Saturday Night Fever With Occupy Wall Street: 700 Arrests, Were Protesters Tricked by Police?

October 2nd, 2011 - by: danny

Dissector Interview by The Pal Talk News Network

Tune in online this morning at 9 AM, Eastern Time to Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Keephopealiveradio.com show. I will be on it.

Zerohedge, Wall Street Beginning To Look Like Egypt See The Photos. Wow!

Fever in the Rain

SATURDAY NIGHT: The sign that grabbed me the most on Saturday night was being held on Broadway, the Broadway downtown, not in Times Square, across the street from Brown Brothers, Harriman, an old line Wall Street firm. It was made by a veteran and said “I fought in two wars for my country. This time I know who the enemy is.” I also heard one foreclosure victim tell his story to a crowd that became angrier as the story went on.

If any other organization had been convening the Occupy Wall Street protest, it would have been called for rain, but not this crowd. They were comitted! The Park was not as full as it had been a night earlier but there was a reason. Hundreds of activists had left earlier in the day to march to Brooklyn over the Brooklyn Bridge. Not all of them made it. As the pedestrian walkway over the roadway became crowded, a large crows detoured into the traffic lanes in violation of their plan and police warnings which may or may not have been heard by all. Traffic ground to a halt, and the police saw an opportunity for another crackdown, or perhaps had planned one.

Some sensed a trap, others a screw up, but in the end as many as 700 were arrested—they said 100, “maybe twice that” at the nightly General Assembly meeting and were dispersed to five jails. It wasn’t clear to me why Brooklyn was chosen, but it was probably just another attempt at outreach to other communities.

The New York Times featured a page one picture of demonstrators sitting on the bridge in police custody, reporting:

“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”

But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them,“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”

But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.

A video on the YouTube page of a group called We Are Change shows some of the arrests. allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.

A video on the YouTube page of a group called We Are Change shows some of the arrests.”

One law enforcement official called it “A PLANNED MOVE ON THE PROTESTERS.”

Police said that people were warned but its not clear how many heard the warnings. Usually, Police set up barriers. There were none this time.

At the General Assembly meeting later in the night, before people in the park could speak to those jailed. a representative of the Direct Action committee admitted he made a mistake and seemed pissed off by what happened. He didn’t charge a police trap at that time, although many in the crowd suspected police scheming. “They are very good with logistics,” one protester told me. “They know what they are doing.”

The New York Times reported earlier on Saturday:

Marchers from the Occupy Wall Street protests were allowed to walk the Brooklyn-bound car lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon. Around 4:15, when they had gotten partway across, the police abruptly stopped the marchers, plunging into the crowd and making arrests. By 4:35 around 500 people were caught on the bridge between orange nets. Some were allowed to walk back to Manhattan. Others, to avoid the police, climbed dangerously up the bridge about 15 feet above the road to escape along the pedestrian walkway.”

There was video posted on Occupy Wall Street websites:

Events like these, combined with the rain, changed the focus away from the debate about the future, that was to have taken place this weekend.

The good news passed along was that there have been events in 27 cities to support this movement. Unions reiterated their support. The SEIU promised to pay for a week’s food. 1199, the hospital workers, agreed to send registered nurses to help train their medical people. The AFL-CIO has endorse the march.

All of their committees were upbeat in their reports about growing support. There have been people coming in from the South as well as New Jersey and Connecticut.

24 were arrested in a march against Bank of America in Boston.

After protests in California, Attorney General Kamala Harris withdrew from 50-state settlement talks with the big banks accused of unscrupulous mortgage and foreclosure practices. Activists saw this as a victory.

Ml-implode: Former Countrywide analyst sentenced to prison for selling data of 2.5 million customers

” A former senior analyst for Countrywide Home Loans was sentenced Wednesday to eight months behind bars for downloading and selling the personal information of some 2.5 million customers in a scam that cost the mortgage lender some $30 million.”

Van Jones and Max Berger write on Reader Supported News:

“Wall Street has long been the home of the biggest threat to American Democracy. Now it has become home to what may be our best hope for rescuing it. For everyone who loves this country, for everyone whose heart is breaking for the growing ranks of the poor, for everyone who is seething at the unopposed demolition of America’s working and middle class: the time has come to get off the fence.”

All of this was taking place as Wall Street reported its worse quarter since 2008.

LBN reports: WALL STREET ENDS WORST QUARTER SINCE DEPTHS OF 2008 CRISIS

Stocks ended their worst quarter since the depths of the 2008 credit crisis, crippled by Europe’s debt debacle, a U.S. credit downgrade and a sputtering global economy. A steep slide on Friday closed out a fifth month of losses as weak economic data from China sparked fears of a global economic slowdown while investment bank Morgan Stanley plummeted on concerns about its exposure to European banks. The S&P 500 index has lost more than 14 percent this quarter and over 7 percent in September alone. As of Thursday, Wall Streets deep downturn in the third quarter wiped out $2.2 trillion of the Wiltshire 5000 index the broadest measure of U.S. stocks.”

What Cornell West Was Saying The Other Day

I was there when Cornell West came to the Occupy Wall Street protest. We were chatting when he was spotted by the crowd and surrounded by well wishes.

He shared his views about the encampment on Democracy Now:

“It’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening,” said Dr. Cornel West when he spoke with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman during a visit Tuesday night to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Some critics have expressed frustration at the protest’s lack of a clear and unified message. But the Princeton University professor emphasized that “you’re talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what’s going on through a set of different lens, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be. Because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution: A transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors. And that is a step by step process.” Dr. West also called on President Obama to apologize for calling on members of the Congressional Black Caucus to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying” when unemployment among African Americans has reached record highs and two of five Black children live in poverty.”

Mike Check!

What the General Assembly Sounds like. These daily meeting have no sound system so messages and comments are repeated by and to the crowd.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Mic check.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Mic check.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Mic check.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Mic check.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Mic check.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Mic check.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: We are going to be starting…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We are going to be starting…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Our general assembly…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Our general assembly…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: We would like to…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We would like to…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Start…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Start…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: With some words…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: With some words…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: From Cornel West…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: From Cornel West…
[CHEERING]
CORNEL WEST: There is a sweet spirit in this place.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: There is a sweet spirit in this place.
CORNEL WEST: I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…
CORNEL WEST: Of those Sly Stone called every day people…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Of those Sly Stone called every day people…
CORNEL WEST: Who take a stand with great courage…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Who take a stand with great courage…
CORNEL WEST: And compassion…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And compassion…
CORNEL WEST: Because we oppose…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Because we oppose…
CORNEL WEST: The greed of Wall Street oligarchs…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: The greed of Wall Street oligarchs…
CORNEL WEST: And corporate plutocrats…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And corporate plutocrats…
CORNEL WEST: Who squeeze the democratic juices…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Who squeeze the democratic juices…
CORNEL WEST: Out of this country…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Out of this country…etc.

Update from AdBusters:

Jammers, dreamers, rabble-rousers, revolutionaries,

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is thundering across America, threatening to morph into a full fledged national movement. Channeling the nonviolence of the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the bottom-up collective decision making of the Spanish acampadas, we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy.

This Saturday #OCCUPYWALLSTREET enters its third week … be there at Noon and stay for the weekend … or be at one of the 50+ fledgling occupations now being organized across the land.
Our people’s democracy movement is about to get three mighty boosts:
• On October 6, a few thousand of us will swarm the capital and #OCCUPYDC. Find out the plan at october2011.org
• On October 15th, the movement goes global … check it out at 15october.net
• Then, on November 3 and 4, we have something special in mind for when the G20 leaders meet in France.

Corporate Media Perspectives

UK media – BBC and the Guardian – report on the Wall Street unrest, growing numbers of participants, protestors amass on the NYPD headquarters…

US media focus on unrest in “democracies everywhere”… Fear of US information repression spurs efforts for establishing alternative internet communications…

Other News:

Mail & Guardian: Congress Blocks Aid To Palestinians

The Palestinian Authority accuses the US Congress of holding back aid to punish Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for UN statehood.

Iran Rejects Deal:

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday rejected the Palestinians’ United Nations (UN) statehood bid, saying any deal that accepted the existence of Israel would leave a “cancerous tumor” forever threatening the security of the Middle East.

Veronica Raymond sends this news along:

Last week, Bush was forced to cancel a fundraising appearance in Toronto, Canada at Tyndale University College and Seminary, an evangelical Christian school. Students and faculty members protested and petitioned to keep him away from their school. Their petition said: “We believe that no amount of new money can justify profiting from a former figurehead whose policies led to the murder of thousands of innocent civilians.”
Bush assumed he would be welcomed by this university, but he wasn’t. Instead, they kept him out of Canada.
Days later, dozens of people, led by former FBI special agent turned activist Coleen Rowley, met George Bush at a Minnesota fundraiser with banners, signs reading “Wanted for torture” and loud chants of “Arrest George Bush!” and “Shame!”
In an article about the protest, Rowley posed the question, “When will Bush be ‘Pinocheted?’” She also asked: “Is it proper to honor this war criminal who launched pre-emptive, unjustified wars of aggression and ‘shock and awe’ that led to hundreds of thousands of people killed, mostly civilian ‘collateral damage’ and widespread destruction in the Middle East?”
Because of this broad-based and growing movement for accountability and justice, Bush’s world is getting smaller. He is canceling more and more events and is being dogged by passionate protests wherever he goes.

J Carracedo: writes:

Hello, Mr. Schechter! We corresponded briefly about the word “rutting” in relation to Dominique Strauss-Kahn some months ago and you were very kind not to be upset with me. Best wishes for your continued good work. You are a good man.

The moment two exhausted rutting stags collapsed after getting their horns locked together

Neither of the young stags could escape as their 30-inch long antlers were entangled together deep in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.

From Saturday’s Blog:

LISTEN UP: Podcast of this week’s New’s Dissector Radio Show: On #OccupyWallStreet and the post office crisis

DISPATCH: Unions Promise Support As #OccupyWallStreet Enters Third Week

By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime of our Time

There had been rumor on Friday that the band Radiohead would be dropping by the #Occupy Wall Street encampment.

They had just been on the Colbert Report, and their fan base is huge among the very demographic of younger people drawn to the protests now beginning their third week.

And so more people came than organizers expected. Loads of people! Except, alas, for Radio Head. The band had reportedly called to express support that led some to conclude that they were on the way.

This demonstrates again the power of celebrity to draw a crowd. What did impress the activists in Zuccotti Park in the financial district is that the Radiohead fans actually stuck around and took part in the activities and a march that went North to Police Headquarters protesting the pepper spraying of activists.

That police action actually persuaded the media that had convinced itself that this growing assembly was not worth covering to cover it. Soon, thanks to research by the mysterious “Anonymous” activists able to identify the police commander responsible for using a chemical weapon against female protesters.

His name is Anthony Bologna, and soon his email was hacked and his record of alleged earlier abuse incidents was publicized, apparently, I was told, with his online porn collection.

Then, Jon Stewart stepped in Thursday with a hysterical report on the Daily Show on the same cop he called “TONY BALONEY,” ridiculing him and the police force.

Perhaps, that is why the NYPD was more restrained Friday night and backed down with threatened arrests of a group of activist bicyclists called Critical Mass, that had shown up to show solidarity. When it was announced at a nightly meeting called the “General Assembly” that the bikers were at risk, hundreds of activists rushed out to show some solidarity to them—and, then, there were no arrests.

Perhaps this incident was evidence of sign I saw reading “The power of the people is greater than the people in power.”

#Occupy Wall Street has yet to attract the 20,000 militants they had hoped for but its growing and, more importantly retaining its sense of community, non-violence, and sense of a tolerant community. It is a decentralized

Most important is that similar actions are already taking place in other cities like a March on Friday in Boston against the Bank of America. An even bigger one is being planned for Washington in October.

Other organizations are supporting this emerging movement. Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union say they “applaud the courage of the young people on Wall Street,” and are planning to turn out their members next week. I saw T Shirts of UAW members and met some activists from the Salvadorian community. Already #Occupy Wall Street sent over a hundred people to back a protest by postal workers trying to save their jobs and the Post Office.

The longer this lasts, and is allowed to last, the more it is likely to grow.

Already intellectuals and writers like Chris Hedges are praising the protesters as “the best among us” and are imploring the rest of us to get involved:

“There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt-taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler.”

Veteran activist Carl Davidson writes:

“Young rebels often manifest a moral clarity that awakens and prods the rest of us. Through their direct actions, they become a critical force, holding up a mirror for an entire society to take a look at itself, what it has come to, and what choices lay before it. The historic example is the four young African American students that sat at a lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee in Greensboro, North Carolina back in 1960.

The Wall Street protests are thus a clarion call to the trade unions and everyone concerned with economic and social justice.”

This weekend, Occupy Wall Street is promising to make an assessment of it strengths and weaknesses and to begin a debate about next steps.
The last two weeks have been a tremendous learning experience for the activists who even doubted their staying power. Now their non-organization has organized with a food committee, media center, sanitation department and task force to encourage more debate.

David Degraw of AmpedStatus.com that pushed for the protests sees the movement defining itself. He told me on my weekly News Dissector Radio Show on Progressive Radio Network that he expects more clarity to emerge from a debate that’s already underway.

He writes, “As the occupation of Wall Street moves into its third week, there are many questions about the organizers behind the ongoing protests and the origins of the 99% Movement.”

He has encountered resistance from parties unknown to his efforts to encourage a debate. “As AmpedStatus was pushing for a decentralized global rebellion against Wall Street and actively supporting the Egyptian uprising against the IMF and Federal Reserve, the attacks on the site escalated. In what appeared to be a fatal blow, the entire ISP network that the AmpedStatus.com site was hosted on was knocked offline, hundreds of sites were also affected and the AmpedStatus.com web hosting provider said that they would no longer be able to host the site unless it was moved to a service that was significantly more than we were paying or could afford. With a very limited budget, and in complete desperation, AmpedStatus put out a call for help.”

The computer whiz Anonymous stepped in and helped the site recover. It is now on the leading edge of the movement. Other sites like Livestream carry the events around the clock the way Al Jazeera reported on TV about the uprising in Egypt. #OccupyWallStreet disseminates tweets around the clock

Many in the media wrote off the young people in Egypt, and proved to be as out of touch as much of the American media is today. As Bob Dylan sang decades ago to a reporter from Time Magazine, “There’s something happening and you don’t know what it us, do you Mr. Jones.”

News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs about the protests on News Dissector.com. His latest film, Plunder The Crime of Our Time” called for protests against financial crime. (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.

The News Dissector