Oakland Mayor Quan. Your fear is preventing you from correct action.

[Fire Walk With Me]

The movement is peaceful. Treat it peacefully and it will respond peacefully. It is that simple.

Thank you very much for deciding to treat the movement peacefully.

[Zoeisright]

1. She's still in office?

She should have resigned in disgrace.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. Peacefully.

[baldguy]

3. That's something I'll never get in a million yrs: why all the violence against non-violent protests?

[dreamnightwind]

4. A couple of points in response

1) The Oakland protests, awesome as they are, have not been entirely non-violent. On the day Scott Olsen was wounded, there had been some protesters throwing things at officers before the violence broke out. I watched an interview of an OWS "spokesperson" who confirmed this. It gave the cops an excuse to go off, lame as that excuse is.

And on the night of the port shutdown, a group of protesters had occupied a former homeless shelter that was sitting vacant, and set fire to a barricade they had erected in the street. After police went off on them, a fair amount of violence to property and businesses ensued, done by a black-bandana'd group of protesters. Also 7 officers were apparently injured, mostly by protesters throwing objects, according to a rep of the police association interviewed by Thom Hartmann. OWS is dialoging about how to deal with this.

Some protesters have also been shooting cops with paint guns, or whatever they're called.

2) We live in a police state. The extent of this is not yet fully known, since there has been no real direct challenge to the powers that be since the police state's maturity. I think we'll see that beast emerge and reveal itself soon enough, they can't wait to use their new weapons and tactics in combat, which is what many of these SWAT type cops have been trained for.

So I really think total non-violence must be adhered to, and OWS people need to do anything in their power to stop violent demonstrators, including pointing them out to the police if necessary (edited to add that some of these violent protesters could even be undercover agents inciting violence, in any event they're no friends of the movement, end of edit).

We want to be Egypt, not Libya. And if things get bad enough, the police and para-military might we'd be up against would be brutal and overwhelming. Hell, if the cops can't muster enough force, we'll see National Guard and possibly even Blackwater/Xe goons being used. That's not a road we want to go down.

[baldguy]

5. Seems to me any violence coming from the OWS side are either a reaction to police assaults

or agents provocateurs not otherwise associated with OWS.

[dreamnightwind]

10. I hope you are right

and I'm sure it's mostly the case, but it has looked to me that it's not entirely the case, and the police are going to over-react to any violence and the media will paint the whole movement as being that way if we give them the chance. I agree that there are probably some agents provocateurs (thanks for helping me spell that!)

[MedleyMisty]

6. I agree with the Libya and Egypt thing

in that I do not want our dictators to be sending a column of tanks against cities and, like, bombarding Oakland.

However, in the end result, I'd pick Libya over Egypt. Note - not saying I'd want to reach it in the same way, at all, which is impossible anyway because LOL at the UN voting for a no fly zone over the US, but I'd rather get rid of the old guard as completely as possible. Egypt isn't free - they're still struggling, just now it's against SCAF instead of Mubarak.

I wonder just how far our dictators would go, though. The current press can't be too good for that old "city on a hill, bringer of democracy" propaganda. Surely they wouldn't want video of protesters being shot and killed being shown around the world.

One thing in our favor - the myth we have of freedom and democracy and peace. It's been a myth for quite some time, but it's still powerful. I think a majority of our police and military would balk at being ordered to massacre Americans. Of course, Blackwater/Xe wouldn't.

[dreamnightwind]

9. Yes, we have to go all the way

Egypt now must free itself from their military instead of from Mubarak. So I agree with you in that regard.

I don't know that the comparison really holds up that well, though. I only used it in the context of their non-violent yet doggedly determined civil disobedience, which I watched hours and hours of on Al Jazeera, truly remarkable.

The non-violence rant:
Our situation is different from both of those countries. I could be wrong about this, violence could be the way to go (and I know that isn't what you are saying), but along with the hope that OWS brings there is a very dark and tragic possibility of civil war here. We have a rabid and heavily armed right wing in this country, most of which will not be our friends if the shit really hits the fan, though we need to bring as many of them as possible to understand that the enemy is the oligarchs. Many of them would rather kill liberals than protest global corporatism. And our country has an unbelievably huge and heavily armed police and military infrastructure that would be a formidable foe.

I don't see a lot of harmony in this nation that can survive a violent uprising without disintegrating into a horrific civil war.

At the same time, I completely agree that we have to go all the way, we have to really get control of this country back into the hands of the citizens rather than the corporations.

Seems to me that a general strike could get some results, as well as getting the corporate money completely out of our elections (SCOTUS impeachments or constitutional amendment required to do this). OWS is doing a great job of being creative and choosing the right targets. I just worry that violence will derail any chance we have at a positive outcome.

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. Just wait until they use high-tech armament like sticky foam and taser drones.

Want to turn Ma and Pa against the police state? That would help.

[dreamnightwind]

11. I dunno

The media is not our friend, and most of the Ma and Pas would get an inaccurate version of what went down, so I could see it going either way as far as public reaction.

[Fumesucker]

8. TPTB aren't interested in dealing with a peaceful movement..

Much better to push people into violence and then paint them as having instigated the violence.

The news choppers cutting off the feed as soon as the cops are ready to charge the protesters is all you need to know to connect the dots.

What's keeping those tactics from working at the moment is ubiquitous video, in the past the police and the government would simply deny anything inappropriate and sweep it all under the rug. They cannot do that anymore because somebody (often several somebodies) has posted video to the internet.