Banks Deeply Involved in FBI-Coordinated Suppression of “Terrorist” Occupy Wall Street. If you had any doubts of the veracity of former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson’s depiction of the financial crisis as a “quiet coup,” a pre-Christmas release of FBI documents should put them to rest. While I linked to a discussion of the results of the Partnership for Civil Justice’s FOIA of FBI materials on Occupy Wall Street, I was remiss in not writing them up earlier. Both the Partnership for Civil Justice and Naomi Wolf at the Guardian (hat tip Scott A) provide good overviews. The PCJ also published the FBI documents it obtained. If you’ve been following the story of the official response to Occupy Wall Street, it was apparent that the 17 city paramilitary crackdown was coordinated; it came out later that the Department of Homeland Security was the nexus of that operation.
The deep FBI involvement is a new and ugly addition to this picture. Several impressions emerge from reading the summaries and dipping into the FBI documents: More details from the PCJ summary: Civil liberties? City releases latest Occupy Oakland costs: $3.7 million. OO activitiy on Nov. 14 By Jennifer Inez Ward Oakland has spent $2.9 million in police overtime for Occupy Oakland, according to recently released city documents - obtained via an Oakland Local public records request. According to the report, as of February 27, the city has paid $3.7 million total for the cost connected to the political movement. The Oakland Public Works division, which is in charge of the maintenance work in Frank Ogawa Plaza, has cost more than $82,000 in overtime so far.
The city also has spent more than $20,000 for overtime connected to its Information Technology department. About $600,000 was spent on "operations and maintenance," which includes costs connected to the short-lived private security services for the plaza and mutual aid charges from outside police agencies. Operation and maintenance charges also lists more than $10,000 for OPD meals, water, portable toilets and car rentals. Cost connected to OO has now become a hot potato issue in Oakland.
Exclusive: Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street (VIDEO) The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf. US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? The NYPD Didn't Want You To See Occupy Wall Street Get Evicted. A police officer carries trash through Zuccotti Park (AP) During our coverage of the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters early this morning, a NPR reporter, a New York Times reporter, and a city councilmember were arrested.
Airspace in Lower Manhattan was closed to CBS and NBC news choppers by the NYPD, a New York Post reporter was allegedly put in a "choke hold" by the police, a NBC reporter's press pass was confiscated and a large group of reporters and protesters were hit with pepper spray. According to the eviction notice, the park was merely "cleaned and restored for its intended use. " If this is the case, why were so few people permitted to view it? "Get the fuck back! Fuck back I said! " Police began vigorously jamming the torsos of those who stood on the sidewalk with their batons. Hundreds of NYPD officers filled Broadway in a show of force (Gothamist) Cornell Brown, a producer at an ad agency who lives on Wall Street, tried to speak with a police officer during a lull.
Did Mayors, DHS Coordinate Occupy Attacks? When a series of crackdowns on the Occupy camps suddenly occurred in, more or less, the same week, many observers wondered if perhaps the attacks had been coordinated at a national level. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan confirmed that suspicion during an appearance on the BBC - excerpted on The Takeaway radio program - when she casually mentioned taking part in a conference call with the leaders of 18 US cities right before the raids. “I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation," said Quan. It turns out one of the 18 leaders who sat in on the call was Portland Mayor Sam Adams. The calls, according to Adams, were organized "to share information about the occupying encampments around the country. " In addition to conferring with their fellow mayors, it appears city leadership also received an assist from the Department of Homeland Security, according to journalist Rick Ellis at the Examiner.
Raids on OWS coordinated with Obama’s FBI, Homeland Security & others. Update: ‘Occupy’ crackdowns coordinated with federal law enforcement officials Minneapolis Top News Examiner November 15, 2011 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. The official, who spoke on background to me late Monday evening, said that while local police agencies had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies, the ultimate decision on how each jurisdiction handles the Occupy protests ultimately rests with local law enforcement. Evicting the Public. Why has occupying public spaces brought such heavy-handed repression? Across America police have been called to clear protestors from parks and university campuses.
Ostensibly progressive cities like Portland and Oakland have been in the vanguard of evictions. From Harvard to Berkeley, university presidents have joined mayors in using police in riot gear to remove students and other protestors from campus lawns. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took pride in giving police a direct order to evict the original Occupy Wall Street encampment from Zuccotti Park. The police moved in at night and made a point of blocking media coverage of their actions. It is disturbing to see governments in ostensibly democratic America taking actions reminiscent of the Chinese government ousting protestors from Tiananmen Square. More recently the government of Bahrain used force to remove peaceful protestors camped at the Pearl Roundabout. Exclusive: Homeland Security Kept Tabs on Occupy Wall Street | Michael Hastings.