Police and media send OCCUPY underground

What happened to the Occupy movement?

Others note that protests did take place in more than 110 cities on May Day in recognition of worker resistance and solidarity, no mean feat given the hostility to labour among the ruling elite i the US. At the same time, only shameless partisans would deny that the Occupy movement is struggling to reclaim the heights it had last year, and many activists admit this in private. Some argue that police and media hostility act as a one-two punch that can knock out movements such as Occupy, and this is all too true, as explained below. But other movements surmount these obstacles. North of the US-Canada border, hundreds of thousands of university students in Quebec have maintained a militant strike for three months against tuition increases in defiance of whip-cracking politicians, pundits and police……….

One can debate whether or not Occupy is still effective, but there is no way to deny income and wealth inequalities have reached historical extremes or that two-thirds of all in the US – and 55 per cent of Republicans – say “there are ‘very strong’ or ‘strong’ conflicts between the rich and the poor,” according to the Pew Research Center.

The media indifference extends to downplaying state repression. Ironically, force is a measure of success because it’s recognition that the movement is a threat:

• In Oakland, police rolled out a tank on May Day
• Chicago has increased penalties for protests and made it more difficult to secure permits in advance of the anti-NATO protests
• University of California officials are pushing for charges against 11 students and one poetry professor that carry 11 years of prison time and million-dollar fines for nonviolent sit-down protests against Bank of America
• Most ominously, the FBI, which was forged in the crucible of the post-World War I Red Scare, is up to its old tricks. Relying on the same techniques it uses to ensnare Muslims in “terrorism” plots, the FBI arrested five anarchists in Cleveland for allegedly plotting to blow up a bridge
• Most recently, one activist in Salt Lake City claimed three FBI agents showed up at his home, unannounced, asking for names of people planning on attending the anti-NATO protests in Chicago

The repression is aimed at preventing Occupy from reclaiming a space, which novelist Arundhati Roy predicted months ago: “Holding territory may not be something the [Occupy] movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.” Since March, Occupy Wall Street has tried to retake public spaces in Lower Manhattan four times, and four times the police have cracked down. The most recent attempt, the night of May Day, was met by a massive police presence in Wall Street, with cops threatening anyone who looked like a protester with arrest.

“Cinematic” is the only way to convey the image of public sidewalks and streets blanketed with thousands of riot police, surveillance units, snatch squads, detectives, beat cops, community police, white-shirted commanders, phalanxes of scooter police, four police helicopters overhead and cars, SUVs, buses, trucks and command vehicles flashing emergency lights. All to clear out a few thousand people, mainly youths, who gathered for a democratic assembly and the faint hope they could recreate the magic of Occupy Wall Street. 

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/2012521151225452634.ht