Occupy Wall Street and the history of force

Over the past few weeks, increasingly irritated and trigger-happy local officials have received glimpses of “people power” as they’ve amped up efforts to clear Occupy camps around the country, including New York’s Zuccotti Park on Monday night. But if history tells us anything, it’s that unwieldy, nonviolent and relatively modest movements can actually take down giants—and that implements of force are no match for the collective will of the people.

Such acts of police aggression are fast becoming the shame of our nation. Intended to deter, they actually amplify the Occupy movement’s narrative of fighting domination and corruption.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s earlier campaign of intimidation backfired just weeks ago, when horrifying video of New York Police Department officers pepper-spraying screaming young girls at point-blank range appeared on TV stations around the globe.

Bad turned worse when protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, and more than 700 of them were trapped and arrested halfway. The mayor later threatened to close Zuccotti Park for a “clean up,” but a groundswell of several thousand people crammed in to defend the camp. This week they returned in the middle of the night, with sound canons and tear gas. Media were barred entry. Police effectively cleared the park, but set off a whirlwind of street action.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country, Occupy Oakland—which also was cleared by police in riot gear Monday—had already been transformed into a veritable warzone in late October as police fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at a crowd of peaceful occupiers, severely injuring Scott Olsen, a two-tour Iraq War veteran. Amidst this ode to the city’s vile history of intolerance, Oakland’s leadership scrambled for answers: Mayor Jean Quan’s top legal adviser and deputy mayor both resigned over the heavy handling of the protests, and the city played host to the first General Strike in decades. The second raid this week only pushed the Occupiers to a new location.

Public outcry will help put these mayors in their place. But without a peep from the Feds, state violence in other municipalities is rapidly devolving into a sadistic free-for-all.  From Atlanta to Denver to Portland, police are bullying nonviolent protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets, jailing people like criminals. Police only apologize after the fact, when incriminating YouTube videos stream on the evening news.

What they are failing to understand is that brutality and force don’t quell the leadership of a movement, they draw it forth in even fuller form.

After all, a dose of adversity has always been good medicine for movements aiming to cure the ills of social inequality. At the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, for example, some 600 peaceful demonstrators in Alabama began a march from Selma to Montgomery, fighting for the right to vote. Crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by a formidable police line, led by the infamous Sheriff Jim Clark. Clark and his posse pushed the protesters back over the bridge with tear gas and beat some of them to near death.