The NYPD: A Movement's Best Friend

[babylonsister]

The NYPD: A Movement's Best Friend
Occupy Wall Street confrontations with police and politicians have only fueled the protest's growth.
Josh Eidelson | October 20, 2011


Tensions at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan mounted last week after New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Occupy Wall Street activists would need to vacate the premises temporarily for cleaning. In response to the threat, occupiers cleaned the park themselves and said that, come morning, they would hold brooms, link arms, and peacefully refuse to leave. Bloomberg backed down, and once more, Occupy Wall Street confirmed that it could endure in the face of resistance from politicians and police. A better question is whether the movement could have endured without the attention and momentum it's gained from confrontation.

"Seeing what happened at the Brooklyn Bridge ... that was a wake-up call," says Armando Serrano, referring to the arrest of 700 protesters on the bridge earlier this month. The number of arrests, and allegations that police lured protesters to the area where they took place, inspired a new wave of activists and catapaulted the movement to the forefront of national news. Since then, repeated accusations of police violence against protesters, backed up by video and witnesses, have only helped fuel the movement.

"The impact of police has definitely helped the movement grow," says student activist and Occupy Wall Street volunteer organizer Biola Jeje.

David Graeber, an anthropologist who took part in six weeks of planning in the lead-up to Occupy Wall Street, says the occupation would not have reached its current size or significance without headline-grabbing confrontations with the police. Though many individual officers may support the movement and its aims, Graeber says that because the NYPD "represents the existing system of property and power relations," conflict is inevitable.

This dynamic is, in part, the formula for effective demonstrations. With a ripe target, civil disobedience dramatizes injustice. Occupy Wall Street planned powerful confrontations and risked arrest in order to force a sustained spotlight on the financial sector. But while Occupy Wall Street laid this groundwork, the aggressive response of city officials and the NYPD helped create an urgent confrontation, a national story, and an enduring movement.

more...

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_nypd_a_movements_best_friend

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Proof we don't have total fascism ,refreshing in a time of liquid logic.

[lg59kis]

4. +1

[msongs]

2. primary function of police is to protect the have a lot from the have less nt

[HockeyMom]

3. Police belong to a UNION

Why in the end wouldn't they sympathize with the protesters and against those who want to destroy Unions?

[customerserviceguy]

5. An "us vs. them" mentality has been planted

It probably started during the WTO demonstrations, it's not a stretch for a cop to see the two groups as being quite similar.

While there are OWS protesters who want this to be what they remember (or what they were told) about the Sixties, there are a lot of cops at the commander level who have their fantasies about what they would have done back then, as well. Ditto for reporters.

[GliderGuider]

6. Because the protesters are civilians, the cops see them as being "outside the wire".

Everyone outside the wire is assumed to be an enemy. Individual policemen may sympathize with the protest, but "The Police" do not. Their social role is to guard the property rights of the power elite, not the human rights of citizens.

Sgt. Shamar Thomas got that, and tried to pull individual policemen out of the herd - that was what made his rant so incredibly powerful.