Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police
portlandoccupier.org
portlandoccupier.org
On another note, pay attention to whats happening over on Reddit and their attempt to unseat Paul Ryan in protest of SOPA/PIPA. They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something that might actually have an effect. Ultimately, the 72 hours or so that Reddit has taken up this initiative is already appearing more effective than months of misguided OWS noise.
Going back even further, look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. Get out of the streets already and go actually make a difference with some concentrated focus and brain power.
What exactly is your metric for success here? A sleazy company changed their stance on a bill that the public is completely unaware of and couldn't give two shits about?
I think "the internet" is taking itself too seriously.
Meanwhile a nation-wide protest movement has at the very least succeeded in planting the issue of systemic economic injustice into mainstream public discourse on a daily basis. History may show OWS to be the catalyst for the resurrection of a real progressive movement in America.
Scapegoating the rich, or "bankers", or some ethnic group that's associated with the above, is a tactic we've seen before, and never leads to anything good.
The message now is, we're having a grand old time getting ourselves in the news, by distracting the police and annoying the public.
> Meanwhile a nation-wide protest movement has at the very least succeeded in planting the issue of systemic economic injustice into mainstream public discourse on a daily basis.
Not a single person has mentioned OWS (in a non ironic sense) to me in probably more than a month. In that time, the internet fought tooth and nail to stop something they disagreed with, and they at least saw some semblance of success. And while the bill has only been delayed, it's quite clear that the 'hands on' approach to protesting is more effective than shitting in public places and getting beat up by the police.
As a disclaimer, I did originally have high hopes for OWS. The people were passionate, and they had the energy needed. But their lack of direction and purpose shortly became apparent, and their almost A.D.D. like inability to focus on something became laughable. They would become so easily distracted by petty violence and police abuse that 90% of the occupy videos on YouTube are about the police. Which of course resulted in the majority of media attention being given to local police issues and not the widespread economic corruption they original fought against.
Once it became apparent that the occupy groups weren't going to try and shift their attention or direct themselves towards a goal, the whole thing deteriorated into a repetitive circus of hide and go seek with local police. Ultimately, they succeeded in removing any momentum they had and have literally become stagnant.
Or move around, don't give into the tendency to push against the line of the riot police. Not a bad idea. Sometimes obvious things because obvious only in retrospect.
> And maybe play some music.
Music in general is very effective at keeping up morale.
If they really were fighting a military battle, the cops would have suppressed them with direct fire, then maybe taken prisoners from the wounded.
The key difference:
> Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks.
If the police have such small numbers that they cannot afford to take any manpower away from the back of the march then yes, obviously this is the case. But really, with police vans offering fast transport there is no reason they cannot prevent a moving demonstration from moving. Obviously, budget comes into play, for example police helicopters can help them see what is going on and help them create tactics to counter it.
An example of what I'm talking about is Kettling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling), a term which has only really gained popularity in the press in the last few years, but police (at least in the UK) have used this method for a hell of a long time - not always as viciously as the image most people think of for the term now, that of demonstrators being stuck and not allowed out for hours and hours.
Plus, in the UK the cops aren't generally armed with anything more than a club. So they have to use their heads a bit more.
This is what happens when UK cops get guns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze...
https://www.google.com/search?q=arizona+police&tbm=isch
and generally only armed with batons outside of low-human rights countries due to the obvious danger of losing control of weapons amidst violent crowds.
I was in Nogales looking for property in winter of '04, and I noted how many of the law enforcement were all dolled up in their military-like gear. This was before the checkpoints, so I never got too close. Still... if I wasn't white and driving a giant, made-in-America pickup truck, I certainly would not have felt too welcome in the area.
I attended riot-control training in the Marines: from the way things look on teevee the cops are doing pretty much what we trained to do.
Guns are out[1]. Clubs, chemical agents, are in. Using your head is the order of the day.
Because it only takes one guy not using his head, throwing a CS grenade into the crowd, upwind from your lines, to ruin your whole day.
[1] Let me (slightly) expand on the guns thing and Marines. We _had_ rifles in the Marines, but doctrine and training had us running around without ammunition, or with ammunition kept in pouches, and only allowed to be used with permission of a commissioned officer.
Unlike the other comment on this sub-thread, I don't see any reason why Kettling wouldn't work here in the US (sadly) if the police used it. The density of the streets in UK doesn't come into it when you consider the Kettling that took place in Oxford Circus, London during May Day riots a few years ago.
I think the issue for Kettling in the US is that police here rely more on aggression and fear of attack (the heavy infantry, as the OP puts it) then strategy and tactical superiority. As the OP observes, this then goes horribly wrong for the Police when they are forced to assert that aggression physically on protestors.
The other issue for Kettling here in US is constitutional rights. In the UK the police will Kettle a crowd for hours - which in real terms mean they will not let you out even if you decide to give up protesting. This is frankly as a punitive action more than anything else. My guess is constitutionally the police might not be able to do this to undetained, unarrested citizens.
Sometimes the kettling can go on for 6+ hrs and even with protestors demanding toilet breaks, water or medical issues from standing up for so long, the police have refused them to leave.
Meanwhile, "Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police" is at the top.
It's unsurprising. The kinds of people who are interested in Occupy protest tactics are very vociferously interested. The kinds of people who are interested in the hiring thread aren't nearly as engaged with that topic (or, those who are aren't numerous). "Real", on-topic HN threads are at a systemic disadvantage to advocacy topics like Occupy.
Flagged, for whatever good that will do.
-- SnarkTron TM 2012 Edition --
My new year's resolution: no more commenting on things on the internet. Bye bye, everybody!
1) To the best of my knowledge, I've never gotten a gig out of the freelancer thread in the past six months, although I am a full-time freelancer. The thread is essentially a list of facts and does not expose me to any new ideas, which would be forgivable if I consistently got gigs out of it, but I do not. As for its cousin the Hiring Thread, I am not nor do I know anyone actively searching for full-time employment (quite the opposite, I know dozens of desperate employers who are desperate for a reason). Job inquiries seem to follow me everywhere I go: to developer events, to my various inboxes, to my phone, etc, and many developers in the tech hub in which I live share the same sentiment. This may be a local phenomena, but it is my experience.
2) I am not an occupier (and FWIW not really a fan). The article was not overly political. It discussed protesting from a tactical point of view and exposed me to a new idea (which may very well be an old idea to others). It is of personal interest because I have been working on pathfinding lately, and this is, essentially, a distributed pathfinding implementation. I wonder if there is a reasonable attack on this kind of strategy or if the strategy is applicable to other protests (Arab Spring, etc.) I think that the discussion quality and level of improvement to my life is going to be a lot higher on this article than on the hiring thread.
The quality of discussion on this article is already poor. That's also not surprising, because while the ostensible topic (tactics) is interesting, it's an advocacy article on an advocacy site and is mostly a coatrack for Occupy --- so, again unsurprisingly, it's not allowed for anyone to question the idea on this thread without starting a debate about the value of Occupy.
Think about it for a second and realize that any political story can be shoehorned into a "tactical" narrative; horse-race politics (which I follow like my siblings follow White Sox Baseball) are also full of tactics; there's a whole NYT subsite for political nerdery (fivethirtyeight) --- I highly recommend it, but would flag most 538 stories submitted to HN as well.
The argument that any given political story is "something that hackers would find interesting" and not "just politics" is as old as the site. There is also an infinite number of arrangement of cat pictures that satisfy the literal definition of "interesting to hackers". I concede immediately that the guidelines --- I think unfortunately so, and to the clear detriment of the site --- are squishy on this point; it would be better if they simply said "NO POLITICS EVER". They don't. But this is an advocacy piece for Occupy and it is pushing good stuff off the front page of the site.
One can make the very same argument that you made about this thread--the sort of people who are interested in the hiring thread are vociferously interested, as either employers or employees, their very livelihood and life satisfaction for years may substantially hang on a comment in that thread. If we are talking about articles that are colored with commercial self-interest or bias, that is the very definition. I would posit that there is a silent majority who are relatively satisfied with their current employment, who read a few comments to see if anyone is hiring to do orthographic drawing theory or NLP in Erlang or topology or [obscure area of research interest] and failing that alt-tab back to Vim to work on arbitrarily less exciting yet still interesting projects.
I don't necessarily disagree with you that it wasn't a particularly high-quality article, that we can do better. But I would not hold out the hiring thread as the example we should follow.
That is a bit of a red herring.
We geeks have pretty much addressed the technical challenge of "infinite number of arrangement of cat pictures" and have delivered. It is hardly an urgency, at this point. You wanna see cat pictures? I'm sure there are an equally infinite number of image sites, and various frameworks for creating yet even more.
Today, as technologists, we are very likely to find ourselves employed by financial institutions, security services, military, various "social" big brother platforms, and, corporate media. We are, each and everyone, enablers, for better or for worse.
To discuss larger, relevant, sociopolitical matter and events here on HN, with a focus on the tech dimension, is not merely an 'idle interest' for the subset of us that do very much care if it is "for better or worse".
[edit/ps: to be clear, I am addressing the OP's general remark and not this specific article.]
I recognise that the 'hiring' thread is valuable to some people on HN and am glad that the post appears, however for me, the 'hiring' thread does very little to 'gratify my intellectual curiosity' - I'm fortunate enough to have a job and so the thread has almost zero value for me personally.
The 'occupy' post did satisfy me intellectually - I don't have a position on the politics either way, but the explanation of 'battle tactics', how they developed by non-military people and how they can be used 'on the street' was intellectually interesting.
I'm asking you to flag this story because the argument for it being on the site is a slippery slope that also includes the fundraising dynamics of the Iowa GOP caucus.
Like I said earlier: stories like this have a systemic advantage over most real "hacker news" topics. A "Comparison of 6 USB Stick Micro Dev Boards" --- unquestionably more germane to the site than this --- is welcome by everyone, but passionately supported by few. Occupy (or Tea Party) advocacy is largely unwelcome on the site by charter, but passionately supported by enough people to peg stories to the top of the front page.
The result is a site that looks more like 2008 Reddit than 2008 HN. In fact, because HN is doing such a good job attracting the Slashdot "Your Rights Online" crowd, we're seeing more and more stories for which Reddit threads are better than HN's.
I used to think the big problem with 'pg's guidelines were that it was squishy about politics; it should, I thought, be rewritten to say "No politics, no religion, no cute pictures, ever." I still think that. But the better thing for the guidelines to say is even simpler:
No advocacy stories.
Having said that, I definitely prefer an article on micro dev boards than protest tactics.
So I would support a ban on most political discussion here as long as the very few relevant things like SOPA are exempt.
> The 'occupy' post did satisfy me intellectually - I don't have a position on the
> politics either way, but the explanation of 'battle tactics', how they developed
> by non-military people and how they can be used 'on the street' was
> intellectually interesting.
SOPA obviously has relevance to HN, so I don't mind that at all, but with increasing frequency, political submissions pop up, and I'm sure the submitters are enabled by the amount of upvotes they get with little to no input from mods/admins who clarify HN's stance on political submissions with no relation to the site's field of interest.
I don't mean "HN is getting more like reddit" as a slur, but the lines between the two are becoming more blurred, and the two serve better as separate entities with different topics of interest rather than some soon-to-be-merged hivemind on political matters.
Maybe most HNers are already pretty happy with their jobs and are not looking? I didn't even click that link. Should I have? Now you made me feel guilty.
I clicked on the Occupy link because I think they found a pretty neat trick on how to oppose the riot police. Regardless of your support for the movement, don't you think figuring that out is pretty interesting?
1: worse case in current situation, I may break a bone or get a concussion followed with medical attention and bragging rights with my peers
2: fire bullets into crowd, lots of people die. Or think about using flame throwers for crowd control
People can, and have, died from direct fire with less lethals including the FN-303 Paint Marking launcher, various 12 gauge skip fire and direct fire munitions, 37mm gas munitions, and 40mm direct fire less lethal and gas munitions.
While some rounds are designed for close quarters direct fire, many are not, and having a 40mm CS grenade hit you upside the head can be lethal.
It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people.
I do agree with most of what Occupy is about, but if the writer of this post is trying to make any political point, he is failing.
Also, I think that a blog and an HN thread are so not the place to learn about how to safely occupy public space and how to participate in a protest, that I simply don't understand how hard some are trying for it to be that place...
Why is his content wrong? I'm not saying it isn't - I just think more people would pay heed to your warning if you can give concrete reasons (plus, I'm curious).
He also gets retreats completely wrong. If your adversary is competent he will actually encourage a retreat since his objective is not decimating your forces but keeping ground, that is why it's always easy to run away from the police in protests... not because retreat "conveys a tactical superiority". If you are lets say holding higher ground, or for example participating in a siege, retreat may mean you are coming back home completely decimated.
Getting further into this would sort of actually be against my own perception of HN not being the place to discuss how to securely protest. I'll also like to keep the internet as free as possible of myself advocating civil disobedience in a country I'm not a citizen of.
Public order policing has been a game of cat-and-mouse for decades, following the movements of European anarchists around the usual circuit of Mayday protests, G8 conferences and arms fairs. It's a highly evolved field and there are extensive playbooks on both sides.
This strategy was devised years ago, in response to police lines being used to control and prevent marching. A core group, usually a Black Bloc, lead other protesters in a fast march, choosing their direction only at the last possible second. The goal is to move faster than police dispatchers can react, preventing the police from establishing organised lines quickly enough. The police response in the UK is pre-emptive kettling[1], in much of the rest of the world a mix of roadblocks and simple brutality. Unless the protesters are angry enough to run into a baton charge or prepared enough to run into CS gas, it's a completely ineffective tactic.
Some commenters seem to believe that kettling would be illegal under US law; It may well be, but that hasn't stopped the extensive use of "free speech zones"[2] to pre-emptively restrict the movement of protesters. Without a Supreme Court ruling, there's nothing to stop Portland PD or anyone else from using kettles.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
1. Underestimates the superiority and effectiveness of the Command and Control of the police force
2. Overestimates the superiority of a mob vs a phalanx.
3. Makes generalized assumptions over why the police allowed them to stay.
4. Assumes that the police will not use their formation with calvary (automobiles, aricraft, and actual horses) as a means of denying the flank or the retreat.
This reads like someone who just went through a college course in ancient combat and has little practical experience in the matter of Command and Control or strategic thinking.
Why the military tactics and metaphors? Many occupiers seem more interested in "fuckin' shit up" than expressing a message. In Oakland, the city was willing to let people assemble every day (when other people would actually see their protest), but the occupiers insisted that anything less than camping in Frank Ogawa Plaza was defeat.
Edit: instead of downvoting, try to explain why this is a good idea.
If a person or group deliberately incites law enforcement to escalate the level of violence in the performance of their duty, are they not partially responsible for that violence? Are their goals worth having that responsibility? They seem to be doing it specifically to get a "PR loss by the police department". What purpose does that serve, in the long run, except to undermine people's respect for the government?
Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. It is supplemented by force/violence in various degrees, but most of the time it's only conditioning and conscience that keeps people in check. The restraints of force and conditioning are swept aside by just such measures as these. The article frankly uses military terminology. These are the tools of governmental overthrow, and I believe they are being used recklessly.
That sounds pretty much exactly backwards from any society I want to be a part of. I don't exist in service of a government, but can choose to tolerate a government that provides value to me.
For a light example, think about speeding, or carpool lane compliance. Most of the time, there is actually no one to stop or punish you for speeding or driving in the carpool lane with the wrong number of people. Most people do the right thing anyway. This is good.
So any compliance with its laws is largely voluntary, based on, among other things, the value provided by the government and the obvious benefits to everyone if everyone follows the law.
I think there's a deeper issue. I suspect you have confused mechanism with purpose. Government coercion is a mechanism for enforcing system goals, where hopefully those goals are agreed upon in a democratic or enlightened fashion. But it is not the government coercion that is good; it is the goals. It is right that government coercion be resisted when the goals are not noble; and doing so does not risk society falling apart, because it doesn't attack what makes society work.
It's not mere "conditioning and conscience" that keeps people in check. The biggest thing that keeps people in check is actually social norms and risking the disapproval of your peers. And those are surprisingly strong forces.
And if you think the kinds of disobedience we're talking about here risk government overthrow, you haven't seen what governments are capable of doing to stay in power. It's humorous to read about Americans thinking their second amendment right to bear arms defends themselves from the excesses of government. Governments are a lot more resilient than that. The real risk to governments comes from military avenues: mutinies, coups, invasion. A government with nuclear arms (i.e. MAD deterrence of invasion) and in control of a loyal military will not be overthrown by its citizens.
But I do agree with you that what we're seeing is corrosive to trust in government. But the answer isn't to bow one's head, go home and be a good little consumer. The answer is to demand that government changes. In a democracy, a big part of that publicity-seeking actions. Ideally, we'd be seeing dialogue and debate, not riot police and polarizing denunciations.
We do need to demand change in our government. If we're going to act in unison, that's where we need to do it. I just don't see the games described in the article as being anything but destructive.
He tried organizing in Albany, Georgia that went uneventfully and without getting much attention or building momentum. So he started holding protests in jurisdictions in the South where he knew the local authorities would violently overreact, thus ensuring heavy national media coverage and a counter-reaction of horrifying the public at their treatment.
Like a glorified case of the wisdom of crowds.
Being in Spain I can tell you the protests accomplished nothing, changed nothing politically and ended up dissolving themselves once it got cold.
One problem is the attitude mentioned in the article: "This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses." (Keep in mind that the US imprisons its populace far more than any other nation, so this is no joke.) I read this rebuttal recently:
"Getting arrested as an unavoidable consequence of standing up for a cause is noble; getting arrested as a voluntary, symbolic act is widely considered bizarre, at best. Moreover, it frustrates huge sectors of the movement who see an opportunity cost to the resources that go into unnecessary jail support, bail, and legal costs. Perhaps worst of all, voluntary arrest is seen by members of especially targeted communities as flaunting arrestees’ race and class privilege."
(http://www.zcommunications.org/pacifism-and-diversity-of-tac...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
It might be bizarre, but it is also historically effective.
The sad thing about grassroots politics in the US is that the conservative grassroots movements, like Tea Party, form loose, non-hierarchical yet highly organized coalitions where as the liberals end up going lowest-common-denominator and form protest groups.
The problem is that the political system in America is geared up to accept pressure from political groups like Tea Party but isn't particularly affected by protect groups on the street. As a liberal I find it depressing that folks refuse to take on the political system at it's own game like the Tea Partiers have done.
The Occupy movement is rebelling against an entire POWER STRUCTURE, the entire hierarchy backed by corporate funding, which funding also pays the GOP apparatchiks that started the Tea Party.
This piece of advice will get people fined (and possibly arrested) for violating noise ordinances in many municipalities. You're better off marching silently.
The Occupy protesters put their BODIES into something. Both approaches are important.
Maybe their plan worked because the police decided it wasn't worth wading thru their feces and syringes every few hours.