OWS: Liberty vs. Freedom

Real Life stuff and trying to keep up with what is going on with the Occupy movement has delayed me getting into American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, but I picked it up again yesterday. 

The author, Colin Woodard, begins by describing in chronological order the origin of the oldest of these cultures: El Norte (the northern portion of Spain’s American empire, essentially a 100 mile strip running along the modern U.S./Mexico border and – at the time – up into California), New France (the settlement of eastern Canada and, as an outpost and afterthought, Louisiana), Tidewater (English planters in Maryland, Virginia, southern Delaware, and northern North Carolina), and Yankeedom (the New England states, especially after the Puritans’ Massachusetts Bay Colony established dominion over them following Cromwell’s victory in the English Civil War).

In his description of the Tidewater culture, Woodard begins foreshadowing the United States’ own Civil War by offering a cultural/historical explanation for the starkly different traditions that would develop between the states.  He describes 17^th century Tidewater as essentially nothing more than a place of huge manorial estates without a single actual town to be found there.  He explains that each such estate was in essence a perfect fiefdom, in which the planter whose estate it was had complete and absolutely authority – including that of life and death – over all persons.

He then attempts to explain how a culture of such authoritarianism could produce champions of republicanism like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison. 

My Suggestion for Moving OWS Forward

Digby warned yesterday that PPP was preparing to release the results of a poll measuring the public’s attitude toward the Occupy movement, and that those results wouldn’t be favorable to OWS.  The results are here, and they essentially indicate that Occupy is losing favorability with the American public:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is not wearing well with voters across the country.  Only 33% now say that they are supportive of its goals, compared to 45% who say they oppose them.  That represents an 11 point shift in the wrong direction for the movement’s support compared to a month ago when 35% of voters said they supported it and 36% were opposed.  Most notably, independents have gone from supporting Occupy Wall Street’s goals 39/34, to opposing them 34/42.

[snip]

I don’t think the bad poll numbers for Occupy Wall Street reflect Americans being unconcerned with wealth inequality.  Polling we did in some key swing states earlier this year found overwhelming support for raising taxes on people who make over $150,000 a year.  In late September we found that 73% of voters supported the ‘Buffet rule’ with only 16% opposed.  And in October we found that Senators resistant to raising taxes on those who make more than a million dollars a year could pay a price at the polls.  I don’t think any of that has changed – what the downturn in Occupy Wall Street’s image suggests is that voters are seeing the movement as more about the ‘Occupy’ than the ‘Wall Street.’  The controversy over the protests is starting to drown out the actual message.  (emphasis added) 

Same as It Ever Was: The Feds' Crackdown on Dissent

Something that had been worrying about in the back of my mind for the past coupla weeks was whether the crackdowns we’ve recently been seeing on Occupy protests in cities around the country might have all been part of a single coordinated effort.  My interest was definitely piqued when Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let it slip in a BBC interview that she

was recently on a conference call of 18 cities who had the same situation, where what had started as a political movement and a political encampment ended up being an encampment that was no longer in control of the people who started them.

And now we get this story that suggests not only that the nationwide crackdown on the Occupy movement was coordinated by the various cities involved, but that the federal government was assisting in that crackdown as well:

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict “Occupy” protesters from city parks and other public spaces.  As was the case in last night’s move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics.  And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

[snip]

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules.  Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear.  In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was least likely to be present.

Well.  That sure sounds like what happened in New York two nights ago.

* * *

Sadly, if it turns out the federal government did assist a coordinated effort across the nation to disenfranchise American citizens of their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and protest their very disenfranchisement . . . well, I won’t be surprised. 

One of the very first things I wrote on this blog was “A Brief History of American Class Warfare.”  There I provided three examples – largely glossed over by our history books and forgotten by most people today – in which The Powers That Be wielded federal power, including the U.S. military, against disenfranchised Americans who were protesting the system that had disenfranchised them.  One such forgotten example was the use of the U.S. military – including tanks – to drive out the Bonus Army that had created a permanent encampment (much like OWS did) on the banks of the Anacostia River in 1932 to agitate for payment of their promised WWI bonuses.

The sad fact is that the United States has a long history of using all its institutional might to preserve whatever existing system has control of it -- the Constitution be damned -- and the idea that the Department of Homeland Security might be involved in crushing peaceful American protesters instead of dangerous foreign terrorists just doesn’t surprise me.  I suspect that most DHS officials don’t even think of this as “mission creep,” but as simply doing the job they were hired to do.

I will be curious, however, to learn precisely what the federal interest was in crushing the Occupy movement.  I’ll be curious as well to see whether my fellow citizens don’t get just a teensy bit alarmed now that their government is actively working to suppress voices that peacefully dissent from continuing “business as usual” here in America.

And I will be very curious to learn whether any right-wing militia whack jobs, the overweight ones running around in the woods of Idaho in camo gear training to fight the inevitable totalitarian police state that they envision the federal government imposing sometime in the near future, will rally in support of the Occupy protesters when they learn the federal government has indeed taken action to shut down dissent, and that part of that action involved a “massive show of police force” -- including even the black helicopters that haunt the militamen's fever dreams, and the imposition of no-fly zones for civilian aircraft.

My guess is that they won’t.  My guess is that the hard-core, survivalist nutjobs of the extreme right-wing in this country are going to look at what their much loathed feds did and say:  “Good on the feds.  Dirty hippies.”

Truly, we are doomed.

Parsing the Order Ending the Occupation of Wall Street

So, we now have the Order of the Supreme Court of New York effectively ending the occupation of Zuccotti Park.  You can read it here.

(Note that the New York judiciary is organized, ah, differently than is the federal judiciary and that of all the other states.  In New York, the Supreme Court is not that highest court in the land.  That would be the NY Ct. of Appeals.  No, the NY Supreme Court is actually the trial court, and hierarchically is therefore the lowest court in the land.  No, I don’t know why they gave it that name either.)

As was easily predicted, the basis for the judge’s determination that OWS does not have a constitutional right to occupy Zuccotti Park is the ability of others to impose “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech. 

Disappointingly, I Think I Got it Right

Matt Yglesias argues today that being booted from Zuccotti park by the NYPD button men ultimately may have been a good thing for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Essentially, Yglesias argues that the protest could have ended in only one of two ways:  either the cops would come in and throw everybody out, or the protests would simply fizzle as people lost interest.  Yglesias suggests that having the protests simply fizzle would have been “demoralizing to everyone who’s come to look at the various Occupations as a key signal of popular discontent with rampant inequality.”

I said something similar only a few weeks ago, when I wrote that if Bloomberg were smart he’d just send the word out to the NYPD that they were to leave OWS alone unless the protesters engaged in illegal acts that substantially interfered with others’ rights.  “Without conflict, I doubt the media would continue covering the story,” I suggested, and the greatest danger to OWS was “probably not co-option but incorporation.  By its continuous presence it may simply become integrated into everyday life, assimilated as background noise, and ultimately disregarded as ‘just something those people do.’”

Of course, I also predicted that L’il Mikey and the rest of the 1% were unlikely to let the movement wither away by simply ignoring it; their own evident terror at possibly being called to account for their sociopathy and their narcissistic inability to see that middle-America would quickly lose interest in both the protesters and them if thing settled down would – I predicted – preclude any such outcome.

And, today, it looks like I was correct about that.

So now the Occupy movement transitions into Phase II . . . whatever that is.  Yglesias argues that “by ordering the protesters to be removed the Bloomberg administration has ensured continued relevance for the issue.”  I certainly hope that is the case.

I guess we’ll see.

There Goes Bloomberg’s Unity Party Nomination

Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to wipe out the Occupy Wall Street movement – and to do so unconstitutionally, by using the police to impose a de facto media blackout preventing coverage of the event – has given us all a little taste of just how high-handed and autocratic L’il Mikey naturally is.  To be sure, these aren’t the actions one associates with the persona Bloomberg has spent so many years cultivating of a “semi-liberal centrist,” but instead with that of a privileged member of the 1% who is not used to being denied anything he wants.

Of course, until he was actually challenged by the Occupy movement it was easy for L’il Mikey to play his easy going, easy guy role.  I keep thinking of Matt Taibbi’s description of Bloomberg after watching him in action at a Huffington Post event last year:

Bloomberg’s great triumph as a politician has been the way he’s been able to win over exactly the sort of crowd that was gathering at the HuffPost event that night.  He is a billionaire Wall Street creature with an extreme deregulatory bent who has quietly advanced some nastily regressive police policies (most notably the notorious “stop-and-frisk” practice) but has won over upper-middle-class liberals with his stances on choice and gay marriage and other social issues.

Bloomberg’s main attraction as a politician has been his ability to stick closely to a holy trinity of basic PR principles:  bang heavily on black crime, embrace social issues dear to white progressives, and in the remaining working hours give your pals on Wall Street (who can raise any money you need, if you somehow run out of your own) whatever they want.

He understands that as long as you keep muggers and pimps out of the prime shopping areas in the Upper West Side, and make sure to sound the right notes on abortion, stem-cell research, global warming, and the like, you can believably play the role of the wisecracking, good-guy-billionaire Belle of the Ball for the same crowd that twenty years ago would have been feting Ed Koch.  (emphasis added).

But with the events of last night and this morning, I think it is fair to say that – when push comes to shove – Bloomberg has finally revealed what constitutes his highest priority:  “giv[ing his] pals on Wall Street whatever they want.”

And what is even more revealing – in an extremely chilling kind of way – is the degree to which Bloomberg refuses to recognize any restraint on his ability to do whatever he wants in order to help his Wall Street buddies get rid of the nuisance that is OWS.  In additional to unconstitutionally blocking the press from doing its job, he is apparently more than willing to simply disregard court orders with which he disagrees.  Via ThinkProgress from earlier this morning:

A judge has ruled that Bloomberg cannot lawfully evict protesters from Zuccotti Park and has issued a temporary restraining order against New York City.  The order allows the protesters to return to the park until after a hearing on the matter today at 11:30 a.m.  In a news conference, Bloomberg said that it was his intention to open the park at 8 a.m. this morning but that, as a result of the restraining order (and contravening it), he will keep the park closed until the hearing.

[snip]

During the question and answer period, Bloomberg added, “It’s our considered judgment that the best course of action is to leave it closed,” in the event that “the judge changes her mind.” (emphasis added)

Now, let’s be real clear about what L’il Mikey is telling us.  He received a Court Order (i) explaining that he did not have legal authority to kick protesters out of the park, and (ii) requiring him to allow the protesters back into the park, but that he himself has decided to disregard that Order and instead act in accordance with his own “considered judgment.”

Is it just me, or doesn’t it strike anybody else that L’il Mikey essentially has decided that as Mayor of New York he alone has the authority to decide how the peace is to be kept in his city?  The situation now has gone well beyond a simple dispute about the right of protest; by disregarding the Court’s legal Order and publicly explaining that he instead is going to follow his own judgment, L’il Mikey has effectively announced the imposition of autocratic law.

Where I come from, recognizing and adhering to the rule of law is one of the cornerstones of being an American.  This is especially true when it comes to the rule of law as it applies to our different branches of government.  Refusing to recognize that the Mayor of New York is bound by the lawful orders of the New York Courts to the same degree as is everybody else is positively un-American.  And now, so is L’il Mikey Bloomberg.

So, can everybody please just shut up now about running L’il Mikey as a centrist, third-party candidate?  He isn’t a moderate, and he isn’t a centrist.  Like almost everyone who makes up the 1%, he is a rich autocrat who doesn’t believe he is bound by the same rules as everybody else.

And he’s an un-American shitbag to boot.

Our Unequal First Amendment Rights

UPDATED BELOW


Good Lord.  I woke up this morning to find David (There is No Spoon) Atkins reporting over at Digby’s joint on the NYPD’s clearing of Zucotti Park.  Atkins listed a number of incidents reported via twitter and I am sure that the story will become clearer as it progresses, but these reports struck me as paticularly creepy:

--  All media and press were not allowed within a block of Zucotti Park;

--Airspace over Zucotti was blocked by police helicopters and legally blocked to prevent any media coverage;

--Journalists gathered together to attempt to gain access were denied.  According to one report, one cop tore a press credential off a journalist, while another responded to a journalist’s claim to be press by saying “not tonight”;

--the Brooklyn Bridge was shut down until 6 am;

--Most subways and trains into downtown were blocked, including with cops at entrances.

Is there any doubt that L’il Mikey Bloomberg and his button men, the NYPD, intended to create a full media blackout here?  I thought this was something that we don’t allow happen in the United States of America, land of the First Amendment and home of the Bill of Rights.

The Over/Under on Further Police Brutality

Charlie Pierce writes about the Occupy Wall Street backlash that’s brewing as a result of the nationwide protests beginning to actively inconvenience – not the banks – but the individual people who run the banks and who bear direct responsibility for our current mess.  Pierce writes: 

It was only a matter of time before the human emotions of guilt and shame began to demonstrate their power.  And guilt and shame do not necessarily manifest themselves in contrition and a resolve to amend oneself.  Sometimes, they manifest themselves in anger and violence, and sometimes, the people who are overcome by the power of guilt and shame have police forces at their disposal.  They lash out, or they subcontract the job.  That seems to be part of what’s happening now.

The future belongs to the country beyond Zuccotti Park and the docks in Oakland.  If the country decides it would rather have order than justice, then what’s coming next could be very dark and very terrible.  If the country decides that, yes, this whole thing has been a nuisance, but a minor nuisance compared to an ongoing recession, near double-digit unemployment, a wave of foreclosures, and the continued corruption of the democratic institutions by the money powers, then somebody outside the park is going to have to stand up and lead the next phase.

I think this is mostly correct.  I have argued before that it is the terror that they may finally be called to account that has the banksters now traveling with bodyguards and L’il Mikey Bloomberg overreacting.  In a way this is a good thing, because it drives sympathy for OWS and keeps media attention on a movement that will suffocate unless the nation is reminded over and over again that nothing forces us to meekly accept what has been done to us in the name of the 1%.

Where I think Pierce goes astray is when he suggests that it is the opinion of “the country beyond Zuccotti Park” that will determine what form the inevitable backlash takes.  This is incorrect, and it is incorrect very much for the reason OWS is necessary in the first place:  The people who decide such things don’t care about the opinions of anyone other than the 1%.

L’il Mikey Bloomberg isn’t judiciously weighing how to respond to an increasingly inconvenient protest movement based on how he thinks it will go over with “the nation” – at least, not “the nation” as you, I and Charlie Pierce conceive it to be.  L’il Mikey is part of the 1%, answers to the 1%, and is concerned only about the 1% -- that is his “nation.”  Anyone having any doubts about this should click over and read Matt Taibbi’s takedown of Mike Bloomberg’s Marie Antoinette Moment, in which he excoriates L’il Mikey for peddling once again the oft-debunked, zombie lie that it was Congress and Fannie and Freddie that cause the housing crisis.  L’il Mikey is going to react in precisely the manner the 1% – out of their own guilt, shame, arrogance and terror – tell him to react.  Badly.

For what it’s worth, I think that would be a political miscalculation on his part.  OWS’s success at drawing attention to itself has always proceeded from its mistreatment by authority figures, whether that manifests as pepper spraying peaceful protesters, firing tear gas canisters at the head of a war veteran, or tossing flash-bang grenades at people attempting to help that veteran after his skull was fractured.  Opening up on these protesters with truncheons and rubber bullets will – I think – only strengthen the nation’s general support for the cause.

But if we’re weighing the likelihood of only two possible scenarios – further police brutality or a diffident ignoring of the protest – I’d say the odds favor the former.