Intro: "I unbuttoned my jeans in the bright, foul-smelling jail cell at NYPD's 7th precinct, using the metal button to scratch a message into the beige paint on the wall. This one said, 'CG WAS HERE: THE CONSTITUTION WAS NOT - #OWS 9-15-12.'"
Occupy Wall Street protester Chris Philips screams as he is arrested near Zuccotti Park, Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, in New York. Carl Gibson and other journalists have also been arrested during three days of protest. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
How I Was Kidnapped by the NYPD
18 September 12
Reader Supprted News | Perspective
unbuttoned my jeans in the bright, foul-smelling jail cell at NYPD's 7th precinct, using the metal button to scratch a message into the beige paint on the wall. This one said,
"CG WAS HERE: THE CONSTITUTION WAS NOT #OWS 9-15-12"
The sun had just set on an early fall Saturday night in New York City, and the air was getting cold. The sidewalk was full of Occupiers and NYPD, and up ahead there was chaos and confusion. I could see camera flashes and rapid movements, and heard nothing but commands from the police and shouts of anti-police profanity from Occupiers watching their friends get snatched and grabbed at random. I linked arms with several Occupiers around me and shouted, "March! March!" and we drew close to the police lines. One white-shirted NYPD lieutenant got in my face as I looked around a wall of cops to see who it was that had just been knocked to the ground and handcuffed.
"Move back, or you're next. I promise you that," he said.
Suddenly, the crowd was on top of us, and police were violently and aggressively shoving several journalists snapping photos to the ground. I felt like I was in a mosh pit at a concert, where my body was simply being moved around by the crowd, not of my own volition.
Then, I felt two strong hands on my backpack, yanking me into the chaos. My first thought was that I was about to be in jail for the remainder of the weekend, missing all of the events I had planned on attending.
"Grab my arms!" I shouted frantically, stretching my arms out to Mark. As I was pulled away, he said I looked like a victim in a horror movie who could not be saved from his fate. Mark still says that he'll never be able to get the image of my terror-stricken face out of his memory. (You can see the exact moment of my arrest at the 1hr 36min mark of this stream and in this photo.)
"Get on the ground!" an overzealous NYPD sergeant shouted. My pants were falling down around my hips, and I tried to get on my knees before he shoved me to my face.
"Get your ass on the fucking ground now!" he yelled at me, as I hit the concrete face-first. I felt a knee on my face as my arms were pulled tight behind my back, and felt the bite of the plastic cuffs eating into my flesh. I was then hustled to my feet and pushed into an NYPD van, which was full of six others, five of whom were journalists. We were whisked away to the 7th precinct, and spent three hours in a cell before being given a court summons and the rest of our stuff, and being sent on our way. That night, the jail was 99% full of political prisoners. Mark's cell, next to mine, was full of OWS graffiti that other political prisoners who came before us had scribed into the walls.
The behavior of the NYPD, acting under the orders of Mayor Bloomberg, who has said the police force is his "own army ... the seventh largest army in the world," was unacceptable. I learned that a private citizen can be violently arrested and jailed for walking on a sidewalk, and that cops have free reign to trample basic human rights guaranteed by our founding documents. Bloomberg is the general in the 1%'s class war, determined to absolutely crush any public opposition to his banker friends' greed and corruption - freedoms of speech, press and assembly be damned.
The NYPD learned from last year that kettling and mass-arresting 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge only adds fuel to the populist fire of the movement. They've now resorted to random snatch-and-grab tactics, meant to disrupt group solidarity, stir up confusion and fear, and minimize media exposure. And given that thousands of Occupiers from across the country are in New York this weekend to celebrate the movement's 1-year anniversary, the snatch-and-grabs of September 15th, mainly targeted at journalists and originators of chants, are meant to do little other than intimidate the group and discourage others from marching on the 17th.
The moment we get too scared to march, Bloomberg and the NYPD win. The moment we allow them to silence our dissent through intimidation, our freedoms have ended. Americans must wake up and realize what's happening to their country and resist the creeping fascist police state, or everything our nation was founded on will be lost in the next year.
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can contact Carl at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Comments
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The larger question for me is how are these tactics effective and how to they help build a movement that has a chance of implementing the type of substantive progressive/rad ical social change that i agree is necessary and that the Occupy movements have been calling for (if we can say that they are calling for anything specific or anything by way of a developed political program).
Successful social and political movements have been about building organization and alternative institutions. Without these, there is no hope of success and a rare political moment and space that Occupy helped create will have been squandered.
There needs to be much more emphasis and discussion about how to build an effective organization(s) and alternative institutions (inlcuding publicly owned financial institutions and worker-owned businesses and cooperatives to name just two) and not fetishize either occupying some (ultimately meaningless) space or getting arrested (in "the old days" the point was not to get arrested but to fill the jails; in the absence of this getting arrested serves no purpose i.e., it doesn't accomplish anything).
i was active in the 60s and the violence of the police today resembles the bridge in Selma far more than anything I ever saw in NY or Philadelphia. It looks like Chicago in 1968.
Mr. Gibson is not the only report of brutish, over the top, police behavior; the accounts are numerous. What happened to Occupy? Its here, its alive, the sympathizers are still behind the movement, its actions are smaller and targeted at injustices thrust upon individuals. Occupy is making a difference all throughout America. There will come a time when Occupy reaches critical mass and America along with much of the world will be transformed by its principles of organized chaos, and communal individuality. If critical mass fails to occur, then we are facing another Dark Age era.
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012 For the 100% of us.
I do recall however that when Occupy Wall Street was being cracked down on it was done in a highly coordinated effort between Homeland Sec, the White House and Local Governments.
I don't have cable, never have sat down to watch their programming, but thanks for making a judgement call on someone you know nothing about.
Are you not aware of the challenge to the constitutionali ty of NDAA that Obama is opposing?
Labor Party 2016.
Outside of the authoritative mindset that is often the self selecting template when building a Police department, there is the matter of of their paychecks. In this regard they are like most people, if you pay them they will do as you ask. And, in NYC the power resides on Wall Street and political power is held by a master of Wall Street; they are the ones pulling their strings.
That is not a justification, it is an explanation. In a nation of laws, using an explanation to justify illegal or borderline illegal tactics should be prohibited.
While I do not believe that because of ones job there should be a higher standard applied to them for non job related activities, this is a job related activity and standard of behavior is critical for a stable society.
Who are the Occupiers? Seriously. Raise your hand if you really know. Not the liberal media BS. Who are they actually? What do they want? How do you know? Seriously - how do you know?
They claim to represent 99% of America. When did you vote them in? Who did you vote in?
I have only seen one thing that is supposedly from the inner circle of this group - the clowns like Cole are not the inner circle. They are the dime store rabble-rousers who generate publicity.
The manifesto that I saw (& I cannot verify its authenticity) reads like a communist manifesto from the 30s with some 21st century updating.
The Tea Party held legal demonstrations (that you could bring your children to without being embarrassed). What took place the other day was a vulgar mob disrupting for the sake of disrupting. They had only one thing on the agenda - pick a fight with the cops & get arrested. Very noble.
Hmm, interesting name? Not my point.
Occupy is anybody that is fed up with the corporatocracy (sp?) that has taken over the American democratic experiment. They manipulate our elections, they have purchased a psuedo legal life from our politicians and judges. Their welfare is held as more critical than any natural person's welfare. If you want to reverse the order of things and make the political and economic engines of America respond to human needs, then you are part of Occupy.
The Tea Party is a bunch of "mob" ignorant loud mouths, that just like a clock are right twice a day. Bringing guns to a demonstration is not family friendly. That is by definition.
Who is at the center of the movement? This is a well organized group whose inner circle is apparently a secret. Who are they? What is THEIR objective? HOW do you KNOW? Where is it published? Do you honest to God believe that the likes of Jason Cole are pulling the strings?
I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm attempting to get you to question whether you are being played like a cheap fiddle by the media. You know nothing about what the movement really wants. Only what you have been told to believe. It is even possible that what you believe to be true really is true. But you don't know that.
- A "natural person" as opposed to what?
- A gun is a tool. If it is being carried legally what is your problem? Do you think the occupiers defecating on police cars & American Flags are exhibiting a more appropriate form of family behavior?
So were are the pictures?
No you watch way to much FOX!
Who are the Occupy movement? Well a hell of a lot are IT personel and a heap more are small buisness owner others are health worker many students and teachers.
The the un-educated or what FOX says they are no most have at lest Colledge education some even worked for the banks and the IMF they are thinkers who see the problem and how it has come about by out right GREED!Ever wonder who controls the bond market? That would be the Corperations of the US of A. 87% of the usa wealth is in the hands of less then 10% and you like that? No they did not make it honestly they stole it by market malipulation or out right thieft BILLIONS.
Occupy is not against Capitialism it is agains Socialised Capitialism in Capitalism there are winners and losers right but under the current model its TO BIG TO FAIL, its MASS UNEMPLOYMENT if they fail so they jet off to plunder the USA taxs (While screaming we pay to much tax!) Once they got the money they cut some for themselves in! Or have you been a sleep or do you prefer to be a serf? WAKE UP TURN OFF FOX AND LOOK AROUND YOU!
There is/was a money trail to follow with the TeaPartiers. Who paid for the big, huge painted busses? This was all documented and reported; mainly by Rachel Maddow. She gave sources that you or I could check for ourselves. She named names and nobody proved her wrong. There were others, her reports are what come to mind.
Where is the documentation, or who actually investigated Occupy that allows you to feel comfortable claiming that Occupy is some sort of secret plot funded by Communists? to overthrow the corporate controlled society we presently find America has become. Here is the part you don't get. It is a plot, and its not a secret, and its not massively funded by Communists or some other hidden agenda group or person(s).
Occupy is obviously beyond your sxcope of understanding because what I wrote did not come from some handout I got explaining what I should believe.
The term natural person appears in the US Constitution, try reading it.
Lastly, a gun is a tool to intimidate, threaten and kill. It is not like carrying a bottle opener on your key chain. By carrying it into a demonstration, legally or not, you put every other person including kids at risk. This is why Tea partiers don't really understand America; at least the America that the vast majority of Americans want to live in.
You can find the answers to your questions "Who are the Occupiers and what do they want?" by attending some of their general assemblies.
BTW. Guns are tools for killing things. That is their sole purpose. That is not one of my family values, how about you?
The Tea Party held legal demonstrations (that you could bring your children to without being embarrassed).
yeah sure: Don't Tread on Me:
wearing guns, spitting on congressmen, threatening elected officials, carrying racist placards, pelting disabled people with garbage, disrupting town hall meetings, disrupting congressional offices, breaking the glass and trashing congressional offices, calling the president racist hate names and threatening to kill him, and praying in public and in private for the assassination of the president of the USA. something you can be proud of taking your grandkids to. like these same people used to take to a lynching for example.
You must be referring to the Tea Party demonstrations where people brought their weapons? Or maybe the one where they attacked a black man who happened to be wearing a hat they identified as Muslim-looking?
The liberties you're standing up for are under threat from the very people you're supporting. Sure, the GOP is much worse. But neither party is on our side.
But really, in many of the pictures I see people, Occupy people, who look confrontive, who are yelling and making angry gestures, etc. OF COURSE we are angry at all that has happened, but acting that out, or yelling slurs at the cops, is not non-violent, and can only ramp up the anger on both sides.
Heck, even "shut yer pie hole" is violent. Get it?
Occupy won't go anywhere unless it really grasps and maintains a non-violent ATMOSPHERE. Non-violence has great power. Otherwise we can easily be OVER-powered by "them."
yelling and screaming taunting aren't violence. in no possible definition of or understanding of the word "violence." and there are no media reports of throwing things. but mace and pepper spray and riot gear while shoving citizens around is violence. under any interpretation.
In New York and other U,S. cities, fighting Occupy and arresting journalists has nothing to do with making the city safe from crime, or fighting terrorism.
England may be a better example to study. It appears that police and civil liberties went rather quickly from substantially better than the U.S., to even worse.
Governments are getting more oppressive on every continent, with the possible exception of Antartica.
The question is, why? September 11, 2001 and July 5, 2005? The imperial wars? Any ideas on what else is causing the growth of totalitarianism and brutality, and why so many people seem to accept it?
Actually, really, police in Turkey today are less violent and public demonstrations less dangerous to attend now than inNY and Chicago.
No army since 1948, laws on the books to protect the environemnt, last year's invasion by Nicaragua of an peninsula on the carribean side was resolved through UN mediation without a gunshot...
Yeah, Costa Rica.
So, none of this is 'accidental or incidental'.
Great Question is...Given All This...What are appropriate tactics? Given our numbers, and means, where is the optimum target.
The Violations are, and will be, legion. The Paid Perpetrators (eg police) and their Political Bosses (Mayors, Governors and Presidents!) are also Legion, and all are completely expendable to The Powers That Be,... to 'The Money' that owns them. To Wit: 'Serious Perpetrations', (eg Bin Laden's murder, John Kennedy's murder) often find the Perps, themselves, being 'taken out', afterwards (to ensure silence)!! The 'Bosses' kill their own murderers!
So, where is our 'Best Aim'. The actual Bosses..never commit the actual violations sufferd by People or by the Earth. They 'write Big Checks' from far behind the front lines (not stupid, they)
Are The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, etc vulnerable at all?Because a monkey wrench THERE.... addresses all violations, at once. Past, Current AND Future.
Let's get smart........ab out our resistence
One indicator of America's slide toward fascism is the militarization of the police, as indicated by their combat-style uniforms, equipment, weaponry, and tactics. Mayor Bloomberg's "seventh largest army" comment only captions the obvious. The cops act this way because they can: They have been trained to see themselves as the front line of an army protecting a city under siege, while citizens exercising their First Amendment rights are a swarm of sub-human insurgents.
Never placate a bully. Let Mayor Bloomberg explain to the citizens of NYC why the city had to pay several multi-million dollar judgments to the victims of his police-state tactics. Never placate a bully.
Add to this the NDAA's indefinite detention with military arresting civilians and the scene is completely fascist.
Millionaire Bloomberg is a tyrant and the "army" that protects his wealth and power continue to shame both NYC and the nation.
All this in the name of "pot melts your brain" and the big business of prisons for profit.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
This has been interpreted to mean that the forces of government are not allowed to infringe on the rights of free speech or peaceable assembly. It seems that Mr. Gibson has had his inherent and Constitutional rights violated by agents of the New York Police Department, which seems to prioritize the current established order over the rights of citizens, a very reactionary position.
Well! Its about time!
You're kinda late to party, aren't you? Most of the rest of us learned all that long before you did, some of us as early as the Viet Nam war protests.
I got my personal consciousness raising at the hands of three Toronto police constables in the summer of 1967.
Anyway, better late than never and welcome to the club
Here's a link.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aclunj.policetape
What will stop the 1% is when we collectively refuse to show up at our corporate jobs for a week or a month.
Until then, they win.
The public is viewed by them as no more than sheep to be subdued and sheared. Any that dare object can expect even worse treatment. It's over America. Get out while it's still legal!
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