Peeling off the grandstanding, hyperbolic huffing and puffing, what's left is that the law enforcement response to the nationally coordinated Occupy movement was nationally coordinated.
Not at all. Occupy was political. Individual police departments cracking down on political dissent is problematic. But when the federal government does it, federal powers make it much more significant. And when you see those folks all working with private security to suppress political dissent, it's deeply problematic.
That's especially true given that the feds have a history of illegal surveillance of (and even interference with) political activity that powerful people happened to find uncomfortable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
"Cracking down" is a gross exaggeration of what the documents actually describe. Naomi Wolf's column is essentially blogspam of a press release by the "Partnership for Civil Justice Fund", which cherry-picks and sexes-up excerpts from the pretty dull documents they got through a FOIA request. It's nowhere near COINTELPRO. It's documentation of exactly the kind of mundane police work you would expect to be associated with a nation-wide protest movement.
Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are vital to successful democracy. I don't expect any police work to be associated with a nation-wide political protest movement.
I agree that it's not as bad as COINTELPRO. That doesn't make it right, though.
Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly != freedom to be completely ignored until you do something wrong.
I'll inline my other comment: Mass gatherings of any kind are a public safety issue, and an organized nation-wide protest with anarchist overtones is hardly the least likely to result in violence and property damage. For police to not gather and share information on what to expect would be stupid.
You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.
Now we can see the police and FBI behavior toward the civil rights movement for what it was: the police helping people in power stay in power.
One of the defaults on Hacker News is a general skepticism toward increasing police power. It's amazing to me how quickly that can switch to justification when it's the "wrong" people getting policed. The reason Aaron Swartz got pursued so vigorously is exactly the reason that Occupy did: they were both (correctly) perceived as a political threat to people with power and wealth.
What are you even talking about? "Wrong" people? Aaron Swartz?
I'm just saying the documents mentioned above[1] don't back up your claims, and that what they do describe is mundane, expected behavior. (I know this because I read them myself, rather than relying on the summary of someone with a clear agenda.) If you weren't speaking in the context of the thread, why post in it?
One of the defaults on Hacker News is a general skepticism toward increasing police power.
First of all, that's not a default of Hacker News, that's a default of individual users of Hacker News. If you want a community of uniform opinion, I suggest digging out your dog-eared copy of 1984 and re-reading the scene of the two-minutes' hate to see where that leads.
Secondly, I'd like to point out that I share that default, but with the additional (and seemingly rare) default of skepticism toward reporting about increasing police power.
That's bullshit, though. Mass gatherings of any kind are a public safety issue, and an organized nation-wide protest with anarchist overtones is hardly the least likely to result in violence and property damage. For police to not gather and share information on what to expect would be stupid.
You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.
Similarily, Westboro Baptist Church protests are public safety issues, because they provoke large angry gatherings. How does the FBI handle that? Do they collaborate with corporations and local police departments to systematically discredit, propagandize against, and wage psychological warfare against the WBC?
Or do they do striaghtforward police work, provide a detail of officers at protests and counterprotests just in case anything gets out of hand, and generally behave reasonably?
There is a very far divide between "wholly ignorant" and "actively subverting." There is also a far divide between that and "sharing information on what to expect."
See also: undercover police excesses in the UK and US, including having children with activists to maintain cover.
Or do they do striaghtforward police work, provide a detail of officers at protests and counterprotests just in case anything gets out of hand, and generally behave reasonably?
According to the documents Naomi Wolf (your link!) cites, this is pretty much what happened. Try reading them for yourself instead of ignorantly complaining about "propaganda".
> Not at all. Occupy was political. Individual police departments cracking down on political dissent is problematic.
The fact that your motivation is political does not provide a license to break the law, and you must expect a response from law enforcement if you do so.
I agree that political protest doesn't provide a license to do absolutely anything. But when laws are selectively enforced against people with particular political views because of their views, that's a big deal to me regardless of the views.
Because of that, I believe that political activity should be given relatively wide latitude for anything that is basically related to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. For example, here in San Francisco, a person blocking traffic for the hell of it might get ticketed for jaywalking. But if a group of protestors takes to the streets, the police will just direct traffic around it and keep an eye on it as long as it stays peaceful. And I think that's about right.
To me the part that makes it truly insidious is the coordination between banks, the FBI, local police departments, and universities, in order to stifle a political movement. This coordination occurred before the start of the Occupy movement, and so before any laws had been broken and needed to be enforced. As such, your use of the word "response" is inappropriate. A "response" implies a previous action to be responded to. This coordination between banks and the FBI happened prior to any protest.
I would expect the law enforcement response to, say, an actual terrorist group to be nationally coordinated.
I would not expect the law enforcement response to semi-legal public camping to be nationally coordinated.
The fact that it was implies that there was a political motivation to the specific law enforcement actions that took place, which is something typically considered inappropriate for the American government. We like to think that in America, we have the freedom to assemble and organize with fellow citizens to coordinate social change.
These documents tell us that we do not. Should we attempt to do so, should we go outside the gameboard for any action, we will be ruthlessly, violently swatted down. The tanks[0] will roll in, the LRADs[1] will blare, and armored stormtroopers will march alongside firing tear gas and pepper spray[2].
And not only will that dismantle that movement, but it will make every subsequent movement have to overcome not just a typical barrier to adoption, but also the fear of being there when the gloves come off and the gas canisters fire. It's what's called a chilling effect[3].
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic... (among many articles documenting this trend; if you want to see it in person go to any large protest in a major city, I have seen them in DC, New York, Pittsburgh, and Oakland among other places)
