San Diego Independent Media Center

As resistance movements thrive both on solidarity and on constructive critiques that help them develop and adapt better to the repressive environments in which they operate, the following two analyses posted to san diego indymedia are highlighted here:

Rocky writes: Regarding the plea for help article at the OB Rag website, did you San Diego Freedom Occupiers think it was going to be easy to openly challege wealth and power in this city?... You cannot butt heads with the establishment, who control the cops and the courts, without getting brusied, much less, win a measure of fair treatment. I know several of the more liberal City Councilpersons personally, to whom you suggest we plea for your Constitutional rights of free speech and assembly, but it is election time and like all politicians, they will turn a deaf ear to your message so that corporate campaign donations will continue to flow into their pockets.

While I am intoxicated by your spontaneity and instinct driven movement; I think, soberly, that it may be time to regroup and develop some semblance of strategy. San Diego is not New York, where there are tens of thousands of supporters to watch your back. Progressives, peaceniks and power liberals in San Diego will, for the most part, march, carry signs, write letters but when push comes to shove, when their comfort zones are breached or their security threatened, they will abandon you – or any youth or people of color movement who rock the boat. --Read More--

Anonymous from Puget Sound Anarchists writes: We just got back from the opening march for Occupy Portland, and were even more disappointed by how liberal, reformist, and nonthreatening it was than we had expected. The website for Occupy Portland had promised that "proper actions" would be taken against "instigators" of any "illegal activity (property destruction etc.)," which we can only interpret as a threat to snitch to the cops, so we went with low expectations, but this was by all means a massive disappointment even taking into account our pessimism from the get-go. We attended the opening march for Occupy Portland because we are some angry-ass proles who really hate capitalism...

Although Occupy Wall Street and the offshoot occupations are supposed to be leaderless movements, we found that there were most definitely leaders who managed everything, from the route to the chants to who was allowed to be at the front of the march to who was allowed up on the microphone at the rally at the end of the march. To be clear, this was a hierarchical, authoritarian event. These leaders/organizers, especially the wannabe-cops wearing blue "peacekeeper" armbands, are not our comrades in any way, shape, or form... When we brought out the usual anti-cop chants ("All cops are bastards, ACAB" and "No justice, no peace! Fuck the police!") we were shouted over and told to calm down. One of the peacekeepers called out on the megaphone, "we need volunteers to block the anarchists because they're being negative and this is a positive event!" We were repeatedly told that "cops are the 99% too!", which made us very sad that so few people have any understanding of how class society functions. Cops are class traitors and the enemy. --Read More--

See also: Movement for a Democratic Society's Critique of Occupy DC

Anna and Rocky describe the cop attack on Occupy San Diego on October 14:

Handed a printed ultimatum late afternoon Thursday, October 13 to either remove all tents by midnight or get arrested, the 100 or so Freedom Occupiers at the San Diego Civic Center held a democratic general assembly and decided to peacefully resist the assault on their rights of free speech and assembly.

There were approx 8-10 tents that were cordoned off with caution tape. It was consensed upon that there would be a group of people inside the tents that were ready and willing to be arrested if necessary. There would be people who would align themselves around that space that the cops would have to walk through in order to get the tents.

At twelve there was a huge outpouring of support at a rally - that was really exciting... People pretty much stayed and slept by the tents. There was music all night that was softly playing and giving us comfort.

Twelve o'clock rolled around when the cops were supposed to come and no one really showed up... As morning broke we got up and got ready for the cops to come at 7. Inside the tent area, we decided that we would create an additional circle of linked arms, much like the one that outside of the cordoned off tent area that would protect one tent that is still standing today and had an individual sitting in the tent.

We had a great time, we worked really hard at being ridiculous and silly and being motivating to one another... The cops were really trying to instill fear in us giving even threats that we would have felonies and things like that if we resisted. To counter that internally we even developed chants that attacked the police in terms of their basic assumptions of coming in here, by labeling them as part of the 99% and identifying that we are defending their pension at the end of the day... You could see the expression on some of the police officers' faces like, oh yeah, I am part of the 99%, I am part of this movement... We had funny little chants like 'Give up your badge and join the movement.' It was fun.

Moving into the concourse slightly after 7 a.m. a pitiful number of 35 police officers began to inch into the encampment, trying to target and arrest protestors one by one in an effort to frighten off the rest. In almost hilarious Keystone Cops antics 8 or 9 officers took over 20 minutes to arrest one young man, their first pick of the day. Generally the protesters were not resisting.. [because] for some of us the tents were not as important as occupying the space.

Retreating to the front of Golden Hall, the gang of cops, looked disoriented and confused. Lieutenants called Captains, Captains called supervisors, supervisors called Commanders and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Deputy Police Chief Boyd Long appeared, almost dragging a hapless Police Chief behind him. Lansdowne appeared dazed, unsteady, like he and his gun, flopping obscenely at his side, had been pulled reluctantly into the OK Corral at Tombstone. Boyd was clearly in command, as Lansdowne stood chewing his fingernails.

A group of anarchists who had created what's known as Ewok Village -- the location at the civic center where there are a bunch of trees that a bunch of anarchists were sort of congregating at - its a great space -- they created Ewok Village Part II. They sort of sat in a circle between the police officers and the tent circle. They're amazing. When the shit hits the fan, they're on the ground. That was wonderful.

Later in the day the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers came by to give us some food, some sandwiches, and the police officers did not let them bring them in...

When some of the vocal people who had put so much energy into the night went home, some of the NLG, some of the cameras when home... that's when the police attacked with pepper spray.

San Diego’s Freedom Square Attacked by Police (Rocky)|| (LISTEN) Notice to Disperse Follow-up Interview (LISTEN) (thedonjean) || Photos from Cop Attack on Occupy San Diego (Rocky) || Breaking News Archive