The ugly hand of the federal government is becoming increasingly
suspected behind what appears to be a nationwide attempt to repress and
evict the Occupation Movement.
Across the country in recent days, ultimatums have been issues to
groups occupying Portland, OR, Chicago, IL, San Francisco, Dallas, TX,
Atlanta, GA, and most recently New York, NY, where the Occupation
Movement began on September 17. The two most recent eviction efforts, in
Oakland and New York, have been the worst.
The police attacks have had a lot in common. They have been
“justified” based upon trumped up pre-textural claims that the occupiers
are creating a health hazard, or a fire hazard, or a crime problem,
generally on little or no evidence, or there has been a digging up of
obscure and constitutionally questionable statutes, for example laws
outlawing the homeless. Then the police come in, usually in dead of
night, dressed in riot gear and heavily armed with mace weapons, batons,
plastic cuffs and tear gas, or even assault rifles in some cases and
so-called flash-bang stun grenades--all weapons to be used against
peaceful demonstrators.
So violent has been the response that some returned veterans have condemned the police for using weapons and
tactics that are not even permitted by occupying troops in war-torn countries.
“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has
arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a
coordinated national effort to try and shut it down,” says Heidi
Bogosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, which has
been playing a key role providing legal services to the new movement.
“We see the scapegoating of these movements, the attacks at night,
and in general tactics designed to terrorize and to scare protesters
away. I can’t see this as anything other than centrally coordinated.”
One indication of that coordination may have been a conference call
among 18 city mayors which was confirmed by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan in a
radio interview on San Francisco station KALW. Dan Siegel, an Oakland
attorney who worked as an advisor to Quan, but who resigned in disgust
after Oakland police and law enforcement personnel from a number of
surrounding jurisdictions brutally drove occupiers there out of their
park using tear gas, supposedly non-lethal ammunition (bean bags and
rubber bullets) and flash-bang grenades in a night-time raid in the
early hours of November 14, says that phone conference call took place,
significantly, while Quan was in Washington, DC.
Remember this image: it's the national police state on the march
Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 25, Quan authorized the first brutal
police assault on Occupy Oakland. It led, among other things, to the
critical wounding of Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran who was among the
protesters, and was hit in the forehead by a police tear gas cannister
fired at close range.
Who organized that critical conference call? Was it Quan or one of
the other mayors, or was it someone in the federal government? Siegel
says he doesn’t know, and Quan isn’t saying.
But both Siegel and Boghosian say they strongly suspect federal
involvement in the planning of the recent spate of police violence
against occupiers. Says Siegel, “It’s only logical to assume that the
‘Fusion Centers’ are involved, especially after the Oakland occupiers
shut down the port in Oakland.”
Some
72 Fusion Centers,
located around the US and funded by the US at a cost of half a billion
dollars, are a post 9-11creation of the new Homeland Security
Department. Bringing the FBI together with local law enforcement
departments, they both collect and share domestic intelligence, and can
serve as command centers to direct local law enforcement in helping
implement national law enforcement goals. There are also many Joint
Terrorism Task Forces, which directly link the FBI with urban police
departments.
Says Boghosian, “What we are seeing here is the Miami model, with
various levels of law enforcement, local, state and federal, all at
work. It would be shocking if federal law enforcement were not seeing
this occupy movement now as a national security threat.”
Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s
National Mass Defense Committee, based in Washington, agrees. “These
crackdowns on the occupation movement certainly appear to be part of a
national strategy to crush them,” she says. “We haven’t yet found overt
evidence of federal involvement, but the fact that in rapid succession
local authorities have taken action raises the specter of coordination.”
She adds, “There is absolutely no legal justification for the
involvement of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in this movement. These
demonstrations are not terrorist activities, and police should not be
treating them as such, yet all over the country the police are treating
the protesters as if they are criminals. The similarity of the response
everywhere to the movement makes it appear that there is a coordinated
strategy.”
Meanwhile, Siegel, now back in private practice, says that since the
riots that followed the killing of Oscar Grant by a BART transit cop,
who shot Grant fatally in the head after he had been arrested, subdued
and handcuffed for a turnstile jumping violation, federal law
enforcement officials have been observed actively involved in police
activities in the Oakland area.
Some Oakland residents have reported seeing federal vehicles and
possibly also National Guard equipment during the police actions against
occupation demonstrators, too, though National Guardsmen can only be
legally activated by a governor, and California Gov. Jerry Brown, a
former mayor of Oakland, has not publicly issued any such order.
Rick Ellis, a journalist with the Minneapolis office of the news outlet Examiner.com, is
reporting
that an unidentified US Justice Department official has confirmed what
Boghosian, Siegel and Veheyden-Hilliard say they suspect is the case:
that each of the recent brutal police evictions and attacks on
occupation groups “was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the
FBI and other federal police agencies.”
Ellis writes, “According to this official, in several recent
conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to
seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on
zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to
demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in
riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations,
with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be
coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be
present.”
According to an
AP story
published early Wednesday, mayors and city leaders in as many as 40
cities were communicating about coordinating an attack on the occupy
movement. Again, this hardly seems like it was on their own initiative.
Given how things have played out, it certainly looks like the
suspicions were correct, and that Ellis’s source is telling the truth.
President Obama has a lot to answer for. So do the mayors who have been overseeing the repressive operations locally.
