Occupy Wall Street. Police vs people in NY.

Yes, I know there are probably a dozen different threads where I could post this but I felt that this one most had the correct tone.

6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying

A little bit of news on the topic; I figured it was worth sharing:

The University of California has reached a $1m (£62,000) settlement with demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during an Occupy protest last year.

The college will pay $30,000 to 21 complainants each, with $250,000 for their lawyers, according to an agreement filed in a Sacramento court.

Well, that's a minor victory at least. Maybe it'll give pause to other organizations before they go slap-happy with unreasonable treatment of peaceful protestors.

I'm surprised to see no mention here of the 1 year anniversary.

Also, pictures.

EDIT: Forgot to respond to the above

It is nice to see some sort of repercussion to police overreactions. It's been a while since I had looked into it, but were there any more direct repercussions for the involved officers (suspension, fines, job termination, etc)?

WipEout wrote:

I'm surprised to see no mention here of the 1 year anniversary.

I saw some people from Occupy Wall Street on Chris Hayes' weekend show and am sympathetic to the general anti-Wall Street idea, but other than giving us the 1% meme, did all that protesting accomplish anything? I'm open to hearing that things have changed, but reading financial bloggers I'm not getting the sense that the big banks have changed a single aspect of their business strategies.

Funkenpants wrote:
WipEout wrote:

I'm surprised to see no mention here of the 1 year anniversary.

I saw some people from Occupy Wall Street on Chris Hayes' weekend show and am sympathetic to the general anti-Wall Street idea, but other than giving us the 1% meme, did all that protesting accomplish anything? I'm open to hearing that things have changed, but reading financial bloggers I'm not getting the sense that the big banks have changed a single aspect of their business strategies.

Hard to say. In a sense, they did change the political rhetoric around money - prior to Occupy, the discussion was about debt, and being framed in a very pro-wealthy interests fashion.

Tanglebones wrote:
Funkenpants wrote:
WipEout wrote:

I'm surprised to see no mention here of the 1 year anniversary.

I saw some people from Occupy Wall Street on Chris Hayes' weekend show and am sympathetic to the general anti-Wall Street idea, but other than giving us the 1% meme, did all that protesting accomplish anything? I'm open to hearing that things have changed, but reading financial bloggers I'm not getting the sense that the big banks have changed a single aspect of their business strategies.

Hard to say. In a sense, they did change the political rhetoric around money - prior to Occupy, the discussion was about debt, and being framed in a very pro-wealthy interests fashion.

A fairly large number of people switched over to credit unions too. And I haven't followed up on that but would not be surprised if the general rate of conversion is higher now, thanks in no part to the changed political dialogue.

CheezePavilion wrote:

A little bit of news on the topic; I figured it was worth sharing:

The University of California has reached a $1m (£62,000) settlement with demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during an Occupy protest last year.

The college will pay $30,000 to 21 complainants each, with $250,000 for their lawyers, according to an agreement filed in a Sacramento court.

My wife cynically responded "So they paid them back one year of tuition money?"

I think the best thing to come out of occupy was to bring the whole situation into the general consciousness and to generate valuable discussion - even if the movement itself was doomed from the start.

Duoae wrote:

I think the best thing to come out of occupy was to bring the whole situation into the general consciousness and to generate valuable discussion - even if the movement itself was doomed from the start.

Well, what were they going to realistically do? It's one thing to topple a regime in a banana republic. It's another to do it in the most well armed and organized banana republic.

It's also interesting how quickly the fact that the police, in the United States, will beat the f*ck out of peaceful protestors, has receded from public awareness. Everything's Just Fine(tm).

Malor wrote:

It's also interesting how quickly the fact that the police, in the United States, will beat the f*ck out of peaceful protestors, has receded from public awareness. Everything's Just Fine(tm).

Last time I looked you guys have enacted no new laws regulating banks (not that Europe has either) and all the big multi-national banks are more profitable today than they were prior to the bail outs. So... Go Consciousness and Valuable Discussion!!!!

Also absolutely true. Yet again, nothing happens -- but we're now explicitly footing the bill when the banks blow themselves up again.

Yeah, sadly, Occupy didn't really accomplish anything of substance beyond proving to the authorities that they can utilize more unjustified police brutality and the populace won't genuinely take them to task for it.

Farscry wrote:

Yeah, sadly, Occupy didn't really accomplish anything of substance beyond proving to the authorities that they can utilize more unjustified police brutality and the populace won't genuinely take them to task for it.

Minus that whole million dollar fine.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Farscry wrote:

Yeah, sadly, Occupy didn't really accomplish anything of substance beyond proving to the authorities that they can utilize more unjustified police brutality and the populace won't genuinely take them to task for it.

Minus that whole million dollar fine.

For one university's private security force.

What about the NYPD? Seattle PD? Etc?

Occupy did work... It did change the debate. It helped ward off austerity measures in the US.

Occupy people are and were mostly idealists who would probably disagree that it worked. But from my pragmatic eyes, I thank them.

Occupy is intentionally an unfocused movement with a broad scope. It's explicitly not about individual heroes or a single great cause. It would be strange for that approach to lead to specific, defined change.

goman wrote:

Occupy did work... It did change the debate. It helped ward off austerity measures in the US.

How so?

Actually it cost CAL quite a bit more in legal and other fees. It was pretty big news in the SF bay area. Most newscasts were reporting the total was close to $2.2 million. (with only $1 million paid to the protesters)

Judge throws out mass Occupy Chicago arrests as unconstitutional

The city singled out the Occupy demonstrators for violating the park's 11 p.m. curfew on two consecutive weekends in October 2011, arresting hundreds of people, but made no arrests when 500,000 people stayed past the curfew at the 2008 election night rally for President Barack Obama "that electrified the world," Associate Judge Thomas M. Donnelly wrote.

That selective enforcement of the curfew, combined with the Chicago Police Department's harassment of the protesters in the days leading up to the arrests, supports "a finding that the city intended to discriminate against defendants based on their views," Donnelly wrote.

The immediate impact was to throw out the arrests of 92 Occupy protesters on charges related to violating the curfew. But the judge went beyond that in staking out his opinion that the city is violating the public's right to free assembly under the state and U.S. constitutions by restricting late-night access to Chicago's most famous lakefront park, which he called "the quintessential public forum."

Noting the park's long history of political rallies going back to Abraham Lincoln, the judge quoted early city leaders who resolved in 1835 that the land that would become Grant Park "should be reserved for all time to come for a public square, accessible at all times to the people." Because parks are a critical forum for free speech and free assembly, local ordinances restricting access to them must be "narrowly tailored" to serve a specific "government interest," such as park maintenance, Donnelly wrote.

there's a bizarre video out on video on demand channels taht talk about the Occupy movement being orchistrated by Obama.

ranalin wrote:

there's a bizarre video out on video on demand channels taht talk about the Occupy movement being orchistrated by Obama.

They start with the same letter!

.... and so does Osama!!

(It's funnier if you read it in James from SMBC theatre's voice)

An older article (from July) but a good one: NYPD 'consistently violated basic rights' during Occupy protests – study

"Report by NYU and Fordham law schools found 'shocking level of impunity' and department that acted beyond its powers"

Farscry wrote:

Yeah, sadly, Occupy didn't really accomplish anything of substance beyond proving to the authorities that they can utilize more unjustified police brutality and the populace won't genuinely take them to task for it.

Several direct action groups have been organized in the wake of the Occupy protests. http://www.nycga.net hosts a number of them, notably the Immigrant Worker Justice and Alternative Banking Working Groups. Occupy the SEC is also still around.

I would also argue that groups like OUR Walmart owe a lot to Occupy. (They may also have Occupy veterans working for them, but I don't really know.) Certainly their refusal to seek union recognition from Wal-Mart or the NLRB recalls the way Occupy resisted calls for them to make demands and be politically categorized.

Occupy legitimized dissent. In my mind, at least, that's a pretty big accomplishment.

pgroce wrote:

Occupy legitimized dissent. In my mind, at least, that's a pretty big accomplishment.

But organized dissent has always been legitimate. Striking workers isn't a new phenomena, nor is people protesting policies they don't like. You can't look over at the gay rights movement over the past 20-30 years and tell them that they didn't know how to organize and protest until Occupy Wall Street organizers showed them the way. They've had a very real set of accomplishments to point at during that time.

Funkenpants wrote:
pgroce wrote:

Occupy legitimized dissent. In my mind, at least, that's a pretty big accomplishment.

But organized dissent has always been legitimate. Striking workers isn't a new phenomena, nor is people protesting policies they don't like. You can't look over at the gay rights movement over the past 20-30 years and tell them that they didn't know how to organize and protest until Occupy Wall Street organizers showed them the way. They've had a very real set of accomplishments to point at during that time.

I don't want to speak for pgroce, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But I took what he said to mean that it "re-legitimized" dissent. As in post 9/11 America has been a country where any kind of dissent was considered unpatriotic and harmful to the country.

I don't want to speak for pgroce, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But I took what he said to mean that it "re-legitimized" dissent. As in post 9/11 America has been a country where any kind of dissent was considered unpatriotic and harmful to the country.

I agree with this.

DSGamer wrote:

As in post 9/11 America has been a country where any kind of dissent was considered unpatriotic and harmful to the country.

We had huge protests against the war in 2003 and 2004, despite rhetoric against war protesters. If we had a war tomorrow and people were protesting it, you'd still see pro-war people telling the protestors they were being unpatriotic. I saw Hilary Clinton say something like that during the Libya operation. That's kind of a separate style of protest/response that springs up during wartime.

OWS protested against a hugely unpopular target- the banks. There's no political danger in that. They generated a huge amount of publicity, and yet here we are in late 2012 with half the country or more still ready to vote for a guy who made $250 million in the financial industry.

Plus, the labor movement and protesting existed long before OWS showed up. I see OWS people on Chris Matthews show all the time, and I generally agree with their critiques of the financial system. But it seems like they talk and hold meetings and symposiums while the government and financial system ignores them.