The Fall of Occupy LA, directed by Tony McGrath
Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 5:57 am
Part 1 of 2
The Fall of Occupy LA
directed by Tony McGrath [and the FBI? Question: Is almost every person featured in this movie FBI?]
[Partial Transcript Re Infiltration of LA Occupy, transcribed by Tara Carreon]
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
[Narrator] On October 1, 2011, Occupy LA took over Los Angeles City Hall Park. Overnight, it became the biggest occupation in the country….
October 4, 2011
[Eric Garcetti, LA Council member] Stay as long as you need to. We’ll continue to work with you.
[Bill Rosendahl, LA Councilmember] Tomorrow we’re putting in a resolution. It will show support and solidarity from the City of LA with what you’re doing. We’ll see you tomorrow!
[Narrator] In early October, LA City Hall approved a resolution supporting the occupation. But over time the relationship soured. With Occupy Wall Street evicted, the clock was ticking on Occupy LA. Within Occupy LA deep internal divisions had formed. Camps developed within the camp. By the final weeks of November, things were coming to a head.
November 15, 2011
[Woman Occupier] This is an American city! We are all in this together. And we have to stay on message, regulate Wall Street, and put the bastards in jail. We have a paper trail. We can find out who they are. We know the head of Goldman Sachs’ name. He should be in there with Madoff, and all the heads: Jamie Diamond. And we need to stay on message. And we need leaders!
[Julia] What are our demands as a group? How do we want to advance this movement? Not just in Occupy LA, not just in Los Angeles even as a city, but to national and even international proportions, so we can gain power for poor and oppressed people worldwide?
[Narrator] Each night the Occupiers met at the GA: the General Assembly.
[Sarah] There was an article in the Minneapolis Examiner today talking about how these raids that have happened in Oakland and New York and Portland and other places were coordinated coming down from the Obama administration, Homeland Security, and the FBI. They had a conference call and went through a game plan. The game plan included the fact that police should use overwhelming force, should do it when the press was least likely to be there, and should look for a legal excuse to raid a camp.
[Narrator] A group of Occupiers – the City Liaison Committee – had been secretly holding negotiations with authorities. This was just beginning to be known by the camp.
[Patti] In the LA times on the Internet today it was saying that someone from Occupy LA is in negotiations with City Hall and LAPD.
[Male Occupier] What the hell?
[Patti] Yeah, that’s what I said.
[Lucero] We have concerns right now. We’ve actually had people, different sources, say that there is an exit strategy that’s in the works. But unfortunately this exit strategy would undermine the solidarity of Occupy LA and the Occupy movement as a whole. We do not collaborate with the police! We do not do the police’s work! We are here to occupy! We are here to build a movement based on solidarity! If you are part of these negotiations, which have not been endorsed by Occupy LA, please come forward and address us!
[Mario] Uh, to dispel a lot of the bullshit that’s been going around, we are not working with the police on any particular issue. We are coordinating what we’re doing in secrecy to work for Occupy LA. So we --
[Occupiers] [Screaming]
[Mario] No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
[Occupiers] [Screaming louder]
[Mario] Because Occupy LA represents social and economic justice, and we have this total transparency thing. Now you say you want strategy -- you say strategy -- and then you come to a public place like this, and then planning for an expansion or anything like that, how can you have an expansion or anything like that while you’re talking about it on the freaking Internet? I mean, all I’m saying, all I’m saying, is that there is no betrayal of anybody’s anything –
[Male Occupier] You do it by not working with the police!
[Mario] Dude, nobody’s working with the police. The fact is, we’re trying to expand. We ain’t trying to sell any other group out to do any particular, to go under the bus for Occupy LA. We’re trying to take care of our own.
[Male Occupier] That’s bullshit!
November 17, 2011:
Why did this happen in 2011?
[Sarah/Time Person of the Year] Obama was elected in 2008. I think by 2010 it was pretty clear that things were not getting better.
[Mario] The country is ripe. The country wanted, in it’s psyche it deeply wanted to talk about this. I mean, in other countries, in Europe the issue of class is talked about, the issue of inequality is talked about.
[Joan] The original call to action from the Adbusters’ website was very clear, that the point was to get money out of politics. What was going on in 2011 had to do with the failure of the bailout.
[Mario] If you create certain circumstances where people are unable to rise out of poverty, then you’re going to have a permanent underclass which affects our democracy. We have such low voter turnout and there’s a reason why. People feel unengaged, they feel like there’s no reason for them to be engaged. What happened in 2011 was the economic inequality spread to the middle class. The middle class began to feel the strains of an economy that wasn’t working. A lot of people in communities of color were saying, “Well, this is something we’ve been dealing with for years. We’ve been talking about this for years. Nobody heard us. Nobody spoke to us. Nobody raised a concern. ”
[Crowd chanting] Banks got bailed out; we got sold out!
[Narrator] LAPD arrested 73 people on November 17. Most were released the next day.
November 18, 2011
[Infiltrators? wasting everyone's time with their corny, feel-good stories]
[Sarah] On our way up, I walked with a small group of girls. Our mission was to scout and see what was going on around the perimeter of Bank of America Plaza. We were stopped by an older woman, she was a business woman, and she asked us if we were Occupiers. And we told her yes, and she said "thank you, thank you so much for what you're doing." She said, "I want you to know that there are so many of us at home, and we watch TV every night, and the only thing that makes us hopeful is this Movement."
[Matt] Our fight is not with the police, it's with the banks! When a citizen issues a citizen's arrest, that citizen holds the offender for the police until they arrive. When a corporation issues a citizen's arrest, they bring out 400 cops, Homeland Security, FBI, close down a 4 block radius, bring two paddy wagons and a bus.
[Richard] The thing about yesterday was having the chance to be able to have a teach-in with the police. We had at least 45 minutes where they were standing there, and we were able to educate them on revolution, and the role that they play in revolution.
[Matt] This is our fight. We must shatter the manacles of control by reminding the police that their duty is to protect first and serve second.
[Alex] I want to talk a about standing our ground. When the police finally move in, they want their job to go as easily as possible. If you lock arms and do not let go, it will make their job harder. This does not mean that they can't throw the book at you.
It just means that most of the time, to make their jobs easy, cops are full of shit!
So stand your ground!
[Richard] Martin Luther King said, “Hate the system, not those caught up in the system.” We are all caught up in each other’s humanity. I said to them, “What would you guys rather have? We all order pizza, and eat pizza together, or you shoot tear gas at us?”
I saw a couple of them who were very robotic crack a smile. They had their last name on their helmet. And I said, “Magellan! I saw you smiling. You want pizza, don’t you?” And he couldn’t hold his smile in any longer, and he started to laugh. Then I saw another one start to laugh. And that’s what Mark is talking about when he says that we humanize the situation.
[Sarah] And I am so proud of everyone, the people on the inside and the people on the outside. We could hear you chanting even in the bus, and it was beautiful.
[Narrator] From the beginning, a committee had been meeting to try and work out the demands and objectives of the movement.
November 19, 2011
Occupy LA Objectives and Demands Committee
[Male Occupier] About three weeks ago the governor of Illinois said that if Occupy doesn’t stand up for some goals that their movement will fall apart. If the movement doesn’t have goals it will fall apart. So I think that this is the most important part of the movement, more important than anything else.
[Chris] Objectives and demands that turned out to be reformist because of the way they were collected and the survey and cultural bias, or whatever complaint you could have about methodology, that’s just one avenue, okay? There’s actions, marching, demonstrations. This is just one thing --
[Narrator] A survey of what Occupy LA wanted had been circulated, and the results analyzed. But only a small number had responded.
[Do you believe this? Or seeing how important they were, did some infiltrator throw the rest in the garbage?]
[Steve] Just 36 people turned it in, which is why I’d like to let you know that obviously we have to state that this is not a statistically really valid sample.
[Dave] We’re gonna take the sample of 35, or whatever, we’re going to take out the top 10 or whatever, and then present them as – what, I don’t really know -- because that expresses the will of the people here. But if we know better based upon our experience and our research, then somehow it wouldn’t be appropriate to analyze them with those tools of wisdom and experience. The method requires that we reinvent the wheel again. We don’t learn from history.
[Chris] I think that we need to let people make up their own minds and just present the facts, the raw data.
[John] This is the first pass, almost the first issue of a newspaper, the first issue of demands. And then we take another round of surveys, possibly modifying the survey a bit to enlarge them, because it’s now been informed by the thinking and discussion that’s been done by this committee.
[Suzanne] I think that as long as we have the caveat you know that, I -- you’re right, 8% is not bad for survey results, honestly -- but my only concern is that it’s going to skew too many people to think that this is the only things that we’re considering.
[Chris] Essentially what we want to say to GA is this isn’t a finished process. I mean, that’s the essence of basically what we want to communicate.
[Male Occupier] You’re extending something you can’t extend. If we don’t come up with issues, we’re dead.
[Suzanne] I don’t agree with we’re dead. It’s our decision whether we die or not.
[Male Occupier] Well, if you don’t come up with goals you’re dead.
[Suzanne] I disagree with that. Anyway, let’s go back to the –
[Male Occupier] Rankings for each demand so you can see just visually the raw data. And you can almost see a clustering affect for the issues that got voted as, ranked number 1 the most times. So (1) Ending corporate personhood, (2) Wall Street money out of politics, (3) Overturn Citizens United,
(4) Investigate the banks and bankers for fraud, (5) stop the wars,
(6) divert military spending, (7) Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, (8) Enact electoral reform. So here’s a heat map right here. So this is a linear formula where every rank, the rank of 1 got, for the purposes of this linear scale, the rank of 1 got a point value of 20, and the inverse for the rank of 20.
So the rank of 20 got a point value of 1.
[Steve] I want to say I’m enjoying the detail that you’re going into for us, and I appreciate the work and the intelligence and everything that’s in here, that’s marvelous, but that level of detail for your presentation tonight isn’t going to work. You know what chaos GA just normally is.
[Narrator] A month earlier, the GA was temporarily replaced by an open mic People's Forum.
October 19, 2011
[It's not an "Open Mic People's Forum," but rather infiltrator?/anarchists putting terrorist fear into the Occupiers of a police raid happening due to their wild behavior.]
[Male Occupier] This is the GA!
[Male Occupier] You have our attention, but we need to have a moment of silence. We need to calm it down.
[Anarchist Infiltrator?] No GA! No GA! No GA!
[Female Occupier] Yo, this is like modern day Rome right now; this is like fucking Parliament;
you guys are not doing anything special; you're just crying. If you're not going to listen to each other, you're just crying!
[Male Occupier] Stop following him. Get in a circle, please! Get in a circle! Ignore him! Let him be; he'll get tired!
[Anarchist Infiltrator?] Love your future leaders,
your new tyrants and dictators shall be benevolent; check them out in action. They're rad. They're totally awesome.
[Male Occupier] You're going to bring the LAPD down here right now. Why don't you calm down? Calm down!
[Male Occupier] Get back in the circle, please, please, get back in, get back in the circle!
[Male Occupier] Return to the circle; find your hearts there.
[Anarchist/Infiltrator] This is what's wrong with the open forum.
Mic check!
[Male Occupier] Don't follow the rabbit. Please return to your seats.
[Male Occupier] There is no growing up in this, the time is now!
[Anarchist/Infiltrator] You don't know what the time is; you don't know how many occupations there are; you have no clue.
[Male] Is this the end of the movement?
[Male Occupier] No brother, this is the movement.
November 19, 2011
GA discussion: Leadership
[Male Occupier] This is a leaderless movement. How do the people in this movement feel about leaders? Are they important? Are they necessary? We ask you to break out into groups of about 7 or 8 and discuss the topic. Select a spokesperson, send them over to a stacker, stackers raise your hands.
[TJ] Excuse me, my name is TJ. I feel that we’re all leaders. We don’t necessarily need 4 or 5, 10 people leading us anywhere. Because that’s how we got into this situation right now because of the leaders that were supposed to be for the people are not for the people. So I totally say, “Fuck leaders.” Be a leader your own self.
[Female Occupier] The problem with leadership right now is not that we have leaders, it’s the influence on the leaders. And the influence on the leaders is big money. So leadership in itself is good. I think it’s important to have a spokesperson for the people. As long as there is no ego investment or monetary investment, then the leaders have no reason to not represent the people. So I do believe in leadership that is truly representative and rotates out, and is viewed as a community service that you don’t necessarily get paid a stupid amount for.
[Anthony] The non-violence statement says that we are a movement of leaders, okay? So that means we all have collective responsibility to work for the betterment of the movement. And that doesn’t just mean taking it upon yourself and doing autonomous action whenever you feel that’s necessary. That means openly bringing it up to everybody, teaching people, taking responsibility for your actions, and promoting the collective leadership. Okay? As a movement of leaders we can’t all just say everything and then have it happen, okay? We have to come together as a group and decide what’s best for everyone.
[Colin] The role of leadership, whatever that means, entails a great deal of responsibility. And the responsibility is to the people who you lead. And the difference between a tyrant and a leader is a leader is concerned about those values, concerned about what their role represents to the people who are, I guess, followers. A tyrant is a person who imposes power from top down,
and they are not a leader.
[Female Occupier] If we’re going to have a leadership without having structures in place to protect people, we’re just building the same system. And that’s really what it is. And there are already people that are messing things up, and I think that we already know who they are. And it’s dangerous. It really is.
[Male Occupier] It’s about transparency of information, and the information that produces greed in the leadership. So the people who have that information aren’t going to give it because now they’re in a position of power, and they are unwilling to compromise in any way because they think that it compromises their meetings which are important to them.
[Bilal] Leadership doesn’t necessarily mean being the boss, or having followers. Leadership means taking initiative and responsibility when something needs to be done. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. Take the initiative and do it upon yourself. That should be the understanding of leadership, not bosses and followers.
[John] I think there’s two different kinds of leadership. One is a kind of horizontal leadership that operates in the community on the ground, like the “keeping it real” committee. It’s a matter of touching base for a lot of people, bringing the people together to deal collectively with problems. There are needs if you’re talking to Oakland, or talking to the City, or whatever, the Fire Department or Health Department. You have to have a representative or a couple of representatives. And if you don’t like the way they perform, you just replace them. But they’re delegates, they are representatives.
[Bilal] We are trying to create another world, a better world, so I think we need to talk, what is our definition? We define what a leader is. I like her idea of a rotating thing. If Martin Luther King came in here in this circle right now, he wouldn’t be a leader, right? He couldn’t lead us to shit, right? Malcolm X? My leader is Malcolm X, and I’d follow him to hell, right? But if we talk about leadership, let’s define what a leader is regarding what we’re trying to build here. And we’re creating a new type of leadership here. I think it’s a word that people get too hung up on. Like I said, I see things that have to be done, I organize things around here, and we get it done.
[Tiffany] But if you don’t agree, and they are doing something in my name, that is the problem. In fact, that’s completely against what Occupy was set up for in the first place.
[Female Occupier] My group felt that Occupy is a leaderless movement. The 1% relies upon leaders to assume control
of the entire population. The 99% must work together to create a peaceful and just society.
[Lawrence] Our group discussed the concept of vox populi, which means “voice of the people.” We do not have leaders that make decisions. Decisions are made by open source groups that anyone can participate in. A vox populi leader is a charismatic person to answer questions and to speak on behalf of vox populi. And they are constantly rotated.
[Lucero] I just wanted to say that I was not elected by my group to speak to you right now, and the reason I’m speaking before you is to give you an example of what happens if I was to decide on my own that I was representing my group. So please keep that in mind when we talk about transparency and when we talk about having spokespeople that we all agree represent us to the police, or the city, and any other official.
[Male Occupier] We believe that we are in a transitional period. The majority of us have come from a society that did not teach us to be leaders. We need to educate ourselves and others on how to be leaders. When we reach that point, we will all be spokespersons for the movement. We will all represent the needs and the goals of the movement. Thank you.
The Fall of Occupy LA
directed by Tony McGrath [and the FBI? Question: Is almost every person featured in this movie FBI?]
[Partial Transcript Re Infiltration of LA Occupy, transcribed by Tara Carreon]
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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Revolution: Yes We Can!, by Tara Carreon
-- FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring, by The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
-- Occupy Wall Street and “The American Autumn”: Is it a “Colored Revolution”?
-- Branding Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, by Gerald Sussman
-- The Revolution Business, Report by Patrick A. Hafner and Alexander Steinbach
[Narrator] On October 1, 2011, Occupy LA took over Los Angeles City Hall Park. Overnight, it became the biggest occupation in the country….
October 4, 2011
[Eric Garcetti, LA Council member] Stay as long as you need to. We’ll continue to work with you.
[Bill Rosendahl, LA Councilmember] Tomorrow we’re putting in a resolution. It will show support and solidarity from the City of LA with what you’re doing. We’ll see you tomorrow!
[Narrator] In early October, LA City Hall approved a resolution supporting the occupation. But over time the relationship soured. With Occupy Wall Street evicted, the clock was ticking on Occupy LA. Within Occupy LA deep internal divisions had formed. Camps developed within the camp. By the final weeks of November, things were coming to a head.
November 15, 2011
[Woman Occupier] This is an American city! We are all in this together. And we have to stay on message, regulate Wall Street, and put the bastards in jail. We have a paper trail. We can find out who they are. We know the head of Goldman Sachs’ name. He should be in there with Madoff, and all the heads: Jamie Diamond. And we need to stay on message. And we need leaders!
Identity Now! (Lloyd Blankfein under Anonymous mask), by Tara Carreon
-- Occupy Wall Street and “The American Autumn”: Is it a “Colored Revolution”?
[Julia] What are our demands as a group? How do we want to advance this movement? Not just in Occupy LA, not just in Los Angeles even as a city, but to national and even international proportions, so we can gain power for poor and oppressed people worldwide?
Zen Politics? Just Say “Noh,” by Tara Carreon
(In dishonor of Adam Pek)
[Adam Pek] To me the fact that this movement does not have political agenda and list of demands is its greatest strength. Because we do not have a platform it becomes impossible for some politician to rise on it to the next election and kidnap the movement. Because we do not have a single demand we do not have a bull’s eye that can be attacked or exploited by media and those in power. Because of this almost every one can identify themselves with and be part of this movement. Occupy Wall Street movement is for people and as long as we keep it clean of opportunities for the greedy and dishonest we will keep it alive and maybe with time it will become our third option created by people for people. It’s more like evolution than revolution.
-- Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, by the Al Capp Organization and the Ford Foundation
[Narrator] Each night the Occupiers met at the GA: the General Assembly.
[Sarah] There was an article in the Minneapolis Examiner today talking about how these raids that have happened in Oakland and New York and Portland and other places were coordinated coming down from the Obama administration, Homeland Security, and the FBI. They had a conference call and went through a game plan. The game plan included the fact that police should use overwhelming force, should do it when the press was least likely to be there, and should look for a legal excuse to raid a camp.
[Narrator] A group of Occupiers – the City Liaison Committee – had been secretly holding negotiations with authorities. This was just beginning to be known by the camp.
[Patti] In the LA times on the Internet today it was saying that someone from Occupy LA is in negotiations with City Hall and LAPD.
[Male Occupier] What the hell?
[Patti] Yeah, that’s what I said.
[Lucero] We have concerns right now. We’ve actually had people, different sources, say that there is an exit strategy that’s in the works. But unfortunately this exit strategy would undermine the solidarity of Occupy LA and the Occupy movement as a whole. We do not collaborate with the police! We do not do the police’s work! We are here to occupy! We are here to build a movement based on solidarity! If you are part of these negotiations, which have not been endorsed by Occupy LA, please come forward and address us!
[Mario] Uh, to dispel a lot of the bullshit that’s been going around, we are not working with the police on any particular issue. We are coordinating what we’re doing in secrecy to work for Occupy LA. So we --
[Occupiers] [Screaming]
[Mario] No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
[Occupiers] [Screaming louder]
[Mario] Because Occupy LA represents social and economic justice, and we have this total transparency thing. Now you say you want strategy -- you say strategy -- and then you come to a public place like this, and then planning for an expansion or anything like that, how can you have an expansion or anything like that while you’re talking about it on the freaking Internet? I mean, all I’m saying, all I’m saying, is that there is no betrayal of anybody’s anything –
[Male Occupier] You do it by not working with the police!
[Mario] Dude, nobody’s working with the police. The fact is, we’re trying to expand. We ain’t trying to sell any other group out to do any particular, to go under the bus for Occupy LA. We’re trying to take care of our own.
[Male Occupier] That’s bullshit!
Take Care of Our Own
I recently had the pleasure to talk with Chris Allen the President of Hunting For Heroes a unique organization that is helping disabled police officers connect with other officers in similar situations and give back to them some hope, some joy and even in some cases a sense of purpose again.
Founded in 2010 by two active duty law enforcement officers, Hunting For Heroes (H4H) reaches out to officers across the country to connect them with other officers who have sustained life altering injuries. H4H provides a hunting camp environment where officers and their families are able to step away from daily struggles and enjoy time outdoors.
Hunting for Heroes actually began as hunting television show. The founders, Chris Allen and Chuck Bowles, were police officers in the St. Louis, Missouri area and were both avid hunters. They were working on a hunting television show working with both the law enforcement and police angles. As the show concept was being developed, the talk of hosting a charity hunt was presented.
We then began to search out those organizations that were taking care of our disabled law enforcement officers. Only to find out there were NONE. We could not find one organization that was providing services specifically… to the disabled law enforcement community. As being cops ourselves and understand the specific needs of a law enforcement officer we found this fact unacceptable.
The motto “taking care of our own” was easily developed as these are the words that we live by. We challenge you to do the same! Hunting for Heroes provides resources, such as recreational therapy and counseling, to disabled law enforcement officers who were injured in the line of duty.
Hunting for Heroes is worthy of your review, and donations. If you have the time they are looking for volunteers. Let’s accept their challenge and really and truly “Take Care of Our Own”.
-- Take Care of Our Own, by Cops Alive.com
November 17, 2011:
Why did this happen in 2011?
[Sarah/Time Person of the Year] Obama was elected in 2008. I think by 2010 it was pretty clear that things were not getting better.
[Mario] The country is ripe. The country wanted, in it’s psyche it deeply wanted to talk about this. I mean, in other countries, in Europe the issue of class is talked about, the issue of inequality is talked about.
[Joan] The original call to action from the Adbusters’ website was very clear, that the point was to get money out of politics. What was going on in 2011 had to do with the failure of the bailout.
[Mario] If you create certain circumstances where people are unable to rise out of poverty, then you’re going to have a permanent underclass which affects our democracy. We have such low voter turnout and there’s a reason why. People feel unengaged, they feel like there’s no reason for them to be engaged. What happened in 2011 was the economic inequality spread to the middle class. The middle class began to feel the strains of an economy that wasn’t working. A lot of people in communities of color were saying, “Well, this is something we’ve been dealing with for years. We’ve been talking about this for years. Nobody heard us. Nobody spoke to us. Nobody raised a concern. ”
[Crowd chanting] Banks got bailed out; we got sold out!
[Narrator] LAPD arrested 73 people on November 17. Most were released the next day.
November 18, 2011
[Infiltrators? wasting everyone's time with their corny, feel-good stories]
[Sarah] On our way up, I walked with a small group of girls. Our mission was to scout and see what was going on around the perimeter of Bank of America Plaza. We were stopped by an older woman, she was a business woman, and she asked us if we were Occupiers. And we told her yes, and she said "thank you, thank you so much for what you're doing." She said, "I want you to know that there are so many of us at home, and we watch TV every night, and the only thing that makes us hopeful is this Movement."
[Matt] Our fight is not with the police, it's with the banks! When a citizen issues a citizen's arrest, that citizen holds the offender for the police until they arrive. When a corporation issues a citizen's arrest, they bring out 400 cops, Homeland Security, FBI, close down a 4 block radius, bring two paddy wagons and a bus.
[Richard] The thing about yesterday was having the chance to be able to have a teach-in with the police. We had at least 45 minutes where they were standing there, and we were able to educate them on revolution, and the role that they play in revolution.
[Matt] This is our fight. We must shatter the manacles of control by reminding the police that their duty is to protect first and serve second.
[Alex] I want to talk a about standing our ground. When the police finally move in, they want their job to go as easily as possible. If you lock arms and do not let go, it will make their job harder. This does not mean that they can't throw the book at you.
It just means that most of the time, to make their jobs easy, cops are full of shit!
So stand your ground!
A lock-on is a technique used by peaceful protesters to make it difficult to remove them from their place of protest. It often involves improvised or specially designed and constructed hardware, although a basic lock-on is the human chain which relies simply on hand grip.[1]
In the United States lock-ons are often referred to as lockdowns.
In American protest movements dating from the 1960s and 70s, the term lockdown applies to a person's attaching themself to a building, object, fence or other immobile object.
The safe removal of the protesters necessitates the involvement of skilled technicians, and is often time-consuming.
The lock-on chosen by the protester may be the difference between being arrested or not, or may vary the kind or number of charges brought against them by the police. If a protester can remove themselves when asked to by the police, they may stand a better chance of not being arrested. However, if they can remove themselves and they chose not to, they may receive a charge for refusing to remove themselves from the lock-on. If the protester cannot remove themselves, it is likely that potential charges are not as important to them as what they are protesting about.
Locking on is a very successful means of slowing down operations which are perceived by the protesters to be illegal or immoral; it is also often used to allow time for journalists to arrive and record the scene and take statements from the group spokespeople.
-- Lock-on, by Wikipedia
[Richard] Martin Luther King said, “Hate the system, not those caught up in the system.” We are all caught up in each other’s humanity. I said to them, “What would you guys rather have? We all order pizza, and eat pizza together, or you shoot tear gas at us?”
I saw a couple of them who were very robotic crack a smile. They had their last name on their helmet. And I said, “Magellan! I saw you smiling. You want pizza, don’t you?” And he couldn’t hold his smile in any longer, and he started to laugh. Then I saw another one start to laugh. And that’s what Mark is talking about when he says that we humanize the situation.
[Sarah] And I am so proud of everyone, the people on the inside and the people on the outside. We could hear you chanting even in the bus, and it was beautiful.
[Narrator] From the beginning, a committee had been meeting to try and work out the demands and objectives of the movement.
November 19, 2011
Occupy LA Objectives and Demands Committee
[Male Occupier] About three weeks ago the governor of Illinois said that if Occupy doesn’t stand up for some goals that their movement will fall apart. If the movement doesn’t have goals it will fall apart. So I think that this is the most important part of the movement, more important than anything else.
[Chris] Objectives and demands that turned out to be reformist because of the way they were collected and the survey and cultural bias, or whatever complaint you could have about methodology, that’s just one avenue, okay? There’s actions, marching, demonstrations. This is just one thing --
[Narrator] A survey of what Occupy LA wanted had been circulated, and the results analyzed. But only a small number had responded.
[Do you believe this? Or seeing how important they were, did some infiltrator throw the rest in the garbage?]
[Steve] Just 36 people turned it in, which is why I’d like to let you know that obviously we have to state that this is not a statistically really valid sample.
[Dave] We’re gonna take the sample of 35, or whatever, we’re going to take out the top 10 or whatever, and then present them as – what, I don’t really know -- because that expresses the will of the people here. But if we know better based upon our experience and our research, then somehow it wouldn’t be appropriate to analyze them with those tools of wisdom and experience. The method requires that we reinvent the wheel again. We don’t learn from history.
[Chris] I think that we need to let people make up their own minds and just present the facts, the raw data.
[John] This is the first pass, almost the first issue of a newspaper, the first issue of demands. And then we take another round of surveys, possibly modifying the survey a bit to enlarge them, because it’s now been informed by the thinking and discussion that’s been done by this committee.
[Suzanne] I think that as long as we have the caveat you know that, I -- you’re right, 8% is not bad for survey results, honestly -- but my only concern is that it’s going to skew too many people to think that this is the only things that we’re considering.
[Chris] Essentially what we want to say to GA is this isn’t a finished process. I mean, that’s the essence of basically what we want to communicate.
[Male Occupier] You’re extending something you can’t extend. If we don’t come up with issues, we’re dead.
[Suzanne] I don’t agree with we’re dead. It’s our decision whether we die or not.
[Male Occupier] Well, if you don’t come up with goals you’re dead.
[Suzanne] I disagree with that. Anyway, let’s go back to the –
[Male Occupier] Rankings for each demand so you can see just visually the raw data. And you can almost see a clustering affect for the issues that got voted as, ranked number 1 the most times. So (1) Ending corporate personhood, (2) Wall Street money out of politics, (3) Overturn Citizens United,
(4) Investigate the banks and bankers for fraud, (5) stop the wars,
(6) divert military spending, (7) Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, (8) Enact electoral reform. So here’s a heat map right here. So this is a linear formula where every rank, the rank of 1 got, for the purposes of this linear scale, the rank of 1 got a point value of 20, and the inverse for the rank of 20.
So the rank of 20 got a point value of 1.
[Steve] I want to say I’m enjoying the detail that you’re going into for us, and I appreciate the work and the intelligence and everything that’s in here, that’s marvelous, but that level of detail for your presentation tonight isn’t going to work. You know what chaos GA just normally is.
[Narrator] A month earlier, the GA was temporarily replaced by an open mic People's Forum.
October 19, 2011
[It's not an "Open Mic People's Forum," but rather infiltrator?/anarchists putting terrorist fear into the Occupiers of a police raid happening due to their wild behavior.]
[Male Occupier] This is the GA!
[Male Occupier] You have our attention, but we need to have a moment of silence. We need to calm it down.
[Anarchist Infiltrator?] No GA! No GA! No GA!
[Female Occupier] Yo, this is like modern day Rome right now; this is like fucking Parliament;
you guys are not doing anything special; you're just crying. If you're not going to listen to each other, you're just crying!
[Male Occupier] Stop following him. Get in a circle, please! Get in a circle! Ignore him! Let him be; he'll get tired!
[Anarchist Infiltrator?] Love your future leaders,
your new tyrants and dictators shall be benevolent; check them out in action. They're rad. They're totally awesome.
[Male Occupier] You're going to bring the LAPD down here right now. Why don't you calm down? Calm down!
[Male Occupier] Get back in the circle, please, please, get back in, get back in the circle!
[Male Occupier] Return to the circle; find your hearts there.
The Perils of Consensus, by Tara Carreon
[Anarchist/Infiltrator] This is what's wrong with the open forum.
Mic check!
[Male Occupier] Don't follow the rabbit. Please return to your seats.
[Male Occupier] There is no growing up in this, the time is now!
[Anarchist/Infiltrator] You don't know what the time is; you don't know how many occupations there are; you have no clue.
[Male] Is this the end of the movement?
[Male Occupier] No brother, this is the movement.
November 19, 2011
GA discussion: Leadership
[Male Occupier] This is a leaderless movement. How do the people in this movement feel about leaders? Are they important? Are they necessary? We ask you to break out into groups of about 7 or 8 and discuss the topic. Select a spokesperson, send them over to a stacker, stackers raise your hands.
[TJ] Excuse me, my name is TJ. I feel that we’re all leaders. We don’t necessarily need 4 or 5, 10 people leading us anywhere. Because that’s how we got into this situation right now because of the leaders that were supposed to be for the people are not for the people. So I totally say, “Fuck leaders.” Be a leader your own self.
[Female Occupier] The problem with leadership right now is not that we have leaders, it’s the influence on the leaders. And the influence on the leaders is big money. So leadership in itself is good. I think it’s important to have a spokesperson for the people. As long as there is no ego investment or monetary investment, then the leaders have no reason to not represent the people. So I do believe in leadership that is truly representative and rotates out, and is viewed as a community service that you don’t necessarily get paid a stupid amount for.
Occupy Tucson: Where is Your Head?, by Tara Carreon
[Anthony] The non-violence statement says that we are a movement of leaders, okay? So that means we all have collective responsibility to work for the betterment of the movement. And that doesn’t just mean taking it upon yourself and doing autonomous action whenever you feel that’s necessary. That means openly bringing it up to everybody, teaching people, taking responsibility for your actions, and promoting the collective leadership. Okay? As a movement of leaders we can’t all just say everything and then have it happen, okay? We have to come together as a group and decide what’s best for everyone.
[Colin] The role of leadership, whatever that means, entails a great deal of responsibility. And the responsibility is to the people who you lead. And the difference between a tyrant and a leader is a leader is concerned about those values, concerned about what their role represents to the people who are, I guess, followers. A tyrant is a person who imposes power from top down,
and they are not a leader.
[Female Occupier] If we’re going to have a leadership without having structures in place to protect people, we’re just building the same system. And that’s really what it is. And there are already people that are messing things up, and I think that we already know who they are. And it’s dangerous. It really is.
[Male Occupier] It’s about transparency of information, and the information that produces greed in the leadership. So the people who have that information aren’t going to give it because now they’re in a position of power, and they are unwilling to compromise in any way because they think that it compromises their meetings which are important to them.
[Bilal] Leadership doesn’t necessarily mean being the boss, or having followers. Leadership means taking initiative and responsibility when something needs to be done. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. Take the initiative and do it upon yourself. That should be the understanding of leadership, not bosses and followers.
[John] I think there’s two different kinds of leadership. One is a kind of horizontal leadership that operates in the community on the ground, like the “keeping it real” committee. It’s a matter of touching base for a lot of people, bringing the people together to deal collectively with problems. There are needs if you’re talking to Oakland, or talking to the City, or whatever, the Fire Department or Health Department. You have to have a representative or a couple of representatives. And if you don’t like the way they perform, you just replace them. But they’re delegates, they are representatives.
[Bilal] We are trying to create another world, a better world, so I think we need to talk, what is our definition? We define what a leader is. I like her idea of a rotating thing. If Martin Luther King came in here in this circle right now, he wouldn’t be a leader, right? He couldn’t lead us to shit, right? Malcolm X? My leader is Malcolm X, and I’d follow him to hell, right? But if we talk about leadership, let’s define what a leader is regarding what we’re trying to build here. And we’re creating a new type of leadership here. I think it’s a word that people get too hung up on. Like I said, I see things that have to be done, I organize things around here, and we get it done.
[Tiffany] But if you don’t agree, and they are doing something in my name, that is the problem. In fact, that’s completely against what Occupy was set up for in the first place.
[Female Occupier] My group felt that Occupy is a leaderless movement. The 1% relies upon leaders to assume control
of the entire population. The 99% must work together to create a peaceful and just society.
[Lawrence] Our group discussed the concept of vox populi, which means “voice of the people.” We do not have leaders that make decisions. Decisions are made by open source groups that anyone can participate in. A vox populi leader is a charismatic person to answer questions and to speak on behalf of vox populi. And they are constantly rotated.
[Lucero] I just wanted to say that I was not elected by my group to speak to you right now, and the reason I’m speaking before you is to give you an example of what happens if I was to decide on my own that I was representing my group. So please keep that in mind when we talk about transparency and when we talk about having spokespeople that we all agree represent us to the police, or the city, and any other official.
[Male Occupier] We believe that we are in a transitional period. The majority of us have come from a society that did not teach us to be leaders. We need to educate ourselves and others on how to be leaders. When we reach that point, we will all be spokespersons for the movement. We will all represent the needs and the goals of the movement. Thank you.