Tag Archives: Occupy Wall Street

Letter to Brooklyn College President Karen Gould: Get Security off Students’ Backs!

The Executive Committee of the Brooklyn College Chapter of the Professional Staff Congress – CUNY (PSC-CUNY) has written to the President of Brooklyn College, Karen Gould, regarding the assaults on, and arrests of, CUNY students by CUNY Security at Brooklyn College on May 2nd. Please take the time to read the letter–reproduced below–in its entirety and help spread the word.

(For background, including links to videos, President Gould’s response, student letters, petition links please consult the Reclaim Brooklyn blog. As I’ve noted before on this blog, this kind of response by campus security is a classic piece of intimidation that always, without fail, succeeds in creating a hostile, combative, threatening atmosphere, and almost invariably results in students getting hurt. And as noted here before as well, the police continue to harass and abuse those that are ‘on their side.)

Occupy Wall Street And The Police: Why So Estranged?

Last year, as OWS kicked off, and as New York’s Finest (and later California’s) began their usual heavy-handed crackdown on any dissent that might threaten the ruling classes, I was struck by the absurdity of it all. Once again, the plutocratic class had found a sub-class of workers–underpaid and overworked–who ostensibly should have been in sympathy with protesters of those economic and political realities that conspired to keep them in a state of perpetual economic and political subjugation, and had them do the dirty work of repressing them. Once again, a comfortable protective barrier had been built around the privileged enclaves of the rich and fatuous, manned and patrolled by those whose best interests lay in dismantling it. The best and most enduring political parlor trick was on display again, and it didn’t seem to have lost its effectiveness over the years.

No matter how long one theorizes about it, to see the game in action, to see its visceral absurdity on display is something else. There they are, the working class sons and daughters of working class men and women, clubbing, gassing, and shooting (rubber bullets at UC-Riverside, anyone?) those that have taken up cudgels on their behalf, those whose struggles, if successful, would ensure the clubbers, shooters, and gassers would be politically and economically empowered, and perhaps be able to ensure a better life for their future generations. Five months after OWS kicked off, five months after discourse about economic inequality has bubbled up in possibly more prominent spaces and forums than ever before, there is no sign America’s currently serving police have shown any inclination to hear, pay attention, and possibly join, a political struggle in their best interests.

Tragedy, farce, or some combination thereof, I think.

Last October, when I joined several thousand others in marching through Wall Street and its surrounding confines, I would often yell out to the wary and skeptical New York City policemen that stood close by, “What was your last contract like?” or “You should be marching with us” or “Wall Street won’t stand up for you” and so on. I’m not sure if any policemen heard me or cared. But that’s no way to be heard, of course. The need for communication with the police, for outreach directed at them, for the discourse surrounding OWS to be funneled directly at the police, written somehow, in a form that makes it relevant to their lived realities is greater than ever.

In a recent interview with 3AM, Brian Leiter said,

An important strategic question for the Occupy movement concerns the police. The police are, themselves, members of the 99%, indeed the 99.9%. Police labor unions remain strong, despite a three-decade long campaign against labor unions in the United States. As unionized workers, the interests of police lie with the Occupy Movement, not the plutocrats. On the day the police refuse to clear “Occupy” protesters from their sites, that will be the day the game is up for the plutocracy in America. It would behoove the Occupy activists, indeed any opponents of the plutocracy, to remember this.

This is close to being as absolutely and totally correct as any contemporary political statement could be.

Can The Mere Presence Of Police Be An Escalation?

Yes. Here is a familiar scenario: students at an American university call a meeting or an assembly. They congregate, and as they do so, a large contingent of security guards or police, sometimes armed with deadly weapons, sometimes not, show up, and form impressive-looking rings of security, setting up cordons and enclosures. The escalation has begun.

A little while later, one of two things surely will happen: either a student will note the presence of the police, and finding it bothersome and offensive (as it is), will address it in something he or she says. Perhaps something like “the police are watching us, they want to silence us,” which sets off other student responses of unease and discomfort (many, many students at urban campuses, especially students of color have already had unpleasant interactions with police in the past, and do not, frankly, find that having police or security guards around makes them feel any safer).

Or, the police will suddenly find some reason to enforce some notion of propriety on the student proceedings; this enforcement is almost invariably, carried out heavy-handedly, and violates the rights to free assembly of the students and anyone else present. The latter is what happened last week at Brooklyn College. This violation takes place because those in charge of law and order, always, somehow, are more disturbed and vexed by young folks talking loudly about politics than they are about the status quo – the din of the former is always greater.

One day, campus authorities will come to understand that when students congregate and gather to engage in political conversation, as they often seem to be doing these days (whether at UC Davis, UC Berkeley or Baruch College, CUNY), the only escalation that will take place is going to be due to the presence of campus police; their presence begins the escalation; it does not end it. It is a cause, not an effect.

Today, at Brooklyn College, the Wolfe Institute sponsors an event titled Occupy Wall Street! Occupy Everywhere? Whats Next?. Our biggest worry in organizing the event was the possibility that Brooklyn College administration would again send a large contingent of campus security guards to “oversee” the event, which would inevitably be seen as oppressive and problematic by the students. I’m glad to say, at this moment, a few hours before the event kicks off, that the college President Karen Gould, has agreed to reduce the security profile of the meeting and to let it in proceed in peace.

I will report back on how things went.

Posner on Occupy Wall Street

Over at the Becker-Posner blog, Richard Posner (finally?) turns his attention to Occupy Wall Street. By and large, other than little quibbles about phrasing that accommodates Posner’s extreme market-friendliness, there is little to disagree with here: OWS was inspired by the Arab spring, depressions lead to demonstrations, social media makes organizing easier, the police tactics were tactically flawed, that OWS’ central complaints were “income inequality, lack of jobs, and the baleful influence of the banking industry.” I disagree that occupying public spaces was a mistake; au contraire, there was a vanishingly small chance OWS and its related occupations would have attracted a fraction of the press coverage they did had the protests been limited to sporadic marching and online bluster. A fixed, visible presence capable of acting as the locus of activist energy was always critical in elevating OWS’ profile; without it OWS would have lacked its distinctiveness as a political movement.

But then, at the end, after offering us as reasonable a take as one might expect from the champion of the economic in human affairs, Posner splutters:

Railing against income inequality, job loss, and banking abuses is thus understandable, but it doesn’t do any good. The “Occupiers” are anarchic and disruptive, and the solid middle of American society, which rejects the Tea Party because of its goofy ideas, is likely to reject the Occupy movement because of its style, while broadly sympathetic to its antipathies. But if the movement attracts charismatic leaders amidst a stagnant or worsening economy, it may become a force in American politics

This is a depressingly familiar, reductive, and not very deep summing up of political action: don’t bother protesting because it won’t do any good; good, “solid” people don’t like noise; come back when you have a “charismatic leader.” That is, channel your “anarchic and disruptive” forces into attracting the “solid middle” all the while making sure you march under the flag of that old rescuer of politics: the charismatic leader. So much for changing the political conversation.

OWS should take heart though, from Posner’s contention that they have found sympathetic resonance with the “solid middle” when it comes to their shared “antipathies.” Perhaps even if there is disagreement about prescription and treatment one should be heartened by agreement, on diagnosis and prognosis, across the political and intellectual divide that separates Posner and OWS.

Hope. Eternal. And All That.