John Pike ("Pepper Spray Cop," "Pepper Spraying Cop" or "Casually Pepper Spraying Everything Cop") was a lieutenant in the UC Davis Police Department. He gained notoriety for pepper spraying peaceful, sitting protesters during the UC Davis protest on Friday November 18.
Al Jazeera's 24-minute documentary about Occupy Wall Street (2012)
I was catching up on some Occupy Wall Street drama (because what else to do on a Monday morning in 2018?) and came across this essay by someone who wants leftists to be better at organizing or something. I liked it enough to read the whole thing.
"Occupy Oakland began as a protest encampment at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza on October 10, 2011. Protestors renamed it Oscar Grant Plaza after a young man who was fatally shot by Bay Area Rapid Transit Police in 2009. The encampment was cleared out by multiple law enforcement agencies on October 25, 2011. The movement also helped spur the November 2, 2011 Oakland General Strike that shut down the Port of Oakland. Police again cleared the protest encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza on November 14, 2011. Other protest encampments were created and subsequently dismantled by law enforcement. The last encampment at Snow Park was cleared on November 21, 2011."
I appreciated Tim Pool's livestreaming during Occupy, but this sort of "Nazis and the people who fight Nazis are equally bad" centrist schtick seems to characterize his recent work. Fortunately there is an even better alternative in the likes of Unicorn Riot http://www.unicornriot.ninja
As someone only peripherally involved but who followed along with the news, I thought Kelsey Whipple did a great job reporting on Occupy Denver.
I'm number 4!
This was a day after I was arrested. There was a big demonstration in Denver with DPD shooting kids out of trees with pepper balls and everything.
The Westword's coverage of Denver's October 15:
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/10/occupy_denver_denver_largest_gathering_police.php
See also the impressive "List of Occupy movement protest locations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Occupy_movement_protest_locations
"A protest group called “Occupy Denver” that used to protest in downtown Denver and in public areas has now reverted to a different tactic — descending on a quiet Denver neighborhood every Sunday afternoon and protesting outside the private home of a Denver business leader whose organization supported Denver’s urban camping ban"
Apparently The Denver Post Editorial Board thinks it is okay to harass and arrest the propertyless for sleeping, but rent-seeking CEOs should be left alone. Good thing The Denver Post is keeping an eye on the situation, otherwise who would lookout for the interests of the rich and powerful?
(I read revision 590841297: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reactions_to_Occupy_Wall_Street&oldid=590841297)
Archive of writing (and audio recordings) by the author of the https://hyphenatedrepublic.wordpress.com/ weblog.
Mo and Nadia were on a 90-day temporary duty undercover assignment as part of CPD Field Intelligence Team 7150 (FIT 7150). The team was tasked with "attend[ing] Occupy Chicago and anarchist movement events for the purpose of observing and listening to reports of any planned criminal activity"
Kevin Carson weighs in on the controversy over the legitimacy of violence in protests: "The state is simply a group of human beings cooperating for common purposes — purposes frequently at odds with those of other groups of people, like the majority of people in the same society. And violent actions by an association of individuals who call themselves ‘the state’ have no more automatic legitimacy than violent actions by associations of individuals who call themselves ‘the Ku Klux Klan’ or ‘al Qaeda.’"
Zakk Flash responds to Chris Hedges' criticisms of the black bloc tactic.
A good rundown of several of the new and proposed anti-camping laws aimed at the homeless and the Occupy movement.
Although the charges and disputed facts in his case are different than mine, this is encouraging!
Give us this day our daily bread Ⓐnd forgive us our trespasses
Pancho was arrested while meditating at Occupy Oakland and nearly deported. As far as I know after his release he has not been deported to date. See also his interview on Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/18/occupy_oakland_protester_pancho_ramos_stierle)
Thank you, NLG!
Some photos and a first-hand account of being arrested at the 888 Turk squat in San Francisco yesterday.
This is disturbing. Some in the OWS movement think the focus should be on corporate influence over politics (instead of police misconduct). But here Graeber reports the NYPD being violent, targeting women, and doing it for the sake of the banks. They’re not separate issues.
This is a protest I went to back in November. State troopers under Governor Hickenlooper and Denver police under Mayor Hancock had just arrested dozens of people at the Occupy Denver camps and confiscated food and supplies from the kitchen, and then they were made the “guests of honor” at a Denver homeless shelter’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was pathetic.
I’m the thumbnail image for this article!
A photo, quote, and brief bio of 20 people arrested at OWS. My favorite quote: “I think that everyone should be arrested at least once.”
Cops really hate tents; but they also don’t care much for books.
I responded to a questionnaire from the citizen journalist who wrote this article, and am quoted in it along with two other activists who were arrested at Occupy-related events (one from the West Coast and one from Australia). I think I came off sounding like I was trying to be insightful without actually being very insightful (someone remind me never to talk to a reporter in real life!), but at least she used my ‘cops hate tents’ quote to close the article. (I don’t know what the ‘police brutality’ bit in the title has to do with anything; I don’t think any of us were brutalized or witnessed brutality.)
I disagree with her: protest chants almost never feel meaningful.
On Karl Hess’s move to the Left.
If nothing else, the Occupy protests have helped bring attention to laws aimed at criminalizing homelessness and the authoritarian restriction of public spaces.
The DA recently added a charge of trespassing and one of interfering with a law officer to my case (and offered me a deferred judgment, which I refused).
Don Mitchell coined the phrase ‘annihilation of property by law’ to describe the legal exclusion of the public (including the homeless) from ‘public’ spaces. Last year’s Occupy evictions show the violence cities are willing to inflict to so annihilate their public spaces.
This is the issue by which I became associated with Occupy Denver in the first place.
Once again, good on the NLG. Note the protesters in San Diego charged with felony conspiracy for interrupting a political speech.
Chomsky’s assessment of Obama’s presidency: "In many ways, it’s a little worse than what I expected, but I didn’t expect anything."
My “I Was Arrested at Occupy Denver” essay is included as page 6 of this publication.
My first experience being arrested and some comments on the liberal/radical divide within the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“Run, philosophers, run (everyone else, too!) with whatever part of the anti-plutocracy message you find most urgent or salient; find whatever allies you can; make noise or pursue quiet changes as suits you and the means at hand.”
A nice post by the Rustbelt Radical sampling some of the music that has come out of the Occupy movement.
Also: http://americancynic.net/log/2012/6/4/north_america_is_stirring.html
A good interview with Kristian Williams about abolishing the police and stuff.
Police behaving poorly at political protests.