.
As I’ve written (to jeers from many of my Occupy colleagues), I don’t think that Occupy should try to make defending the First Amendment right to protest its main cause. We have other fish to fry.
However — given its actions on July 12, the LAPD has pretty much forced our hand, at least in part. The police story of the evening’s clash with people out on the street does not add up.
Occupy (and its allies, which may now include those bystanders arrested that night) have a choice in how to respond. One is to escalate the civil disobedience — rock the chalk. That’s my guess as to what happens next. I think that it would just lead to more arrests and increasingly repressive tactics without garnering social support — but (1) I’ve misjudged things before and (2) what I think about it at this point won’t stop it anyway.
There’s a second response, which can be as well or instead, which I do favor:
We should call for an independent investigation into LAPD actions at the 7/12 ArtWalk.
That does not mean accepting a “sweep things under the rug” investigations. The investigating commission should be included representatives from Occupy, the National Lawyers Guild, and local law school professors dealing with areas such as First Amendment rights, police procedure, and police misconduct. Police and local government and federal government and whatever else officials should of course be part of the investigation as well.
Why take this extreme measure? Here’s a few reasons:
(1) We don’t know at this moment whether the LAPD recognizes a right to chalk on public sidewalks or other ground surfaces.
A right to chalk messages as part of a protest could be argued to be inherent in the First Amendment itself. I have my doubts about that. What I am more confident of is this: the police have no proper power to discriminate among chalked messages on the basis of content or viewpoint.
That was the conclusion of a Florida court that considered a First Amendment challenge to an arrest for chalking. If a city allows chalking on sidewalks at all — yep, even for hopscotch — then it has to allow chalking for reasons of protest. It can offer reasonable restrictions on time, place, and manner, but those restrictions should be made very clear and can’t be calculated to suppress political speech.
I’m pretty confident that LA has allowed chalking in the past and is not about to ban chalking altogether. It is vulnerable to the same sort of suit that occurred in Florida.
(2) The LAPD has given reason for suspicion that it is being used as a proving ground for extreme tactics in suppressing protest.
Last night, our commenter “Double Eye” slipped me a link to a story that gives one pause: a reminder that since the initial break-up of Occupy LA, the LAPD has training with the military to facilitate its operation in urban environments.
Joint military training exercises will be held evenings in downtown Los Angeles through Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The LAPD will be providing support for the exercises, which will also be held in other portions of the greater Los Angeles area, police said.
…
The exercises are closed to the public, police said.
The exercises are designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements, police said.
Some people may conclude from this that the apparently disproportionate reaction of the LAPD to the ArtWalk crowd was a way of testing out some of these approaches. At this point, I don’t come to that conclusion — but I certainly do want to see it investigated the reaction on July 12 was so disproportionate that it raises concerns about what the hell they were thinking.
(3) We need to establish the facts as to exactly what happened on July 12.
The story that reached the public is apparently roughly this: a crowd got out of control at ArtWalk and started throwing rocks and/or bottles at police, who broke up the crowd and arrested people, including firing rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Except for the rubber bullets part — are they really supposed to be an early option nowadays, and if so, why? — this doesn’t seem that out of line. If you throw things at cops without provocation — with provocation, too, but especially without — you should not be surprised if they arrest you treat you roughly. If that’s all that happened, the independent investigation I’ve called for will be pretty simple.
That’s not what I expect to happen, though.
Here’s the story as I understand it from Occupiers: pissed off at the recent arrest of an Occupy activist for chalking (or maybe the police would say it was for something else, I don’t know), they handed out chalk to people attended ArtWalk in LA and encouraged them to try out some street art. One woman, probably not expecting that she was committed aggravated chalk assault on a sidewalk, delightedly started doing so. The police arrested her forcefully. It was at that point that ArtWalk patrons — mostly or entirely not Occupiers — reacted badly to police (although my Occupy sources deny that anything was thrown at them. I’ve pointed out that they wouldn’t necessarily have seen it, but I agree that an isolated event should not have lead to a full-scale fusillade of rubber bullets.) This led to what they classify as a police riot against unsuspecting ArtWalk patrons who hadn’t even come to protest.
That gives an entirely different sense of events. In that situation, we not only have the question of First Amendment rights, we have the questions of police priorities — really, LAPD, chalking??? — and of the proportionality of police response even if this was a priority or even if they were responding to things being thrown at them.
Maybe the LAPD can explain why this shouldn’t put a fear of appearing in a crowd in public — even an ArtWalk! — deep into the heart of every Los Angeles resident or visitor. They should have to explain. Depending on the facts, and the grounds on which they arrested the woman who chalked first, this could be one of the most bizarre police confrontations in memory. It would have a hugely chilling effect on public participation — at least in areas outside of where the 1% gather — and god help us if the LAPD ever tried this in one of the areas of their jurisdiction where people have a lot of guns.
We shouldn’t want a society where people get this sort of treatment. We need to find out what happened here and figure out how to keep it from happening again, in a way that protects our freedoms of speech and assembly.
This is not the fight that I’ve wanted Occupy to have — but if it’s the fight that the police want to have, then that’s where we’re headed. We should start with a proper and independent investigation. Mayor Villaraigosa and Chief Beck should announce one without delay.
================
I wanted to clarify something in my story of yesterday about chalking and anarchist tactics.
I got called out by several Occupiers, one who sent me a message leading to the conversation below. I’ve rewritten the comments to me, though each retains its central message; my responses are verbatim.
OOC: We are working very hard on a press release. We’ll have eyewitnesses and the timeline regarding when the people were injured and the shots were fired. Please allow us to do the press release factually without adding any opinion.
GD: Send me the press release and I’ll print it. I won’t editorialize there, but you know that comments sections take on lives of their own.
OOC: I will as soon as I receive it. I don’t understand how people can comment so extensively when they were not present at the time.
GD: Being there isn’t a guarantee of knowing the truth. Often there will be a disturbance in some small part of the crowd that most people there can’t see — and then the police respond by trying to shut down the whole rally. Even if someone somewhere threw a bottle or whatever, though, the police response was an overreaction.
OOC: That’s where you’re wrong. I was there; we were all together. There was only 10 people from Occupy LA; the rest were citizens and children. We were all mixed together. I read your blog and it is an absolutely outrageous misrepresentation of this situation that I saw as an eyewitness. The facts are incorrect. There was not, I repeat not, an anarchist group there at any time. They were all civilians. Nobody from OLA got arrested; all of the people who got arrested were citizens that were outraged when a woman got thrown violently to the ground and arrested for chalking. Please take that blog down; it is absolutely wrong.
I’m not taking it down, but I am going to clarify. I didn’t mean to convey that there was an anarchist group (Occupy or otherwise) there throwing things at police. I was discussing anarchist tactics, which include trying to provoke confrontation with and overreaction by police. One way to do this has been with chalking. I don’t think that these confrontations help us much; as I’ve said, I think that they turn our attention (and the public’s attention) away from our substantive “money and power” criticism and towards “right to protest” issues which I’m happy that, in Occupy Orange County, we were largely able to short-circuit.
I understand that people took my story yesterday to suggest that an anarchist group of provocateurs was present. So far as I know, that wasn’t true, and I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. My reaction was to the clever tactic (and it was clever) of giving out chalk to people, in the prompt wake of Occupy arrests for chalking, to tweak the noses of the police over that arrest. I don’t think that I’d have done it because I don’t think that our fight is in any serious way about chalking and I don’t see much point in treading on the nerves of the police, who we wish would chill out.
That said — there is no way in the world, based on what we know, that I can see the extreme response of police (which seriously endangered innocent bystanders, take a look at that one guy shot just below the eye) could be justified.
If the police want to justify it, they should be invited to do so — at independent investigatory hearings. What should bring all Occupiers and fans of the First Amendment together right now is to demand such an investigation, with private or public hearings if and as needed, with a composition of the investigatory group sufficiently diverse as to prevent anything from being swept under the rug.
I didn’t want this fight, but the fight has begun, so let’s do it right.
if handing out chalk is ‘seeking confrontation with the cops’ then so be it. all previous 12 arrests were done peacefully (if you can call handcuffing and imprisoning someones body, peaceful) there was no reason to think the LAPD would show up in force, let alone use excessive force to instigate a riot. we explained to people the ‘dangers’ of chalking and the people who were there for art walk were so incensed by the brutal arrest of a woman (mind you after 7 previous arrests that night) they spilled into the streets. people in buildings living in lofts apparently threw bottles and the police used this as a reason to escalate the situation by firing projectiles. this has nothing to do with ‘anarchist tactics’ handing out chalk is not one of these such tactics, nor is it a provocative action. to even mention that in the wake of blatant repressive police state violence minimizes the actions of the police and strengthens the legitimacy of their violence-monopoly on the state. we had chalk, before anything was thrown they were in full riot lines. this was after a month of struggle at our new occupation site outside the lobby group that runs DTLA and lobbies state and city gov. this was most definitely about DOMINATION of space, privatization of space, criminalization of dissent. it was meant to be a fun, outreach action. and most of the occupiers had left before it the police chose to amass further and escalate.
(I just re-posted this from what Greg put up this morning – there was something wrong with that link! So some of your “facebook likes” etc aren’t on this one … copied over the one comment…)
This looks and sounds like Media Activism. It’s refreshing and much better than Media Complicity.
If you are not part of the solution, than you are part of the problem.
So I have been told.
I’ll try to circulate this article the best I can.
Attacking police for the sake of overreaction is NOT an “Anarchist tactic” but standing up and fighting back when the police cross the line is. You know what else is an anarchist tactic? Community gardens, and food not bombs etc. Those damn violent anarchists…
Your comment gives the impression that (1) you don’t know what a “tactic” is and (2) you have a blindered view of the history and nature of protest tactics. It comes down to your belief that anarchists can’t be the ones attacking because they always act out of justifiable self-defense. Defenders of the police will say the same thing about them. It’s a pretty boring argument — as either way it generally leads to the police beating the hell out of everyone and most of the uninvolved population edging away from the movement.
Rather than argue about who’s engaging in legitimate self-defense and who’s not, I’d just as soon avoid pointless battles with police where my side gets stomped and the public by and large doesn’t care — largely because they’re put off by people like you.
I never said that all (or most, or even many) anarchist tactics are violent; I favor community gardens and food-not-bombs. But those are not tactics of engaging in conflict, which is what we were discussing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhIfxUt-Joo
” We need study groups, speakers, co-ops, collectives, infoshops, workshops, community gardens, other free institutions, community organization, etc. but we also need militancy, we need to be both creative, and destructive, offensive and defensive. Starting a commune will mean nothing when the state comes to shut it down and no one fights back, and same that our community organizing to create a blueprint for a post revolutionary society will mean nothing if the state doesn’t get smashed.”
In other words “Hi, I haven’t been involved in Occupy Orange County, but I’ve come here to co-opt your movement. Everyone follow me.”
Um, actually I have. And OOC was already co-opted. We are/were probably the most pushover of an encampment.
Oh, I think I know who you are now. Well, if you wanted to get beaten up by cops and have an occupation hanging by its fingernails, you should have gone to Long Beach. There’s nothing wrong with that preference, it just wasn’t what most OOC people wanted.
I’m planning on somehow liberating land and creating a housing collective/ community center. Once successful I’d be open to allowing OOC to use it for stuff. To set the record straight, I’m not shaming the actions or people of OOC, but rather shaming the constant bashing of anarchists/ anarchism within the Occupy movement as a whole, and I’ve experience it a lot especially in OC. I just get stressed out when people tend to criticize what they can’t understand.
And often overreact, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
OK, we can agree to disagree. I hadn’t intended to slam anarchism; I was referring in part to Jeff, who describes himself as one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xo8XRSiY9o
Greg, the KFI news report about the Joint Military operations was quoted accurately but as placed in your article, it sounded as though it was referring to this last Thursday, the night of L.A. Artwalk. It was referring to last January.
This should not change the fact that those urban exercises were and probably still are being conducted in actual urban areas for the sake of real urban control and warfare and not the lots of Universal Studios. L.A is the greatest location for such undertakings when you think about it. Downtown L.A., specifically the industrial area just south of City Hall are probably the film location capital of the world. People expect the filming of Armageddon there on a daily basis.
If one wants to try to segregate the creative left and yuppie left from the real activist left, well someone ought to choose the Downtown Artwalk though. So, I agree with you, the activists should not let the media claim it is there fault if the police destroy L.A. Artwalk (last week or in the future). The activists need to proceed with caution and legal rationality while the police probably will not. (Apparently, they no longer have to)
And Yes, the police decisions that night created an Artwalk riot by mostly patrons and some Occupiers.
But of course, we all must demonize the actions of the brave that said “This is enough!” to the police. I praise the people, and the few occupiers that stood up and said Fuck the police! If you still trust the police, and have faith in their institution, then you’re no really paying attention to what’s going on, or at least are attempting to deny/ ignore it. And I don’t mean you double eye, but YOU as in everyone who is facing the cognitive dissonance, and denial that they are hurting the revolution as a whole.
I think that pushing for an investigation can work if we keep laying out the facts and beating the drum.
Of course, Allonblack’s contention that our glorious aim is to smash the state is going to make it a bit harder, but we can probably get past that.
Sorry if I gave a misimpression in my use of the KFI article — although one of its implications is that planned exercises like that which we saw last week could have stemmed from it.
What’s the reaction from the Arts community? I imagine that they’re about as stunned as people in San Diego would be if people invaded Comic-Con this weekend to break up their seditious activity. Is this going to radicalize ArtWalks, leave most unaffected — or end them?
Liberal cognitive dissonance at its best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H8N61v9Z9A
That was boring. Ain’t gonna watch Maggie’s videos no more.
Petition calling for an investigation. http://www.change.org/petitions/mayor-villaraigosa-governor-jerry-brown-attorney-general-eric-holder-investigate-lapd-use-of-force-on-angelenos-at-art-walk-on-7-12-12
Thank you, Todd. I was out most all day yesterday and didn’t have time to put one together. I’ll start promoting this. It needs to be an independent commission with reps from Occupy, ArtWalk, and sympathetic people in the legal community. (No, I’m not volunteering; plenty of people could do it better than I could right now.)
Thank you Greg. We are putting your piece up for the over night post… probably about 8 PM. Then the petition in the morning.
Cool. I would suggest to Occupy LA that if they want to bring a suit against the LAPD based on chalking, it probably already has all of the plaintiffs and witnesses that it needs. I suggested on the OOC page that people wear black and chalk on each other’s backs if they want to push through to the next level of absurd police response.
Right! L.A. folks are going to have to take the lead on this one with outreach and back up from everyone concerned. Let’s avoid much of the the LAPD/Cop bashing and focus on the probable new relationship between urban police departments and the U.S. government.
Primarily focus on the ways the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and changes in the NDAA are altering the relationship. Not that this is all new for certain American communities. or other communities effected by U.S military policy.