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NIGHTSTICKS

TO WALL STREET!

by the Novem

ber 13th Gr oup


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Nightsticks to Wall Street! chanted on the streets of Portland, Oregonon the morning of Sunday, Nov 13th while riotpolice menaced the crowd

Power concedes nothing without ademand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people willquietly submit to and you have foundout the exact measure of injustice

and wrong which will be imposedupon them, and these will continue tillthey are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants areprescribed by the endurance of thosewhom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass


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NIGHTSTICKS TO WALL STREET!THE LESSONS OF SATURDAY NIGHT

by the November 13th Group

November 17th, 2011

Saturday night, and the subsequent raids and police actions nationally,have made a number of points clear: 1. T HIS MOVEMENT IS NO LONGER MADE UP OF JUST THOSE STAYING AT THE ENCAMPMENTS , NOR THOSE PARTICIPATING IN THE A SSEMBLIES . In Oakland and Portland, we ve seen thatlarge numbers of the population who are not camping or are unableto attend nightly meetings are still willing to come out in support of the Occupy movement.

2. T HE ARGUMENT THAT WE CAN T AFFORD TO DISRUPT LIFE FOR THE 99% DOESN T ALWAYS HOLD WATER . WhenOccupy Portland publicly de ed both the Police and the City by insisting it would stay, Portlanders rallied behind it in numbers thatmatched those of day one of Occupy. Occupy Portland s willingnessto disrupt business as usual for the 1% and portions of the 99%in their employ found massive support and that support won the

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night for Occupy Portland. Occupy Oakland s call for a GeneralStrike in response to state repression found somewhere well beyond20,000 people marching behind it, shutting down Oakland s economicfoundation, the Port of Oakland. Our strength lies in our willingness

to disrupt business as usual for the 1% and their tools. 3. T HERE IS A NATIONAL STRATEGY EMERGING AGAINST

THE O CCUPY MOVEMENT . In Portland (as elsewhere), thishas consisted of attempts to demonize the protest encampments

with tales of violence, drug use, and even bomb-making. Citiesacross the country appear to be issuing versions of the same press

release, uniformly citing health and safety concerns. These attemptsat discrediting the movement have come alongside soft police violence. Since the General Strike in Oakland, in response to massiveand publicly-viewed police brutality against the Occupy movement,the State has concluded (atleast temporarily) that thepolitical costs of deploying overwhelming force against theOccupy movement in view of the public are too high every time it does so, the movement snumbers swell.

4. T HE P OLICE ARE NOT OUR ALLIES . Individual cops may beour friends or neighbors, they may be workers like ourselves, butthe role and function of police is as enforcers for the 1%. Relatively soft treatment early on inspired some occupiers to view the policeas allies, but now it is evident that the police will beat us and destroy our encampments for the 1%.

Policing and crime enforcement in the United States are structuredentirely around race and class. When the poor and marginalized

demand power, the 1% will always cry criminals! The 1% cangamble away our pensions, take our savings, foreclose our homes,destroy social security and run our economy into the ground and

what happens? The federal government rains dollars over them inthe billions. Daily enforcement of drug laws, property crimes, andpetty statutes disproportionately target out the poor, people of colorand the homeless. These policies are known failures at preventing

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anti-social behavior. Throughincarceration, parole, probationand street-level policing, the1% maintains a constant and

ever-tightening control over thesectors of society most likely torebel.

If Occupy Portland is truly committed to a diverse movement of the 99%, it cannot afford tosimply conclude that the Police are our friends. We embrace theposition heard in the streets Sunday: the police can join the rest of the 99% when they put down their batons and take off their riot gear.

To this we would add and when they cease to kill and incarcerateour brothers and sisters in our neighborhoods and streets.

5. T HE L IBERAL P OLITICAL E STABLISHMENT IS INCAPABLE OF UPHOLDING ITS OWN IDEALS . Perhaps the most progressivemayor in the United States, Jean Quan, has presided over multiple

violent evictions of Occupy Oakland. On Saturday we saw PortlandMayor Sam Adams order police to forcibly remove the encampments,and when thousands came downtown to oppose the eviction on thenight of the deadline, he made no effort to address these citizens of Portland.

Sam Adams claims, I support this movement. But Adams only supported this movement until it became an actual political threat.Sam Adams moved when the federal strategy of action against theOccupy movement emerged, and when the Portland Business Allianceand Portland Police Association publicly demanded that he do so.He may support Occupy s message against economic injustice, butat the end of the day, he has made clear that he takes orders from

those who perpetuate or protect

those economic injustices. Sam Adams has presided over furtherunweaving of our city s socialsafety net. The now destroyedOccupy encampment served1500 meals a day and attempted,imperfectly, to provide mental

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health care and a sense of community to the city s most vulnerable.

Our movement is centered on humanitarian ideals liberty, humanrights, expansion of freedoms and democratic participation.

The liberal political establishment has acted to quash the greatestmanifestation of them in our lifetime, at the behest of money andpower. Our strength lies in demonstrating to the world that Occupy comes closer to putting these ideals into practice than any liberalpolitician ever will.

6. N ONVIOLENCE WILL NOT PROTECT US FROM POLICE

VIOLENCE . We respect those who practice true nonviolent resistance.Nonviolence, however, is no guarantee of immunity from repressionor violence, especially when we are not willing to simply give up andgo home (those of us who have one to go back to). We refused to beprovoked, but we also refused to back down. This is what thousandscame down to support, and why even some of the nonparticipants,

who had lined up at the Justice Center to witness the eviction joinedthe crowd as it pushed riot police off of the street. A movementof thousands managed topush riot police out of ourencampments and off thestreets. Our simultaneousrefusal to riot and refusalto back down in the faceof police provocation is are ection of our strengthand discipline.

7. T HE POWERS THAT BE FEAR USING VIOLENCE IN THE PUBLIC VIEW . This is a temporary calculation, one based on theassumption that the costs in terms of increased public sympathy for Occupy are higher than the bene ts of fear and demoralizationcreated by state violence. In Portland, the Police and the Mayorhave made clear their desire that those who wish to be arrested doso peaceably, and have stated that, we can accommodate them.

The 1% knows from experience that deploying tear gas, concussiongrenades and billy clubs risks inspiring sympathy from averagepeople, as it already has across the country and around the world.

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The Police and the City establishment will be more than happy toshuttle as many symbolic arrests through the justice system as wecan offer. This allows them to continue to propagate the lie that they

have been nonviolent, obscuring the reality underlying the entirety of their actions when you threaten someone with weapons,beatings, and arrest, and that person does what you say,

violence has been enacted.

Police and the City retreated Sunday morning not because the crowdoverwhelmed them militarily, but because the crowd called their bluff.

Although unwilling to give the police the provocation they wantedfor an attack, those present stood rm, letting police know that toclear the crowd, they would have to show the population of the City and the whole world the real violence which underlies Sam Adamsand Mike Reese s threats. The Police backed down because they fearthe backlash that would be generated from that show of force. If thedemonstration had had clearly demarcated arrestables, separatedand seated quietly, the police would have had the quiet charade of

nonviolence they needed to perpetuate their lie. When this failed,they retreated.

Occupy Wall St. in New York was swept withoutright violence in theform of tear gas and

batons, while media werecordoned off blocks away because the State knew that the costs of such

violence being seen by thepublic would be too high.

It is notable that the Police in Portland avoided the use of chemicalmunitions and forms of more spectacular violence, despite hours of speaker truck announcements promising just that to the crowd if itdid not disperse. (Nearing the end of the eviction on Sunday, whensmaller numbers refused to be moved, we felt the overhand strikes of police batons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BtLxuh88ck ).

Saturday night succeeded because thousands of people came down

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in defense of Occupy Portland, and they saw an alternative to thefalse choices of negotiating with the city, sitting down and being arrested, or rioting.

8. L EADING BY FOLLOWING : THE MASSES IN THE MOVEMENT LEAD BY ACTION . People placed their safety and liberty on theline to defend Chapman and Lownsdale Squares from a raid by Portland Police on Saturday night, and the diverse group assembledchose to hold the line against a phalanx of armed riot police andhorses, and ultimately topush forward and back

the police down. All toofrequently, conservativeOccupy leadership triesto reign in bold action by larger groups. At the bestof times, common peoplemay be several stepsahead of leadership.

9. C HANGING THE SYSTEM REQUIRES TAKING RISK . TheOccupy movement has made headlines around the world for itscreative resistance. The Oakland occupy has twice now regroupedforces and reestablished the encampment after being swept by police. In Portland, occupiers showed a willingness to stand upto the announced city eviction. By remaining in the park after thedeclared curfew, by defying police orders to disperse, by turning back charging horses, by confronting baton jabs with all of these actionsthousands of Occupiers and supporters accepted a certain level of personal risk, and in doing so, were able to achieve a signi cantpolitical victory. Our strength lies in our ability to creatively resist,and our ability to create situations that inspire people to believe thatthe risks involved are worthwhile.

10. IN SOLIDARITY LIES STRENGTH . Occupy needs a diversity of ideas and opinions to be debated and tested; this is its strength.Our movement must continue to draw masses of people into new and varied forms of activity, and solidarity must underpin thisprocess. The media or other of cial institutions are not going to giveOccupy a fair shake, and we should not bring the expectation that

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some purity of action or word will change this.

While we should take seriously the issues of strategy and promoteaccountability, we must avoid playing into a simplistic divisionbetween legitimate and illegitimate protesters. We cannot afford thisdangerous and false division, which ultimately blames people of conscience for attempting to change the world and draws attentionaway from the larger problems.

Genuine participation in the Occupy movement may lead to murky

situations which may not t into a larger strategy. These situations will always exert a cost to the movement but without striving forsolidarity, this cost will be even higher. Occupy will be underminedby the divisions which will emerge if factions continue to attempt tobolster their own legitimacy by throwing those they disagree with topolice or media in denunciations or collaboration.

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