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Cities’ Occupy Encampment Evictions A ‘Set-Up’?
by
Ritt Goldstein | 11.14.2011
With the 'homeless and troubled' having come to Occupy, bringing the kinds of issues they sadly too often mean, an 'excuse' for police action to evict Occupy developed, one that's been readily pounced upon. Of course, reports that 'the troubled' were sent to Occupy by police and other authorities have appeared, raising questions if Occupy was 'set-up' for both the ongoing evictions and the derailing of their original objective - the Banks and Wall Street.  Photo is Occupy Cincinnati, Cities’ Occupy Encampment Evictions A ‘Set-Up’? With the 'homeless and troubled' having come to Occupy, bringing the kinds of issues they sadly too often mean, an 'excuse' for police action to evict Occupy developed, one that's been readily pounced upon. Of course, reports that 'the troubled' were sent to Occupy by police and other authorities have appeared, raising questions if Occupy was 'set-up' for both the ongoing evictions and the derailing of their original objective - the Banks and Wall Street. As news reports of the moment widely tell of broad efforts by many cities to eliminate Occupy’s encampments, some things are vital to recall, especially those suggesting that these eviction actions are being pursued under a ‘manufactured pretext’. Underpinning many of the cities’ efforts are alleged public safety concerns about those within Occupy’s camps, but the media has also reported upon how ‘troubled’ individuals have been urged by police to join Occupy. As a matter of fact, I wrote of this myself, “Occupy Facing 'Cloaked' Counterattacks”, and see such urgings of ‘the troubled’ by authorities as a mechanism to attempt to smear, disrupt and discredit Occupy, as well as provide the pretext for the kinds of eviction actions we’re seeing. Notably, Salt Lake City is one of those cities that has just moved against an Occupy encampment, the reason being a suspected drug overdose death there. While 19 SLC Occupiers were arrested, local KSL.com news reported that the deceased was a “homeless man identified only as ‘Mike’". There is a difference between those which are ‘troubled and homeless’ and those which have left their homes to struggle for justice. What is of paramount importance to recall is that at first it was ‘sanitation’ issues that led the cities’ efforts, though now that the ‘troubled’ have been ‘seeded’ within Occupy’s camps, we have a new rationale supposedly demanding action. But as the Acting Legal Director of the Utah ACLU, Joe Cohn, told KSL, "We must ask, if someone died of an overdose at the homeless shelter, would they be closing the homeless shelter?” Are the latest actions against Occupy, actions in at least Oakland, Portland, Denver, Salt Lake City, and further, motivated by a sincere desire to ensure public safety, or rather to strike another blow against Occupy, against ‘we, the people’, while using ‘public safety’ as a manufactured pretext? Dirty tricks against popular social justice movements are an old story, but what’s relatively new are the dimensions of the wrongdoing that spawned the Occupy movement, the fact that we have so many of the 'best politicians that money can buy', and the courageous determination of so many everyday people in the struggle to reclaim what is ours. If any need reminder of how much our police often care about the public’s safety, this video of the graphic, November 9th police violence against students at Occupy Berkeley says more than I can. I will note that the video appears to show that valiant young women seem a favorite target for such police action. VIDEO Unprovoked assault by police on students #OccupyCal #OccupyBerkley #Solidarity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVkC7kRFV8c Of course, one must examine anything in its context, and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement is no exception. In 2009 I wrote an article in The Christian Science Monitor about alternative banking, "Banking, the Swedish model". At the end I quoted a dire warning. "Jakob von Uexküll, founder of both the British-based World Future Council and Sweden's Right Livelihood Award (also known as the 'alternative' Nobel Prize), argues that banking interests have become so powerful that they have been effectively able to 'take over governments to get the kind of legislation they needed.' Referring to the megabanks, Mr. von Uexküll adds, 'They need to be dismantled.... If an economic entity is too big that it threatens the state, it threatens democracy.'" Occupy Wall Street is right, corporate power and greed are a problem, and that’s why the dirty tricks will continue, and why our support for Occupy’s selfless valor must as well. The only things that remain are for people to finish waking up to what's actually happened, then join Occupy in acting upon it. Copyright November 2011 Ritt Goldstein is a former leader in the movement for US police accountability and author of police accountability legislation. He is also an independent journalist whose work has been published in both America and abroad. |
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