LEGAL GROUPS TAKE ACTION AGAINST RECENT CRACKDOWNS ON OCCUPIERS

A RIT student is lead away in handcuffs in Washington Square Park, Rochester, N.Y. in the early morning hours of Oct. 29, 2011. 32 people were eventually arrested for violating park curfew laws. Those ticketed will appear in City Court in early December. photo provided

Rochester, N.Y.-- With Congress no longer observing its sworn role to defend the US Constitution, the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee and the Partnership for Civil Justice recently filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and the National Parks Service to release "all their information on the planning of the coordinated law enforcement crackdown on Occupy protest encampments in multiple cities over the course of recent days and weeks."

According to a statement by the NLG, each of the FOIA requests states, "This request specifically encompasses disclosure of any documents or information pertaining to federal coordination of, or advice or consultation regarding, the police response to the Occupy movement, protests or encampments."

The rapid-fire assaults on occupation encampments in cities from Oakland to New York and Portland, Seattle and Atlanta, all within days of each other and the similar approach taken by police was not a coincidence. The attacks included overwhelming force in night-time assaults, mass arrests, use of such weaponry as pepper spray, sound cannons, tear gas, clubs and in some cases "non-lethal" projectiles like bean bags and rubber bullets, the removal and even arrest of reporters and camera-persons, and the justifications offered by municipal officials, who all cited "health" and "safety" concerns, all pointed to central direction and guidance.

The Occupy Movement, which is now in over 170 cities around the U.S., "has been confronted by a nearly simultaneous effort by local governments and local police agencies to evict and break up encampments in cities and towns throughout the country."

You would have to be living under a rock not to know that the severe crackdown on the occupation movement appears to be part of a national strategy. The operatives of the 1 percent want to crush the movement in an action we describe purely as political insanity.

The Occupy demonstrations are not criminal activities and police should not be treating them as such.

Rochester Occupiers peacefully protest in Washington
Square Park in downtown Rochester. photo provided

The police conducting these coordinated raids look more like Imperial Storm Troopers than cops in their riot gear get-ups. The attacks show how the nation's local police are becoming more of a national paramilitary force, curiously akin to the widely despised and feared Armed Police forces that do the heavy riot-control and repression duty in China.

Equipped with federally-supplied body armor and military-style weapons like stun grenades, sound canons and of course assault rifles, domestic US police forces responding to even garden variety, peaceful protest actions often look more like an occupying army than a local police force.

Meanwhile, anti-occupy actions have even been condemned by the Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans who are increasingly coming to and supporting the occupation movement. These vets say the police are employing tactics that they themselves were not even permitted to use in dealing with unrest in occupied or war-torn lands.

This is probably one of the biggest political miscalculations of recent memory. The Occupy Movement is not going anywhere—and conducting coordinated raids will not stop the 99 percent from peacefully assembling and speaking their minds.