1. Standing arm-in-arm and sitting are the essence of non-violent protest tactics, widely used by Dr. Martin Luther King and others, against which violent police tactics are never justified. Authority figures are trying to call these tactics violent in order to justify police brutality.
2. The vague and hypothetical threats to public health and safety posed by Occupations pale in comparison to the actual injuries inflicted by the police attempting to stop them. The “public health” threat has been evoked over and over by mayors and chancellors to justify breaking up the camps. Did anyone do the cost-benefit calculation? Police actions are far more hazardous and dangerous these days than protests.
3. Police brutality in the face of Occupy protests is directly related to the militarization of police forces in the name of the “War on Terror”. Police departments bought all these fancy toys with Homeland Security money, and now they feel they have to use them. Glenn Greenwald makes this point in more detail.

Taxpayers, are you getting that? The police took billions of your tax dollars to outfit themselves with military-style gadgetry and now, as a reward, they are using them not on terrorists, or violent criminals, or even petty drug users, but on you, to prevent you from freely assembling and speaking.

Recent events give the impression that the world has lost its moral compass. You have Chancellors of UC Berkeley and Davis, who are probably very nice, intelligent, left-leaning people, authorizing violence against their own students and afterward asserting the necessity of the tactics. Why are authorities so scared to death of the Occupy protests? Why do the police keep fucking up and getting away with it? Are the violent suppressions going to work? I hope not.

It was a tumultuous day for the Bay Area Occupy movement. The previous night, a large demonstration in Berkeley followed when police beat UC Berkeley students with batons for trying to establish their own Occupation. In the afternoon, some Oakland City Council members and business leaders held a press conference about a mile from the Occupy Oakland camp to call for its removal. Occupy supporters showed up and shouted down the speakers. At the same time, Mayor Quan visited and the camp and, in an apparent change of heart 2 weeks after her last reversal, told the Occupiers they would have to leave.

The Mayor and other detractors uniformly say that they agree with Occupy’s message, and that they support free speech, but that sleeping in the plaza is causing the problems. It is a “safety hazard” and attracts the wrong element, hurting downtown businesses. They have a point. Oakland’s struggling downtown businesses are not helped by tear-gas raids, broken windows, or (additional) multitudes of homeless people.

From my own observations, the people at Occupy Oakland are not generally people you would want hanging out around outside your downtown sandwich shop or clothing store. But these are the people you would want to band with, post apocalypse. They are capable, practical people, with a diverse set of skills, able to take a small patch of mud and create all the elements of a functioning community: food service, with an elaborate pantry and kitchen; education, with the library and daily classes and trainings; government, with the General Assemblies and committee system; health care, with medics and the medic tent; entertainment, with the music tent and its ceaseless drum circle; and well-being, with their daily scheduled yoga and meditation. Some of these are also like the people you’d be stuck with, post-apocalypse: crazy people, mentally damaged by the apocalyptic trauma; leachers, looking out for themselves; and fringe types, who survived the doom because they were holed-up somewhere far from people and now they aren’t very well socialized.

But let’s set aside for a moment the question of ills wrought by Occupy Oakland’s choice of location. (Yes, one thing Occupy Wall Street has going for it is that no one cares about hurting the business of the adjacent megabanks.) One Oakland business leader had wondered bitterly to the press why protesters always choose 14th & Broadway to demonstrate when the rich people are all elsewhere. Here is the answer: the symbolism can not be beat. City Hall towers over Frank Ogawa Plaza, all white stone and columns, much like any capital building in Sacramento or Washington, looking every bit the seat of power that it was designed to be. Glass office buildings bear down on other sides and traffic lumbers by on Broadway, downtown’s central drag. A person standing in Frank Ogawa Plaza feels small and humbled. But a crowd standing in Frank Ogawa Plaza knows that everyone in all those window can see them — in fact, can’t ignore them — and feels empowered.

If I were Mayor Quan, I would look out the window of my mayoral office at the 180-tent encampment below and I would be afraid. Not afraid for my personal safety, but surely for my political future. I would be afraid because this ragtag bunch of unemployed kids has twice the proportion of public support that I do. I would be afraid because this scruffy homeless encampment can rally 10,000 to march on a week’s notice [3]. I would be afraid because every move I make would be scrutinized by the populist hoard below, each of them hungry for a reason to protest.

I don’t have a better answer than anyone else about how we can turn the Occupy movement into real change. But this is my feeling: When the President of the United States looks out his window at the masses and feels fear, when congressmen look down the Capital steps at the demonstrations below and feel fear, that is when we will get the change we’re looking for.

Often, I fight time. It is scarce. Internally, I rail against its scarcity. Externally, I go faster. Dangerously fast. Internally, I feel helpless. I grit my teeth. Externally, I do not do one third of the things I have planned. Meanwhile, I do other things. Useless things. Internally, I feel bad about this.

Time is a limited container. Fill it with what you will. Put in the large rocks of your schedule first: work, doctor’s appointments, crises, sleep. Sleep is sandstone, softer than the others. You may break off a peice here and there to make it fit. Then, add the smaller and rounder stones of meals, visits with friends, concerts, errands, showers. It is tempting to shake the container at this point, to settle the contents and make room for a few more. Do not do this. Leave room for travel time. Now, add the sand of daily life. Fill the space with e-mail, television, chatting in the hall, reading a few pages on the train, buying a candy bar. Finally, pour in the water of thoughts, paces, breaths, and sighs. Is the container full? Does it hold everything you want?

Of course not. But time is not a limited container. The containers are constructs of our own creation. A day is a basket, woven out of numbers and social conventions. I have woven a basket, and now I am upset that it doesn’t hold everything I want it to hold. The limits, I feel, are imposed by the fabric of the universe. Time is scare and I am helpless to stretch it, to wind it back, to own more of it. But really, I have just mismatched the basket and what I want to carry.

…solving climate change is going to require energy. What if that energy came from an energy company? Chevron. Harnessing the power of human energy.

And then:

Bank of America. Helping America out of the financial crisis.

Apparently it was “corporations pretending to solve the problems they helped create” night for NewsHour sponsors.

Desire to be online as a function of time online

One thing that has surprised me about unemployment so far: some things that used to seem hopelessly tedious are somewhat satisfying, such as practicing scales and reading bottom-of-the-stack, good-for-you books like “People’s History of the United States” and a macroeconomics textbook (after the financial crisis, I figured I should understand macro econ better).

Well, back to not working…

Enron executive strategy: “Buy high, hide your losses with phony accounting, collect your bonus and get out.”

Lehman Brothers executive strategy: “Buy high, hide your risk with complex financial instruments, collect your bonus and declare bankruptcy.”

Other large investment bank’s executive strategy: “Get ‘too big to fail’. Buy high, sell low. Make up the difference with government bailout money. Continue collecting bonuses.”