Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Second rate reporter says what?

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

This blog will pay for itself.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Police Arrest OccupyBoston Protestors

Police Arrest OccupyBoston Protestors

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From the Boston Globe website, timestamp 2:53am:

Boston police moved in and began arresting scores of Occupy Boston protesters who refused to leave a large part of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway early this morning.
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At 1:20 a.m., the first riot police officers lined up on Atlantic Avenue. Minutes later, dozens of sheriff vans and police wagons arrived and over 200 officers in uniforms and riot gear surrounded the Greenway. Police Superintendent William Evans and Commissioner Edward F. Davis watched from across the street. Evans gave the crowd two minutes to disperse from the park, warning that they would be locked up if they did not comply.
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The crowd of protesters, energized by the sudden appearance of the Boston and Transit police officers, chanted, ‘‘The people united will never be defeated,’’ “This is a peaceful protest,” and “the whole world is watching.’’
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About 10 minutes later, the first officers entered the park and surrounded the group. Evans, using a loudspeaker, gave one more warning and then each protester was individually put on his or her stomach, cable-tied, and dragged off as others tore down tents and arrested and detained people on the fringe of the park.
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About 100 people were arrested, Davis said. One police officer was hit in the face. According to police, no protesters or police were injured…
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Police had earlier warned the about 1,000 protesters to leave the Greenway area, where they had settled hours before, and relocate to Dewey Square or a small, adjacent strip of the Greenway.
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Officials do not want the protesters, who originally settled in Dewey Square, to occupy the space across Congress Street on the Greenway because it recently underwent a renovation project where expensive improvements were added, according to Elaine Driscoll, police spokeswoman.

More at the link, probably updated by the time you’re reading this. #OccupyBoston’s twitter feed here.

There’s been a few hundred protestors, and “around a hundred” tents, camped out in Dewey Square since September 17, with the explicit permission of city authorities. According to the local newscasts Monday evening, “thousands of students from ten Boston-area colleges” took advantage of the three-day weekend and unusually warm weather to swell the ranks over the past couple of days. Organizers said that more space was needed to accommodate the newcomers; “spokespersons for the Mayor’s office” warned that despoiling city property would be prosecuted. (Since Mayor Tommy “Mumbles” Menino hates litterers and similar vandals second only to rich Haaavahd fvcks looking down their inbred noses at him, this was extremely believable to the locals.)

I hope we’ve heard the worst of this — that nobody has been seriously hurt, and that negotiations between the organizers (who have not been removed from their original Dewey Square encampment)and the city resume later this morning…

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  3. 3.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Good grief you’d think being anal about “hey we just planted that grass!” would be overridden by concerns about escalating what’s becoming a nationwide protest by risking more mistakes and scenes of police violence, I mean even out of their own self-interest.

    Also, the protesters’ chants stopped as their companions were being lead off by police.

    Okay I guess literacy on the part of the Boston Globe reporters and/or copy desk is the least of the concerns here, but still.

  5. 5.

    TenguPhule

    One police officer was hit in the face. According to police, no protesters or police were injured…

    Gotta love our liberal media.

  7. 7.

    Keith G

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    …overridden by concerns about escalating what’s becoming a nationwide protest by risking more mistakes and scenes of police violence

    That is why the officials chose 2 AM., fewer witnesses and a lot less video.

    While this was a minor operation, the post 9/11 era has led me to feel that there is a embryonic police state developing just inches below the facade that is our civil society. I doubt “60s era” styled protests will be allowed to develop without the weight of our anti-terrorism security state (and lessons learned tactics) kicking in.

  8. 8.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Keith G: Well, listen they weren’t tolerated much then either despite what everyone thinks nowadays. Police reaction in Berkeley, long before what happened in Kent State or Chicago, was brutal and a huge part of what escalated everything into such a years-long conflagration, though the protesters were pretty pissed to begin with and definitely played their part.

    I’m sort of hoping we’ve all learned since then on both sides, about wiser ways of handling things. Every time I find myself saying things like that though I then think wait, what am I saying? I also thought, like Joe Stiglitz, that we had learned lessons from the Great Depression but he and I are both shocked to discover that we never did. Apparently.

  9. 9.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I was going to link this above but time ran out: Stiglitz (via Krugzilla) on the current economic situation, in case anyone missed it at the time:

    When the recession began there were many wise words about having learnt the lessons of both the Great Depression and Japan’s long malaise. Now we know we didn’t learn a thing. Our stimulus was too weak, too short and not well designed. The banks weren’t forced to return to lending. Our leaders tried papering over the economy’s weaknesses – perhaps out of fear that if we were honest about them, already fragile confidence would erode. But that was a gamble we have now lost. Now the scale of the problem is apparent, a new confidence has emerged: confidence that matters will get worse, whatever action we take. A long malaise now seems like the optimistic scenario.

  10. 10.

    harlana

    posted on previous thread, but thot it appropriate to repost here:
    Apparently, Beck is saying “listen up, rich people, these people are out to kill you, they will drag you out into the street and kill you”

  11. 11.

    harlana

    From the we are the 53% site:

    We, the 53% of income-earners who pay taxes, hereby refuse to bitch about it.

    ORLY??? THANKS cuz I’m really sick of your whining about taxes, bitches. Good, we can put THAT ONE aside, right?

  12. 12.

    Keith G

    @Bill E Pilgrim: I hear you. I doubt that there would be much police “brutality” due to lessons learned, but there may be more surveillance, disruption, early stage preventive actions (as in Boston) and harsher prosecutions – think the zero tolerance BS being used in some public schools.

    Again, I am not fearing this as an inevitability, but just musing about our darker undercurrents.

    ETA – We have all those Fusion Centers begging to be used.

  14. 14.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Keith G: Good points. You actually got me thinking about the differences, similarities. In some ways the whole idea of a bunch of crazy long haired people protesting was just unheard of in those days, they didn’t know what to make of it and the first reaction was just to stomp it out as brutally as possible, and I assume they’ve learned at least something since then.

    On the other hand as you say now, we’ve developed into something even scarier than back then in many ways, in the post 9/11 “Homeland Security” era, with things done quietly out of public view.

  15. 15.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): Wasn’t an encyclopedic list ;)

    Also I lived in Berkeley, or practically, so it’s a visceral memory. I was young so it amounted to going downtown to buy records and being second-hand tear gassed, but still. No one was kidding around, that was clear.

  16. 16.

    Samara Morgan

    Do you remember, AL?

    Julian predicts that America will turn into a police state on the way to non-linear system collapse.
    the system is WAI.

    vox populi, vox anon

  20. 20.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @vtr:

    The Occupy Wall Street movement may look radical, but its members’ ideas are less radical than those you might hear at your average Rotary Club.

    I want to know when was the last time Bobo stepped foot in a Rotary Club? Does he even know what one is? Do they have a salad bar?

  22. 22.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Samara Morgan: If you could demonstrate how this is different from every other time the police have barged stupidly into protests over the past 100+ years, then you might have a point. Until then, I would say this fits the historical pattern. Look up the Haymarket and Bay View Massacres from the 1880s as examples.

  23. 23.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    ahem…

    /shrugs so. I am not a historian. Ima bringin the SCIENCE perspective, ‘sline cudlip retard. Julian predicted distributed jesusland self-organizing systems, its WAI anonops is occupywallstreet.
    __
    Do you juicetards watch the video?
    __
    vox populi vox anon

    Someone could make a ‘bot that generated tokospeak and save us all the trouble.

    Hmmmm …

  24. 24.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @arguingwithsignposts: I know it won’t get through to her, but the stupid need to be countered. It is fantastic that people are using new technologies to coordinate and organize protests, but protesting still requires people in the streets. I am reminded of people in the late 90s who said that computers and the Web had fundamentally changed the economy and it was “DOW 36,000, Baby!” forever. We know how that turned out. The fundamentals remain the same.

  25. 25.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    @Bill E Pilgrim: I happened to be there the day after the Chicago 7 verdict and, while they were prepared for the worst on Telegraph, not much went down. I had a buddy from the city who was a campus cop and he always talked about how badass the SF Tac Squad was.

  26. 26.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Omnes Omnibus: Agreed. It’s especially stupid her assertion that Anonymous = OccupyX. There are a lot of people out there who’ve likely never heard of Anonymous.

    But it’s a neat trick if you can claim credit for anything that happens.

  28. 28.

    Hawes

    Back in the First Gilded Age, Jacob Coxey organized the first mobilized protest that marched on Washington. Thousands marched on DC to protest deflationary monetary policies that trapped people in debt for life.

    When they got there, they were arrested for walking on the grass.

    Crushing people’s long term economic prospects? Fine.

    Stepping on plants? You’re the next Hitler.

  30. 30.

    Chris

    @Hawes:

    Crushing people’s long term economic prospects? Fine.
    …
    Stepping on plants? You’re the next Hitler.

    Or the first one, given the time frame.

  33. 33.

    Cat Lady

    The good news is that Boston has a virtually limitless supply of students to fill the ranks of the protesters. The bad news is that the city has a love/hate relationship with them. If the cops are picking on veterans, that’s just stupid, when cracking a few out of town troublemaker heads would be considered meh.

  35. 35.

    soonergrunt

    @arguingwithsignposts: Somebody did, hence this bot. The code needs tightening, and the error handling system needs to be strengthened and revamped.
    This is what happens when you start with the “Hello World” program and work from there.

  38. 38.

    Chinn Romney

    I’m not buying Mayor Mumbles Menino’s defense of this sweep. The demonstrators can’t “tie up the City” (they were not), but a Hollywood Film Crew can (5 mile backups on 93 yesterday for hours).

  41. 41.

    soonergrunt

    The Tulsa Race Riots, Kent State, The Memorial Day Massacre in 1937, The Haymarket Affair, the Thibodaux Massacre, the Homestead Strike–the list goes on and on and on.

  42. 42.

    Bruce S

    Romney has flip-flopped a bit on the Wall Street protests.

    I don’t worry about the top one percent. I don’t stay up nights worrying about ‘gee we need to help them.’ I don’t worry about that. They’re doing just fine by themselves. I worry about the 99 percent in America. I want America, once again, to be the best place in the world to be middle-class. I want to have a strong and vibrant and prosperous middle-class. And so I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel…The people in this country are upset.

    I’m wondering if there is some tipping point taking place, with the protests taking on a kind of common-sense legitimacy that’s undeniable, increasingly even by “serious people” like Bernanke, the NYTs, Prez and VP…and now…Romney? I think this indicates he’s feeling more confident that his detractors in the GOP primaries will implode. More than any other GOP candidate, Rommey is vulnerable to the “1%” critique and he’s got to start playing to the general election audience. If this “tipping point” is actually happening, the Wall Street protests are clearly going to help frame the economic debate going forward.

    We’re still watching this thing as it’s taking shape, but so far not bad for a bunch of Dirty Fucking Hippies. (That said, Romney is going to be eviscerated for this tepid shift to “empathy” by Cain, Bachmann, Perry, et. al. and that should be fun to watch.)

  43. 43.

    Judas Escargot

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Agreed. It’s especially stupid her assertion that Anonymous = OccupyX. There are a lot of people out there who’ve likely never heard of Anonymous.

    And, vice versa, Anonymous sprang from the “4theLulz!” culture– nihilist script-kiddies, concerned with nothing more than their own self-amusement. Less than a year ago, giving a shit about anything besides sowing a little chaos would get you pegged as a ‘moralf@g’ on their boards.

    Twitter and Facebook are useful tools, but are also parts of the ‘machine’. Either can be turned off (or censored) with the flick of a switch. Any movement based solely on those tools is doomed to fail.

  44. 44.

    Cacti

    @Bruce S:

    And so I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel…The people in this country are upset.

    I wonder how much longer his opponents will stay “hands-off” of his history as a job-destroying vulture capitalist.

    Mitt is the poster boy of the 1%.

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