertise to deal with those issues. Those in favor insisted that they did.

The camp was evicted ostensibly for reasons of public safety, and it was never clear to me whether OP was “winning” the struggle to maintain peace within the camp when they had a substantial homeless population – time didn’t get to tell on that one. But they certainly struggled with it.

Megaupload is one of a number of sites that lets you upload files, which then get a unique URL that you can share with anyone that will let them download the file.

Just like every other public file sharing implementation ever, the site itself is totally legal, and some people even use it for legitimate purposes, but it’s mostly used by pirates.

The harder you squeeze, the louder the pop.

Money is not our hammer; it is our shackle and chain.

More to the point, if we continue to hold property sacred, the rich with their sacred property will endure forever.

In corrupting the government, impoverishing the people, creating an army to oppress the people, holding themselves above the law, and eroding our fundamental rights, the 1% has broken the social contract. And in breaking the social contract, they have forfeited their own rights. Their misbegotten property must be reclaimed by the people, for the people. It is not appropriate that we should negotiate and beg favor with those who we must depose.

This is the true message of physical occupation.

The hype is a bit sickening, but I think Kucinich is one of our better Senators. He was the one who tried to get Bush and Cheney impeached for war crimes.

The NEED Act is available to view online. If you want to get rid of the Fed and restore the creation of money to Congress, this would be a way to do it. I don’t really have a lot of experience in this area, so I wouldn’t mind reading some discussion about loopholes, unintended consequences, etc.

Property is an entitlement as surely as anything is, and the people can take it away from the wealthy, or dissolve their money with the stroke of a pen (or more likely these days, the tap of a mouse or keyboard).

They who have so much to lose have much to fear from us who have so little left, and that held for ransom.

Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s legendary swordsman, wrote “do nothing that is of no use.”

I firmly believe there is no one anywhere in the US that could run as an independent on a platform of getting money out of politics, curtailing corporate rights and power, and relieving our vast wealth inequity, using a tiny fraction of the funding that will go to the corporate puppets in the two major parties, and win the Presidential election. Our election system is rigged, and so is the political climate. Creating the change this country needs will take years of grassroots effort, at minimum. Your insistence to the contrary does not impress me.

If you want to know what Occupy is really about and how it functions, and you can’t figure it out from the volumes of information that have by now been compiled and published by the media, I direct you to your nearest Occupation, where you can meet the actual people who are actually protesting in person and talk to them about your ideas for fixing America. Leveling ridiculous, unsubstantiated accusations at the movement through this blog will accomplish nothing whatsoever.

The fact that we are unable to distinguish you from a concern troll should give you pause for thought. That pause, if it exists, may be the only thing that saves your credibility.

Like it or not, the Occupy movement has always billed itself as one that is transparent and open to the public. That public includes the media – and those who cling so desperately to the First Amendment to justify their occupation ought to remember that the founders valued the freedom of the press, as well.

Do the ends justify the means? Here in Portland, I have heard the same story about meetings being held in private and the flow of information restricted so as not to inform the police. The protesters have the right to do this if they wish, but they should consider that it is NOT transparent, is NOT open, and is NOT inclusive. I wonder how the public will react to a supposedly leaderless movement that actually creates internal hierarchy with an informal system of information classification based on trust networks.

It’s more like Congress doesn’t even care there is an Occupy movement, because they still hold all the levers.

The 1% isn’t really scared yet. You’ll know when they are when they send in the military, PMCs, and/or CIA assassins.

Wasn’t it Eisenhower who warned us against the military-industrial complex? I don’t think I’d be so quick to dismiss him as a hypocrite – and anyway, don’t his words speak for themselves, no matter what you think of the man?

Everything’s blurry when you squint. If you would see the movement clearly, stop squinting.