#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[dada]

LA and Philadelphia are both getting raided by the cops again tonight.

[Nordic]

This was just posted on Facebook under Occupy LA's page:



‎

27 arrest vans at Dodger Stadium, they are moving in now.

Looks like tonight might be the night TSHTF.


Live link:

http://www.ustream.tv/occupyfreedomla


edit:

1 a.m. Local news doing live coverage. Cops are starting to haul people away, very methodically, breaking down the camp. News Whores are talking about how "taxpayers are angry" about how much repairs to the park are going to cost. I know, how about sending the bill to Wall Street?

[Aurataur]

I arrived in downtown LA at about 10:45 pm. The area surrounding City Hall was completely locked down with police barricades at every intersection from Temple to 3rd and Alameda to Broadway. There was no way in. I watched with a crowd of several hundred from about a block away as hundreds of police in riot gear poured into the park. This is it, folks. Last I heard there had been over 130 arrests.

[American Dream]

“There is a Way Out of Here”

Movement for Equality and Against Capitalism

November 29, 2011

By Peter Bohmer


Speech at a rally of many thousand at the steps of the Washington State Legislature November 28, 2011 in Olympia. They were beginning a special session today to consider even more cutbacks for poor people, and for health and education. The rally was sponsored by Olympia Coalition for a Fair Budget, Occupy Olympia and many others. The State Police tasered quite a few people and arrested at least three as the rally turned into an Occupation of the Washington State Capitol here in Olympia. Occupy Olympia is continuing its occupation of Heritage Park and protests and resistance are planned at the Capitol all week and maybe longer.


I’d like to take a minute to acknowledge the moment. So often, we are alienated, or apathetic to the injustices taking place every day. But we have reached a point where we can no longer accept what is happening. We have had enough! The top 1% have pushed us to this and so now, we are in the beginning phase of a global movement. I think we all know what is at stake and I hope we understand the amount of hard work and dedication it will take to accomplish real economic and social justice and liberation. We have some differences in our visions of what a just society looks like, but we know it doesn’t look like this.

We are living in a period of obscene inequality of income and wealth, a broken economic and political system that needs to be transformed not patched up. The income of the top 1% today is 42 times that of the bottom 90%. This income inequality is three times greater than the already high inequality of 1979. 25 million are unemployed with the rate for Blacks twice that of whites, 50 million people do not have health insurance, 1 in 3 are poor or near poor. Over 2 million people are in prison, millions have lost their homes or never had one.

Many, maybe most people are somewhat aware of this and the rule by and for the wealthy but had become resigned that little could be done. Some believed Obama was the answer but the Democrats have also put Wall Street and corporate profits and the war machine before people’s needs for jobs, a livable wage, and a sustainable environment. They have sacrificed immigrants. Obama raised and dashed people’s hopes. This furthered cynicism for a while but there is something new and powerful in the air.

Si Se Puede!

And we are not alone. This is an inspiring global movement-from Tunisia, to Egypt to Chilean students, to Greeks resisting austerity in the streets, to Occupy Wall Street, and the many WA Occupy movements here today. We are saying by our actions-- No More Business as usual, that democracy doesn’t mean voting for the lesser of two evils. It means demanding and putting into practice, participatory democracy, in all parts of life including the economy. The impossible is becoming possible and we are just beginning.

It means not accepting a society where the top 1% have 225 times the wealth of the bottom 90%. So when Gov Gregoire says she is proposing a sales tax rather than an income tax on the wealthy because the people of Washington State have spoken, she is talking about the pre-Occupy reality but that was then and the 99% movement is now. A necessary reform is taxing high income people to fund cutbacks in basic health and education but that is not enough.

We are building a movement that unites the 99% for economic justice but that must also mean making central the needs of the most oppressed by not ignoring justice and amnesty for undocumented immigrants, by demanding major reductions in the prison population—this is one cutback in State government spending we support. Let us make sure that inside our movement and in our demands and actions, racial equality and women’s liberation and LGBT rights are also emphasized as is our support for political prisoner such as Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, as is our support for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, and our opposition to U.S. wars such as Afghanistan. Let us welcome all people into the Occupy movement including people who look mainstream. We shouldn’t be cliquish. Let us unite the 99% while promoting and celebrating diversity and autonomy.

The labor movement is a central part of our struggle to change this country, hopefully a social justice unionism where unions are social movements committed to organizing the unorganized, who are democratic and participatory. An example is the Longshore Union , who with Occupy Oakland, on Nov. 2, shut down their port and did not have to be in the lead of the action to participate. It is also necessary the Occupy Movement understand a vibrant and bold labor movement is part of the solution, not part of the problem. The 1960’s would have been very different if the social movements and organized labor had worked together.

Let us name the system that is oppressing us. It is more than corporate power or financial capital, it is capitalism, C A P I T A L I S M. Capitalism exploits working people around the globe and the environment all in the name of profit. Human needs are never what motivates this system, only profit and growth. Some reforms are possible but they are limited. Our aim should be to connect people’s immediate needs for shelter, food, peace, quality education and health with a vision of a good society and a strategy to get there. Let us educate and build alternatives and fight the power--to transform and revolutionize this society where there is community and worker control, where everyone has a meaningful job but doesn’t have to work many hours, that is sustainable and equal across the globe, where basic needs are not commodities but basic human rights, where creativity and race, gender and sexual liberation are real—call it participatory democracy or participatory socialism or whatever you like.

I am afraid we will face more repression as the economy continues to crumble but let us be bold and think big and resist and be persistent. Let us get actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement and be more than just passive supporters. Our future and those of future generations depend on it.

Occupy Wall Street! Solidarity! All Power to the People!



From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/there-is ... ter-bohmer

[Luther Blissett]

Here are some photos from last night's raid in Philly. The occupiers led the cops on a chase throughout center city in the area around City Hall.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news- ... 40268.html

[vanlose kid]

Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots

The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles.

David Graeber Last Modified: 30 Nov 2011 07:06


New York, NY - Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about Occupy Wall Street I get some variation of the same lecture:

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense - the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don't you realise all this radical language is going to alienate people? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"


In-depth coverage of the global movement
If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honourable place. After all, since the financial crash of 2007, there have been dozens of attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of the United States' financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. It was only on August 2, when a small group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians showed up at a meeting called by one such group and effectively wooed everyone away from the planned march and rally to create a genuine democratic assembly, on basically anarchist principles, that the stage was set for a movement that Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa were willing to embrace.

I should be clear here what I mean by "anarchist principles". The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society - that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants.

Anarchism versus Marxism

Traditional Marxism, of course, aspired to the same ultimate goal but there was a key difference. Most Marxists insisted that it was necessary first to seize state power, and all the mechanisms of bureaucratic violence that come with it, and use them to transform society - to the point where, they argued such mechanisms would, ultimately, become redundant and fade away. Even back in the 19th century, anarchists argued that this was a pipe dream. One cannot, they argued, create peace by training for war, equality by creating top-down chains of command, or, for that matter, human happiness by becoming grim joyless revolutionaries who sacrifice all personal self-realisation or self-fulfillment to the cause.

It's not just that the ends do not justify the means (though they don't), you will never achieve the ends at all unless the means are themselves a model for the world you wish to create. Hence the famous anarchist call to begin "building the new society in the shell of the old" with egalitarian experiments ranging from free schools to radical labour unions to rural communes.

Anarchism was also a revolutionary ideology, and its emphasis on individual conscience and individual initiative meant that during the first heyday of revolutionary anarchism between roughly 1875 and 1914, many took the fight directly to heads of state and capitalists, with bombings and assassinations. Hence the popular image of the anarchist bomb-thrower. It's worthy of note that anarchists were perhaps the first political movement to realise that terrorism, even if not directed at innocents, doesn't work. For nearly a century now, in fact, anarchism has been one of the very few political philosophies whose exponents never blow anyone up (indeed, the 20th-century political leader who drew most from the anarchist tradition was Mohandas K Gandhi.)

Yet for the period of roughly 1914 to 1989, a period during which the world was continually either fighting or preparing for world wars, anarchism went into something of an eclipse for precisely that reason: To seem "realistic", in such violent times, a political movement had to be capable of organising armies, navies and ballistic missile systems, and that was one thing at which Marxists could often excel. But everyone recognised that anarchists - rather to their credit - would never be able to pull it off. It was only after 1989, when the age of great war mobilisations seemed to have ended, that a global revolutionary movement based on anarchist principles - the global justice movement - promptly reappeared.

How, then, did OWS embody anarchist principles? It might be helpful to go over this point by point:

1) The refusal to recognise the legitimacy of existing political institutions.

One reason for the much-discussed refusal to issue demands is because issuing demands means recognising the legitimacy - or at least, the power - of those of whom the demands are made. Anarchists often note that this is the difference between protest and direct action: Protest, however militant, is an appeal to the authorities to behave differently; direct action, whether it's a matter of a community building a well or making salt in defiance of the law (Gandhi's example again), trying to shut down a meeting or occupy a factory, is a matter of acting as if the existing structure of power does not even exist. Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.

2) The refusal to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order.

The second principle, obviously, follows from the first. From the very beginning, when we first started holding planning meetings in Tompkins Square Park in New York, organisers knowingly ignored local ordinances that insisted that any gathering of more than 12 people in a public park is illegal without police permission - simply on the grounds that such laws should not exist. On the same grounds, of course, we chose to occupy a park, inspired by examples from the Middle East and southern Europe, on the grounds that, as the public, we should not need permission to occupy public space. This might have been a very minor form of civil disobedience but it was crucial that we began with a commitment to answer only to a moral order, not a legal one.

3) The refusal to create an internal hierarchy, but instead to create a form of consensus-based direct democracy.

From the very beginning, too, organisers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus. The first decision ensured that there would be no formal leadership structure that could be co-opted or coerced; the second, that no majority could bend a minority to its will, but that all crucial decisions had to be made by general consent. American anarchists have long considered consensus process (a tradition that has emerged from a confluence of feminism, anarchism and spiritual traditions like the Quakers) crucial for the reason that it is the only form of decision-making that could operate without coercive enforcement - since if a majority does not have the means to compel a minority to obey its dictates, all decisions will, of necessity, have to be made by general consent.

4) The embrace of prefigurative politics.

As a result, Zuccotti Park, and all subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society - not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of other institutions, all operating on anarchist principles of mutual aid and self-organisation - a genuine attempt to create the institutions of a new society in the shell of the old.

Why did it work? Why did it catch on? One reason is, clearly, because most Americans are far more willing to embrace radical ideas than anyone in the established media is willing to admit. The basic message - that the American political order is absolutely and irredeemably corrupt, that both parties have been bought and sold by the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population, and that if we are to live in any sort of genuinely democratic society, we're going to have to start from scratch - clearly struck a profound chord in the American psyche.


Perhaps this is not surprising: We are facing conditions that rival those of the 1930s, the main difference being that the media seems stubbornly willing to acknowledge it. It raises intriguing questions about the role of the media itself in American society. Radical critics usually assume the "corporate media", as they call it, mainly exists to convince the public that existing institutions are healthy, legitimate and just. It is becoming increasingly apparent that they do not really see this is possible; rather, their role is simply to convince members of an increasingly angry public that no one else has come to the same conclusions they have. The result is an ideology that no one really believes, but most people at least suspect that everybody else does.

Nowhere is this disjunction between what ordinary Americans really think, and what the media and political establishment tells them they think, more clear than when we talk about democracy.

Democracy in America?

According to the official version, of course, "democracy" is a system created by the Founding Fathers, based on checks and balances between president, congress and judiciary. In fact, nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution does it say anything about the US being a "democracy". The authors of those documents, almost to a man, defined "democracy" as a matter of collective self-governance by popular assemblies, and as such they were dead-set against it.

Democracy meant the madness of crowds: bloody, tumultuous and untenable. "There was never a democracy that didn't commit suicide," wrote Adams; Hamilton justified the system of checks and balances by insisting that it was necessary to create a permanent body of the "rich and well-born" to check the "imprudence" of democracy, or even that limited form that would be allowed in the lower house of representatives.

The result was a republic - modelled not on Athens, but on Rome. It only came to be redefined as a "democracy" in the early 19th century because ordinary Americans had very different views, and persistently tended to vote - those who were allowed to vote - for candidates who called themselves "democrats". But what did - and what do - ordinary Americans mean by the word? Did they really just mean a system where they get to weigh in on which politicians will run the government? It seems implausible. After all, most Americans loathe politicians, and tend to be skeptical about the very idea of government. If they universally hold out "democracy" as their political ideal, it can only be because they still see it, however vaguely, as self-governance - as what the Founding Fathers tended to denounce as either "democracy" or, as they sometimes also put it, "anarchy".

If nothing else, this would help explain the enthusiasm with which they have embraced a movement based on directly democratic principles, despite the uniformly contemptuous dismissal of the United States' media and political class.

In fact, this is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles - direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones - has cropped up in the US. The civil rights movement (at least its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, and the global justice movement all took similar directions. Never, however, has one grown so startlingly quickly. But in part, this is because this time around, the organisers went straight for the central contradiction. They directly challenged the pretenses of the ruling elite that they are presiding over a democracy.

When it comes to their most basic political sensibilities, most Americans are deeply conflicted. Most combine a deep reverence for individual freedom with a near-worshipful identification with institutions like the army and police. Most combine an enthusiasm for markets with a hatred of capitalists. Most are simultaneously profoundly egalitarian, and deeply racist. Few are actual anarchists; few even know what "anarchism" means; it's not clear how many, if they did learn, would ultimately wish to discard the state and capitalism entirely. Anarchism is much more than simply grassroots democracy: It ultimately aims to eliminate all social relations, from wage labour to patriarchy, that can only be maintained by the systematic threat of force.

But one thing overwhelming numbers of Americans do feel is that something is terribly wrong with their country, that its key institutions are controlled by an arrogant elite, that radical change of some kind is long since overdue. They're right. It's hard to imagine a political system so systematically corrupt - one where bribery, on every level, has not only been made legal, but soliciting and dispensing bribes has become the full-time occupation of every American politician. The outrage is appropriate. The problem is that up until September 17, the only side of the spectrum willing to propose radical solutions of any sort was the Right.

As the history of the past movements all make clear, nothing terrifies those running the US more than the danger of democracy breaking out. The immediate response to even a modest spark of democratically organised civil disobedience is a panicked combination of concessions and brutality. How else can one explain the recent national mobilisation of thousands of riot cops, the beatings, chemical attacks, and mass arrests, of citizens engaged in precisely the kind of democratic assemblies the Bill of Rights was designed to protect, and whose only crime - if any - was the violation of local camping regulations?

Our media pundits might insist that if average Americans ever realised the anarchist role in Occupy Wall Street, they would turn away in shock and horror; but our rulers seem, rather, to labour under a lingering fear that if any significant number of Americans do find out what anarchism really is, they might well decide that rulers of any sort are unnecessary.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 04508.html

*

[Bruce Dazzling]

From the David Graeber piece posted by VK:

"Radical critics usually assume the "corporate media", as they call it, mainly exists to convince the public that existing institutions are healthy, legitimate and just. It is becoming increasingly apparent that they do not really see this is possible; rather, their role is simply to convince members of an increasingly angry public that no one else has come to the same conclusions they have. The result is an ideology that no one really believes, but most people at least suspect that everybody else does.

Nowhere is this disjunction between what ordinary Americans really think, and what the media and political establishment tells them they think, more clear than when we talk about democracy."

Perfectly said.

[Aurataur]

Occupy L.A.: Fearing attacks, some officers wear hazmat suits
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/fearing-attacks-by-protesters-some-lapd-officers-wear-hazmat-suits-.html
November 30, 2011 | 12:54 am



The Los Angeles Police Department's raid at the Occupy L.A. camp included officials in white latex hazmat suits.

Officials said the protective dress was needed out of concern some protesters might fling urine and feces at them as they began to clear out the park. It's unclear whether that actually happened.

Columns of police moved from several sides into the camp, which has been the subject of much debate across Los Angeles since it was set up nearly eight weeks ago.

Lines of officers came from inside City Hall, forcing hundreds of protesters onto the south lawn and quickly encircling them.
The protesters were essentially trapped in the park. They linked arms as the police moved in. Some chanted "We are peaceful" and "We are the 99%."

Police tore down a large plastic structure on a stairwell and pulled out large bags of cement that protesters had placed in some tents.

The LAPD strategy appeared to be to trap protesters inside the park, sometimes pushing them with batons but not appearing to strike them. Some officers were armed with bean-bag rifles.

[Nordic]

Not to defend the cops, but in case anyone thinks that's weird, in my line of work we often shoot in the streets and alleys of downtown los angeles, and feces-throwing is an extremely common occurrence there. The worst is when the addicts throw their used needles, with little balls of feces stuck on the needles, like darts at people.

I hate downtown LA, and that's one of the reasons. It's a big open sewer.

[StarmanSkye]

^^^^
Nordic wrote:

--quote--
Not to defend the cops, but in case anyone thinks that's weird, in my line of work we often shoot in the streets and alleys of downtown los angeles, and feces-throwing is an extremely common occurrence there. The worst is when the addicts throw their used needles, with little balls of feces stuck on the needles, like darts at people.

I hate downtown LA, and that's one of the reasons. It's a big open sewer.

--Unquote--


Man is that SICK... Like in severely-aggravated socialized psychopathological dysfunction. Culturally-reinforced by the bitterly enforced victimization, objectification and exploitation of civil society as a consequence of vulture capitalism's parasitism.

Its hard to grasp what a severe lack of dignity, self-respect, sense of honor, basic decency and civility that kind of extreme, self-absorbed zombified behavior reflects. It would be terrible for the 99%/Occupy movement to get painted with such a wretched attitude or reputation.

[elfismiles]

I hate downtown LA, and that's one of the reasons. It's a big open sewer.

From LA to NYC it's just one big stinking sewer of 99% mind-controlled filth!

"Well. [He thinks] Whatever it is, you should clean up this city here, because this city here is like an open sewer you know. It's full of filth and scum. And sometimes I can hardly take it. Whatever-whoever becomes the President should just [Travis honks the horn] really clean it up. You know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it, I get headaches it's so bad, you know...They just never go away you know...It's like...I think that the President should just clean up this whole mess here. You should just flush it right down the fuckin' toilet."

... I just watched TAXI DRIVER for the very first time last night ... on BluRay. Wow!

[Nordic]

Yes, if the production has the money they hire these steam-cleaning trucks that literally disinfect the alleys with steam before we get there. Sadly many productions don't bother.

Its the insanely (and insane) huge homeless population down there. They got nowhere else to go. It's been "gentrified" a bit in the last few years with the housing boom down there converting a lot of the old flophouses into ritzy hipster lofts, so now there are fewer homeless people (it seems, don't know where they really went) but it seems there's just as much dog shit and piss from the hipsters designer doggies (it seems to be a rule that if you get a cool loft downtown you are required to buy three designer dogs to live there with you) as there used to be from humans. Although there's still plenty from both species. I've literally seen little rivers of dog pee running down alleys now. But its been good for the unemployed dogwalkers, there are more of them than ever.

And now with the loft craze, there are fewer homeless up high hurling down things like tv sets (and infected needles and poop) from the upper windows of the buildings. I suppose that's an improvement of sorts.

Did I mention I hate downtown la?

One of the cops last night being interviewed basically just admitted they haven't a clue as to how to deal with the homeless of los angeles

[Luther Blissett]

Monitoring #occupyphilly on tweetdeck is vexing today, between the weird bot spam psychic reading stuff and the pablum who are seeming to be openly inviting oligarchic rape. People are psyched for the eviction like they are psyched for a Phillies win. I'm half expecting a news van to get flipped by the anti-Occupy Philly crowd.

[Nordic]

From the David Graeber piece posted by VK:

"Radical critics usually assume the "corporate media", as they call it, mainly exists to convince the public that existing institutions are healthy, legitimate and just. It is becoming increasingly apparent that they do not really see this is possible; rather, their role is simply to convince members of an increasingly angry public that no one else has come to the same conclusions they have. The result is an ideology that no one really believes, but most people at least suspect that everybody else does.

Nowhere is this disjunction between what ordinary Americans really think, and what the media and political establishment tells them they think, more clear than when we talk about democracy."

Perfectly said.

That does express, perfectly, the source of a great cognitive dissonance in our country. I find it whenever I go talk to people. Its one of the reason people don't want to talk, because they've been told that "everybody" feels otherwise.

It's brilliant, really, from a diaboical people-controlling perspective.

I'm convinced most "polls" are largely artificial at this point for the same reason.

[Luther Blissett]

I'm sure you all know this is by no means the end…but still, a good account.

Witnessing the final moments of this incarnation of Occupy Philly
by Emily Guendelsberger November 30, 2011

I had zero intention of staying up until 6:30 this morning, but the helicopters with the Occupy Philly eviction woke me up around 3:30 a.m., and in trying to figure out whether there was a zombie invasion on or what, I ended up glued to the livestream and #occupyphilly Twitter tag. (I’d like to apologize to Twitter for all the times I called it dumb.) As it became clear that the end of the physical incarnation of Occupy Philly was going down about two blocks away, I could no longer rationalize staying in bed, especially considering we were kind of there for its birth.

There were a few funny moments before leaving the house—the infiltration of the trending #occupyphilly tag by a bunch of ad-bots touting a psychic phone line, the guy doing the livestream getting recognized and getting a brief “LIVESTREAM! LIVESTREAM! LIVESTREAM!” cheer. There were dull stretches as protestors wandered around with purpose but seemingly at random, which I broke up by playing the “Figure out where the livestream guy is by the background scenery” game, which was most easy when they went by Five Guys. But when there was drama, it was legit exciting. For one, the shouting and call-and-response of the mic check system is inherently pretty dramatic, and when people started using it, as they did around 3 a.m., to express apocalyptic-sounding stuff like, “I love you guys, there is nowhere I’d rather be,” it was electric. And the #occupyphilly tag on Twitter was insane. Horses stepping on people! Storming barricades! A Pac-Man-esque chase around Center City! I put on pants and grabbed my cane.

I walked all the way down 15th Street to where a police barricade manned by 10 or so cops was set up at Arch, then heard by text that the main group was back the other way, at 15th and Callowhill. Walking back the way I came up 15th Street, I kept passing little trickle-off groups of four or five people who looked like they might have split off from the larger group. They all looked pretty tired. A crowd of young protestor-looking types was gathered at Hamilton Street, apparently free to come and go. One guy was eating something off a paper plate. I thought, “Well, if he had time to get pizza, things can’t be too bad.” I reconsidered when I realized none of the three pizza places in our neighborhood were open and that the guy was eating plain white rice poured from a Chinese takeout box.

I ran into some former colleagues from Philly Weekly, who had been following the protesters all around the city for nearly five hours; they said that at this point, just about everyone’s phone had died and they couldn’t even tweet anymore. Checking the #occupyphilly tag, previously hopping with stuff from people on the street, had shifted at 5:30 a.m., when I found mostly stuff like, “guess I can’t go in to work today because of #occupyphilly LOL” and, “Way to take out the lazy trash Philly PD! #occupyphilly.” If that was the city’s strategy, letting the protestors’ electronic and bodily batteries run down by sort of ponging them around Center City until they couldn’t communicate with each other or the outside world via social media and their physical voices were too hoarse to mic check or shout and then round them up, that was really crafty. So since nobody else seemed to have one, I decided to stay with my fully charged Internet phone until the whole thing wrapped up.

PW staff writer/photographer Michael Alan Goldberg said he’d gotten caught up in a rush for a barricade at City Hall and had been held by three cops for 10 seconds or so, and that when he’d initially yelled, “I’M PRESS!” they responded that they didn’t care. He got some sweet pictures, incidentally.

At this point, around 5 a.m., both sides were pretty quiet and, if not relaxed, certainly looking pretty exhausted. There was only one guy intermittently yelling about stuff. No more mic checks. (The yelling guy’d taken the venue, behind the School District building, as a chance to go off about how Ackerman had filed for unemployment the previous day and how she was the 1 percent.) I decided to get a better angle, and circled around to the other side of a fence about 10 yards away from the white school bus onto which they were gradually loading zip-cuffed people.

I only saw the tail end, so I can only judge that. I wasn’t there for any of the scuffles. But I swear, they must have drafted the 500 chillest cops in the city for this duty, because when I witnessed people get all verbally aggro on them in the livestream or on the street, they did a very professional job of rolling their eyes and brushing it off. I also talked to several cops while wandering around looking for the bigger group, and they were polite and helpful across the board, even saying that I could go through the barricade on 16th Street if I wasn’t “causing a ruckus.” Then again, a small white woman with glasses who walks with a cane isn’t exactly threatening.

Likewise, there weren’t a lot of antagonists in the Occupy crowd; most seemed to appreciate that the officers were human beings on a really crappy work shift. There were obviously a few chants on the theme that the protesters’ taxes paid the police salaries, and some mic-check rants about police brutality elsewhere in Philadelphia that got very tense. But I wish there was some sort of transcript of a mic check caught on the livestream around 4 a.m., in which the speaker encouraged the protestors to be cool, and if anything went down, to remember to turn the other cheek, as that’s counterintuitively the only thing people take seriously. By the end of the night, it was down to a sort of mutually exhausted, “If you don’t go away, we’re arresting you.” “Okay, but I’m not leaving.” “Okay, I guess we’ll arrest you, then.” The situation seemed too tired to keep up the animosity.

The zip-cuffed people being loaded on the bus were almost uniformly in their 20s. I overheard cops saying that 33 guys and 12 females had been arrested on 15th Street on charges of obstructing a highway (people who had been there before me said that they were told if they were on the road they’d be arrested) and failure to disperse. It took about 45 minutes to get everyone searched, paperworked up, and on the bus, which finally pulled out around 5:45 a.m. to the evident relief of the bike cops, who rolled out together.

As I was walking home in the pre-dawn darkness, I did my usual post-flash-mob-leg-break juggling act of trying to get my pepper spray situated in one hand while using the other to cane along, which is harder than it sounds. Then I thought that I’d almost feel bad for the guy who’d try to mug me within a block of dozens of tired cops who’d undoubtedly been under strict don’t-respond-to-taunting orders all night.

• If you need a lighter today, there’s a ton of ’em in the street behind the school district building if they haven’t been flattened yet, as you apparently cannot take them on the Sheriff Bus and the cops just threw them in the street.
• Overheard: “Those horses are sellouts!”

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