police brutality

Chain of Fools

/ JillArcangela / Leave a comment

Last week, I wrote about the violence that overtook the city of Oakland, violence that left a two-tour Iraq War Veteran with a brain injury and so far unable to speak.  A couple days ago, I wrote about the shining example set by the Albany Police Department that refused to evict the occupants camped in Albany, an action which forced the city to communicate with the occupants and has begun to build a working agreement between the Occupy Albany group and the city officials.  Then, late last night, I tuned into the appropriate media channels, none of which are on the television – by the way, to check up on the Occupy camps around the world.  What I found was yet another attack being carried out against the Occupy Oakland group, which had organized a general strike that shut down the Port of Oakland for several hours.  Before this night of violence ended, a civilian was killed.  Even after all this, I woke up this morning to an article in the New York Post about the way in which businesses around Zuccotti Park are suffering as a result of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s encampment there (foot traffic supporting these businesses was made impossible because of recently removed police barricades around the area).  The article discussed the continued pressure from those seated snuggly in their political offices demanding actions be taken to clear out the Occupy Wall Street movement.  What kind of “action” do they have in mind, exactly?

There are, after all, only two real options in the situation.  Thus far, with the exception of Albany (whose hand was forced by the wisdom of Police Chief Steve Korkoff and his support staff) and Philadelphia (whose days of peace are numbered as a construction deadline for the plaza they occupy is quickly approaching), few if any cities have made the correct choice so far.  With so many examples of what-not-to-do in a one-of-two selection set, it seems – I’m sorry to say – plainly moronic that the great city of New York is still debating and not already underway in their course of just and cooperative action.  Personally, I’m marveling at the apparent ineptitude of the political officials presiding over lower Manhattan and their complete inability to understand the situation.  If this chain of command cannot understand what the one and only appropriate course of action in this situation is then they are, in fact, a chain of fools.  But let’s play fair, put the kid gloves on, and walk them through their options, shall we?

Option One: Work with them.  I know many politicians both local and more removed from the situation do not want to exercise this option because the movement has called them out on the corruption that has put and kept these people in office.  It has also voiced focused scorn toward the corporations whom these politicians are now indebted to for their professional successes and thus essentially sworn to serve.  However, considering the alternative (see Option Two) and the perhaps realized but not yet accepted fact that these groups and this movement aren’t going away, one would think that the city officials would chose to employ this option.  Meet with them.  Ask them to develop a working group to communicate and cooperate with the city in securing the space and items required to exist without filth, violence, and disruption to local businesses and residents.  What’s more is that if the city took measures to protect these camps, helping them manage the threats of outside criminals, and stopped the nightly evictions and attacks, people would feel safer approaching these areas and patronizing the areas businesses despite the tents in the park across the street.  Clearly, however, the city, state, and eerily silent federal governments have chosen not to follow the course of peace, liberty, and sanity.  So let’s see what’s behind door number two.

Option Two: Fight them.  So far, the use of aggressive policing, harsh enforcement of city ordinances, manipulation of local and state laws, application on non-lethal weapons, agitation of the camps, mass arrests, attempts to blind the public by manipulating media outlets, and bullying have been the mode of operandi for city officials.  This has left many police and “protesters” (I despise the word) injured, rendered a veteran literally speechless, indirectly caused the death of one citizen, cost what is now probably totaling in the millions of dollars collectively, and violated the constitutional rights of thousands upon thousands of American citizens.  Still, despite all of the blood, sweat, tears, and money thrown down on both sides of the line, this option has left us, as a nation, no closer to solutions for the problems the Occupy movement stands against and no closer to a conclusion of the events themselves.  Instead, the occupancies grow larger and more organized, the message of the attacks spurs outsiders to extend greater support, the perpetrators of the actions find themselves the victims of technological counterattacks, and the feeling of necessity to complete their mission becomes stronger inside the movement as the corrupt and their ringers out themselves with their increased volume and harder lines against it.

Even after such a short period of time, fewer than three months since the first tent was erected, it would seem that our government, both local by their actions and larger by their failure to defend the people, has taken the same stance on our grievances and assemblies as the governments in Libya and Egypt did not so long ago.  Our government has failed to heed its own words, to follow its own advice, and to protect the constitutional liberties entitled to us from birth.  This will force us onto a long and difficult path.  However harsh this course may be, however, we must understand that in their actions, thus far, the government has established its loyalty to a system without justice, without ethic, without respect for the people to whom this nation truly belongs, and hence without peace.  Their failure to cooperate and communicate with us, to hear our grievances, to aid us in our aim to mend our Republic and eliminate political corruption and corporate maleficence, and to protect us from the brutality that has been carried out against our camps, is their signature of approval on an agenda for continued abuse of our nation, our freedoms, our economy, our planet, and our people.  If our politicians will not hear us now that we are living and screaming in their streets, now that we are calling for reform, now that we are tolerating and reconvening after nightly physical assaults, now that we are expressing keen awareness of the political and societal atrocities being committed by corporate bedmates, now the American citizens have been injured and killed in this fight for freedom, when will they hear us?  Perhaps it is time to take their orders to disperse us, and the deafening silence of those in our nation’s capital who could defend us, as all the proof we need to know – truly know – that our government has nothing of the democracy from which it was birthed nor the republican practices for which it was groomed left in it.  With every moment of silence on the hill, with every tear gas canister fired, and with every night of violence carried out against people attempting to exercise their first and most basic human and American rights, they sound their call to war.

I believe, with every piece of my being, that our ability to stay peaceful – even when staring into the drooling jowls of the dogs of war – will be the key to our success.  For every occupant struggling to maintain his composure in the face of unadulterated violence, there are countless others on the outside watching.  As long as we remain peaceful, we can continue to prove to the growing audience that we are not the animals that politicians and their media paint us to be, and that we are not here to destroy the nation as they say we are.  We are here to restore democracy.  We are here to save our nation and our planet.  We are here to be the peace and justice we want to see in the world.  We must be committed to this path of peace if we are to succeed in our mission.  Let the chain of fools run themselves into the ground, burning up their resources and exhausting their men.  With poise and patience, we will out wait them and out will them.  And when the tear gas clears, when they have nothing left with which to try to tear us down, we will still be there – ready to do what we came to do.

“Do your worst,” Churchill said, “and we will do our best.”

Where The Good Cops Are

/ JillArcangela / 3 Comments

When I started researching this letter, I intended to title it as my father suggested: A Tale of Two Cities. Unfortunately, the occurrences of police brutality have persisted far beyond the suggested “one of two” cities in the title. In recent days, it seems brutality is becoming the common response to occupancies in cities all over the world. Even within days of the tragic injury of an Iraq War Veteran in Oakland (CA), occupancies in cities including Denver, Austin, and Richmond were met with similar tactics of tear gas, rubber bullets, pepperballs, and the old fashioned baton beating. It would seem these local officials and police administrators were determined to barge into these occupancies in search of their very own martyrs for the movement. But this is only one side of the story. What of the other city in the famous title?

Perhaps the one police department not getting enough attention these days is the small and courageous force of Albany, New York. Contrasting the courage being asked of officers who must set aside whatever personal feelings they have about the Occupy movement’s objectives and swallow their fears of exercising brute force against unarmed civilians, the officers of Albany and their superiors did something far more difficult. They stood up to the powers that be and said, “No.”

Yes. That’s right. They said, “No.” Allow me to explain.

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings called for Occupy Albany to be cleared by Albany’s finest, Police Chief Steve Korkoff wisely evaluated the situation and then refused to uphold his orders. His justification for this was that the group was peaceful; he feared disturbing the peace would result in violence; and he believed that mounting an offense against the occupancy would upset a positive relationship between the citizens of Albany and its police force. Moreover, action against the movement seemed irresponsible when weighing the logistics of the situation (violence, manpower, cost to the city, etc.) and the charges against the group (misdemeanor trespassing). What’s more is that the city police department’s refusal to comply with the orders given by the governor and mayor were supported by the state police force. A representative of the New York State Police even commented to the Albany Times Union newspaper that “police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.”

The refusal to carry out orders for clearing the occupancy is, of course, unprecedented. I, for one, feel that Chief Korkoff should be commended for his ability to stand up for what he believed was both right and beneficial to his city. His valor not only protected the occupants and their rights, the citizens of Albany, and his officers, but it also had several other beneficial upshots. The first is that, since it was clear the city had no recourse otherwise, a meeting with the occupants was held to iron out agreements regarding their stay. This, in turn, opened the lines of peaceful and respectful communication between the two groups, fostering positive feelings on both sides. Additionally, it functions as an example for police forces and local governments in other cities as a possible course of action in dealing with the Occupy camps in their areas. Though many police forces are taking their lessons from the pages of the now infamous Oakland Police Department, they should be taking them from the quiet capital of Albany. Police have all too often been the mechanism of violence when they should in fact be the last defense against it. Above all of this, however, what I like best is the subtle reminder that the constitutional right of the people to assemble cannot and should not be trumped by state or local restrictions on the use of public space. Now, here’s an idea we can build upon.

A lawyer interviewed recently by Keith Olbermann pointed out that restrictions on the use of public spaces create a unique problem when discussing our right to peaceable assembly. These restrictions are not technically law as they are not passed by legislative branches of government, but rather written and enforced by executive rule. They are ordinances, and though you can be arrested for violating them, the arrests are essentially optional – something we know to be true because of the selective enforcement we have seen over the last several years. That aside, if the local law intends to uphold these ordinances, the question next becomes, “If not here then where?”

I’m certain that when our founding fathers (it freaks me out, by the way, when they are referred to as The Architects; that’s way too Orwell/Huxley for me) wrote our right to peaceable assembly into blessed existence there was plenty of open space and even a fervor about the very idea that created tolerance to things like trampled bushes (my apologies to the Rose Kennedy Conservancy). Today, however, our culture and population have created a very different landscape for political assembly, literally. Every tiny space is ruled over by some group, public or private. Our cities have become hulking establishments of metal and concrete with narrow streets and narrower sidewalks. Our city parks and plazas are home to the homeless and lunch break vacation spots to the metropolitans. Places once sacred because of the great liberties conceived and signed there are now merely temporary parking for coffee sucking suits and photo-ops for passing tourist groups, people living out some momentary appreciation for freedoms they don’t work to maintain or see vanishing from their lives.

At some point, cities need to be reminded that their municipal ordinances do not trump your constitutional rights. And at many points, we all need to be reminded what these spaces – in each city selected for profundity of location and visibility to the offices on high – were really intended for. They were given to us for this very purpose: for us to come together and enjoy our American freedoms.

In Nashville, recent developments have the state and local officials on the ropes as Occupy Nashville was awarded a restraining order against Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and other city officials, and a lawsuit is being assembled regarding the attempted infringement on the occupants’ first amendment rights. The case will be huge for the visibility and morale of the movement, but even Nashville’s progress came at the barrel of gun – or, in this case, the butt of a nightstick.

If only the story of Albany was as loud in the ears and as clear in the eyes of Americans as the nightly reports of mayhem and brutality. If only an honorable police chief making comments from a press conference was as visually stimulating (and hence newsworthy by our media standards) as grey clouds of chemical weapons being dispersed on scattering civilians wearing bandanas over their faces. If only military contractors pushed valor and humility as hard as they pushed nonlethal weapons when gearing up our nation’s police forces.

Though the reality for most occupancies is less than what it should be, and what we know now it could be, it only makes the movements commitment to remain peaceful even more important, especially when under attack. This is one final and beautiful lesson we learn from Albany. In peace, more things are possible. Stay peaceful, campers… And thank you, Albany.