Occupy Torts: "Revolutionaries" Sue Their Oppressors

Occupy Oakland has been a violent, confrontational group, alternating between riotous violence and shrill denunciations of legitimate police tactics. Recall that there have been riots and blockades resulting in property damage and millions in economic losses, not to mention the inconvenience to regular folks unfortunate enough to cross paths with the "99% (more like the .00000099%). Over the course of their street fighting, a few Occupiers managed to get injured, and now they are doing what all "true" revolutionaries do: they are suing someone. 


First, there are a couple of thirtysomething rioters who were marching down Broadway, and got hit by a car. You mean there are automobiles driving down the street?! 

Two Occupy Oakland protesters hit by a car as they marched down Broadway during the movement's general strike filed a lawsuit Friday against the vehicle's registered owner. 

Lance Laverdure, 29, of Fremont and Margaret So, 36, of Oakland were hit by the driver of a silver Mercedes-Benz at 11th Street and Broadway about 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2. BART police, who were first on the scene, briefly interviewed the driver and got his information, decided he wasn't drunk and let him go. They turned over the investigation to Oakland police. 

No charges have been filed against the driver, whose name is not publicly known.
But Laverdure and So filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court against Sara Abu-Nasser of Davis, saying her family owned the Mercedes that hit them. Their attorney, Carla Minnard, said she believes Abu-Nasser was sitting next to her boyfriend when he hit her clients, a crash that was caught on amateur video. 

Abu-Nasser could not be reached for comment. She has not responded to the suit, which alleges negligence, assault, battery and conspiracy.

I'm of two minds about this. If I were sitting in the backseat of Abu-Nasser's (hey, sounds like an oppressed minority!) Mercedes, I would have advised her boyfriend, or whomever it was behind the wheel, that driving the car into a crowd of people was not a good idea, no matter how richly deserved such an act would be. That's partly because you're opening yourself up to this sort of lawsuit, but mostly because the Occupiers were trying to pick a fight by obnoxiously blocking traffic, surrounding Abu-Nasser's vehicle, pounding on the hood, etc. When someone's trying to pick a fight, the best thing to do is walk away, or ignore it. These Occupiers were acting like a**holes right up to the minute the car nudged them, at which point they collapsed to the ground in paroxysms of self-righteous pain. (we did this for you, 99%!)


This is a case where everyone acted stupidly, but the injured parties were probably the worst of the bunch, as they were actively seeking confrontation. 


Then there's Scott Olsen, the "Iraq War vet" (no left-wing protest is complete without the Absolute Moral Authority figure of the disenchanted Iraq War vet) who made the news when he was struck in the head by a police projectile, and landed in the hospital with serious head injuries. 


Let me be the first to say that I am against severe head injuries, but the Occupiers and their media enablers have been trying desperately to make Olsen out to be some kind of martyr for the cause, rather than what he really is: a guy who was part of a group engaging in running battles with the police. Someone was going to come out of that mess with injuries and Olsen's number came up. That hasn't stopped Olsen's attorneys from spinning the facts in as dark a way as possible:

Occupy Oakland demonstrator Scott Olsen was hit in the head by a beanbag projectile, not a teargas canister, fired by a policeman during a protest in October, Olsen's attorney said Wednesday. 

"The fact that it was a beanbag shot, which was not what we thought, puts it in a completely different light," said Mark Martel, who is preparing to file a claim against Oakland. "If he was hit by a tear gas canister, that would just be stupid or negligent.
"But if it was a beanbag - those are meant to hit people, and it tells me that whoever did it, did it intentionally." 

Martel said he was e-mailed confirmation of the beanbag shot two weeks ago by an Oakland Police Department investigator who is looking into the department's handling of the Occupy protests. 

The attorney said videos showing Olsen, a former Marine and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, during the protest indicate that whoever shot him was within 30 feet. 

"Because it was in close distance, it suggests this was an intentional shot to the head," Martel said.

An intentional shot to the head with a bean bag? Hey, bud, if the Oakland PD had wanted to shoot you, they would have done so, and you would have stayed shot. 


I would like to note that, unlike last fall, the Occupiers are no longer claiming that the police were using "flash grenades" in their anti-Occupier arsenal. I'd also like to note that there is remarkably little information about Olsen's injuries or his long-term prognosis, again in contrast to a few months ago when he was in "critical condition" and leftists the world over were waving his bloody shirt. 


As I've said before, if the Occupiers were real revolutionaries they wouldn't be fooling around with niceties like lawsuits and parade permits. They would be out there everyday putting their lives on the line. That wouldn't make them more admirable, of course, but it would certainly be more admirable than their present incarnation as leftists living out their Walter Mitty fantasies that they are bad ass street rebels. 

Defensive Crouch: Are Occupiers Responsible For The Murder of a Man In The Oakland Hills?

Oakland has, for whatever virtues it may lay claim to, a well-deserved reputation as a violent, crime-ridden urban area. Of course, most of the crime-ridden areas of Oakland are readily identifiable. Most of the city is as safe as any other place you could name, especially as you go uphill. But, living in the tony Oakland Hills is not a protective shield, as one unfortunate resident learned over the weekend:

Residents of the tranquil Berkeley hills were in shock Sunday after police described a horrific slaying, with a homeowner beaten after confronting a young man - an apparent stranger - who had trespassed onto his property. 

Authorities did not identify the victim, but neighbors and public records indicated that the owner of the home where the Saturday night killing occurred was Peter Cukor, 67, who owned a logistics consulting firm. His family declined to talk. 

Shortly after the attack outside the large home near Tilden Park, a Berkeley police officer found Daniel Jordan Dewitt, 23, of Alameda, less than a block away. Dewitt was booked on suspicion of murder, and was being held Sunday without bail. 

Dewitt suffers from mental illness, said his mother, Candy Dewitt.

Cukor had found Dewitt lurking around his garage, and called the police. It was when Cukor went back outside that Dewitt beat him to death. And, what were the police doing that was so important that they could not respond to Cukor? Why, escorting an Occupy Oakland march, of course. 

The victim had called police on a nonemergency line after first seeing Dewitt, according to sources familiar with the case. But police were busy monitoring an Occupy Oakland march to UC Berkeley, and officers were dispatched only to high-priority call 

An officer who noticed the call about Dewitt on his computer told a dispatcher he would respond, but was told not to go, sources said. 

Minutes later, the victim's wife heard her husband yelling for help and called 911 after seeing the suspect dragging him into bushes and hitting him with a potted plant, sources said.

Evil right-wingers have drawn the obvious conclusion, pointing out that the Occupiers' repeated insistence on marching to and fro, with spontaneous bouts of street fighting mixed in, have caused East Bay police departments to divert police resources away from run-of-the-mill criminals in favor of the lawless faux-revolutionaries of the Occupy Movement. This has inevitably given rise to some defensive reactions by Occupiers and their allies who say the usual crap about how their protests are "mostly" peaceful, that the violence is by a relative handful of agitators (who use the "peaceful" protesters as willing human shields), and that, at some indeterminate time in the past, the Oakland Police Department "started it." Wah! Wah! Hey, you guys, I'm not saying the police are perfect, but you've shown yourselves of in need of babysitting every time more than 3 of you get together for any purpose. That's diverting police resources, and it's your fault. 


The Occupiers have long overstayed their welcome. It's too bad there still seems to be little will to do anything with them besides babysitting. 

Pigs Fly: Oakland Liberals Protest OWS/Support The Police

How obnoxious have the Occupy Oakland protesters gotten? So obnoxious that they have drawn liberal counter-protesters supporting the police (!) and denouncing the Occupiers as criminals (!!) 

A tense face-off between Occupy Oakland activists and members of a new group formed to protest their tactics erupted this afternoon in front of Oakland City Hall, with both sides accusing each other of missing the point of the Occupy movement. 

About 40 people calling themselves members of Stand for Oakland gathered at Frank Ogawa Plaza around noon to denounce what they said was violence and vandalism by Occupy Oakland protesters in recent weeks 

They said they sympathized with Occupy Oakland's focus on economic disparity but said destruction during clashes with police was giving the overall Occupy movement a bad name. They cited in particular activists' trashing of parts of City Hall after their failed attempt Jan. 28 to take over the long-empty Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center.

The linked article captures the tragic divergence of views between dumb liberals and crazy liberals. 

One young Occupier, who like many declined to give his name, argued with members of the new group that Occupy would have been eliminating blight by taking over an empty convention center. 

"You are blight, don't you see it?" retorted Aaron Merritt, a 39-year-old graphic designer. 

The young Occupier shot back: "You're in the matrix. You've been indoctrinated."

Frankly, none of this would be necessary except liberals, from the president on down, were happy to see disruptive street protesters so long as those protests were attacking "Wall Street" (AKA Tea Partiers, Republicans, people with jobs). Oakland bent over backwards to accommodate the Occupiers, and what they got were endless riots and criminality, including the murder of one Occupier in broad daylight across the street from City Hall. 


We conservatives may be stoopid, but we had the Occupiers' numbers a long time ago. 

Welcome To The Occupation: Occupy Oakland Attacks City Hall

Oakland was beset by its Occupiers once again. This time, several hundred protesters wandered the streets, looking for something to occupy, before wandering back to City Hall, which they attacked and trashed. 

Oakland officials and Occupy protesters confronted the fallout from their increasingly toxic conflict on Sunday, a day after the tensions reignited in chaotic, often violent demonstrations that resulted in at least 400 arrests. As usual, each side blamed the other for sparking the violence. 

City officials took stock of the damage from Saturday's clashes, which included injuries to three police officers and several protesters, as well as vandalism inside City Hall. 

There, dozens of protesters had broken in with a crowbar, grabbed an American flag, and ignited it on the front steps.

I thought the whole point of Occupy (This Space) was to protest Wall Street greed, but Oakland is about as far as you can get, physically and philosophically, from Wall Street. The real problem is that Oakland's city fathers have shown themselves to be real pushovers. Rather than arrest these clowns and keep them in jail, they let them out to do more harm, psychoanalyzing all the way

"It's like a tantrum," Mayor Jean Quan said while displaying the damage inside the building, which included a broken model of City Hall she estimated to be 100 years old. "They're treating us like a playground." 

Quan said Occupy Oakland had "refused to be nonviolent" and, as a result, was "turning off the rest of the movement." She said police would step up efforts to obtain restraining orders against some protesters to keep them from approaching City Hall.

A "tantrum?" No, they are responding to weakness, something Mayor Quan has displayed in abundance these last few months. You have to admire the Oakland Police Department, which has to do battle with white-bread street anarchists on the one side, and a feckless fifth column worried about the "movement" on the other. I would have turned in my badge long ago. 


Typically for leftist revolutionaries, the Occupiers are exploiting the idealistic dupes among the Bay Area's progressive community and beyond. Despite the manifest squalor and crime surrounding all of the Occupy camps, the "1%-99%" formulation remains media talking point for everyone from the president and Warren Buffet, all the way down to Boots Riley and Van Jones. Occupy Oakland's leaders engaged in some pretty sleazy chicanery to draw a crowd this weekend:

Saturday's demonstration, which brought more than 1,000 people downtown, began on a festive note. After a brief noon rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza, Occupy supporters, accompanied by a small marching band, filled the street with banners. 

Jordan said he did not consider the rally to be peaceful, however, because of marchers' plan to seize a building and because some of the protesters slashed tires as they walked. 

Most marchers had no idea where they were going, because organizers kept secret the building they hoped to seize. Tensions rose as marchers arrived at the long-shuttered convention center just south of Lake Merritt and began tearing down fences.

That's actually pretty typical among leftist protest leaders, who want to lead a revolution, but know they could never draw a crowd if people really knew what they were up to. Instead, they just lie, brazenly, hoping to bring enough people to provide cover for the destruction they plan to wreak.

Rain Parade: Occupy SF Fights The Elements

I had a noon meeting in the Financial District, but forgot that Occupy (This Space) had promised to "shut it down." Luckily the geniuses who would re-order our economy didn't realize that January is the one month of the year you are likely to have a driving rain storm. 

Lots of rain. Lots of noise. Few arrests, and smaller crowds than expected. 

All in all, Friday's big Occupy movement attempt to shut down San Francisco's Financial District was a mixed success for the protesters who led it - and something of a relief for those who had feared it. 

Occupy San Francisco organizers mustered several hundred participants for their all-day protest against economic inequality, and as they marched throughout downtown staging rallies and skits and civil disobedience, they did manage to slow traffic and force a couple of businesses to shut down, including the headquarters of Wells Fargo Bank. 

Unlike some major Occupy actions last year on both sides of the bay, nonviolence prevailed - although tensions between police and protesters flared after night fell as activists briefly occupied the vacant Cathedral Hill Hotel on Van Ness Avenue. Two officers were injured by thrown objects there, and at least five people were arrested before the demonstration ended around 11 p.m.

No, I don't know what the point of trying to occupy the vacant Cathedral Hill Hotel was. The hotel closed a while back to make way for a health care facility. No Evil Banks or Teabaggers were involved. 


Even with the driving rain, I saw one sizable crowd crammed on to a sidewalk in front of (I think) a Chase branch. There was a also a knot of folks standing in front of the Federal Reserve building. And, most oddly, there were a couple die-hards in front of the 9th District Court of Appeals building, calling for the repeal of the Citizens United case, (supposedly Friday's protests were timed to coincide with the second anniversary of that decision) which puts these clowns on the same intellectual level as the president who famously chastised the Supreme Court for daring to find that people don't surrender their free speech rights when they organize themselves into a group. But don't call Obama a socialist! That's H8!


I can't say I've done a comprehensive poll on this, but the self-righteous Occupiers have not endeared themselves to the 99% in San Francisco, something captured dramatically in this street vignette:

The first arrests came early, when crowds blocked entrances at the Wells Fargo headquarters at 420 Montgomery St. Seven people were arrested on the Sacramento Street side of the high-rise around 9:30 a.m. Several more protesters were arrested an hour later when they moved back in front of the service entrance. 

On another side of the bank, a number of people covered themselves in a large swath of black fabric and undulated en masse in what they called a "black blob" representing "the security state enshrouded in ever more secrecy." 

A man on his way to work dismissively shouted "Get a job!" at the blob. One demonstrator retorted, "Our job is the occupation!"

Do I like "Wall Street?" Not particularly. Do I like government bailouts of banks, not to mention of insurance companies and car companies? Hell, no! But I dislike squatting, squalid "revolutionaries" even more. 

Get Back: Occupy SF Protesters Return

Occupy SF returned on Saturday afternoon, "occupying" the roof of a Wells Fargo in the Mission District. Since real San Franciscans were inside watching the game, we can assume these are outside agitators. 

Police arrested at least four people who had climbed up on the roof of a Well Fargo bank in the Mission District today as part of a protest to end to home foreclosures. 

The arrests came after the protesters, part of Occupy SF Housing, demanded that the manager of the bank at Mission and 16th streets fax a letter to Wells Fargo's chief executive officer, John Stumpf, calling for a moratorium on home evictions and foreclosures. 

"This protest today was about Wells Fargo's role in evicting and foreclosing on our neighbors in the Mission and other neighborhoods in San Francisco," said a man who identified himself as "Stardust," an organizer with Occupy San Francisco and Occupy SF Housing, who witnessed but was not arrested during today's demonstration. "We're demanding an immediate moratorium on for-profit evictions and foreclosures." 

Occupy SF Housing, a coalition that includes Occupy SF, San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee of SF and other groups, organized the noontime protest. As many as 200 protesters had gathered in the streets, according to observers.

Very cute, but I'll ask for the one millionth time: what are these guys doing that is so remarkable that they are deserving of the arms-length treatment they are receiving from Wells Fargo and the cops? The linked article doesn't mention this, but radio reports indicated that the cops were pretty much spectating the whole time, watching the protesters prancing around, and "waiting" for Wells Fargo to ask them to make some arrests. Lame. 


This was apparently a dry run for a planned "shut down" of SF's Financial District this Friday. Looks like the good guys are already planning to surrender to the mob. 

Occupy Too Much

The most annoying thing about the Occupy (This Space) Movement isn't just the squatting, the squalor, and  the endless whining. It's how the "99%" formulation has entered political lexicon even as the Occupiers themselves have been driven from the public square. Check out this opening graf from a story about a couple Good Samaritans who stopped a shoplifter at Nordstrom: 

In this Occupy Wall Street era, it was a crime against the 1 percent: Two people grabbed a handful of purses worth more than $10,00o Saturday night in the Nordstrom store in Walnut Creek and sprinted for the exit.

But they wouldn't get far. A pair of holiday shoppers braved blasts of pepper spray from one of the alleged thieves before subduing him until police arrived

That's just ridiculous. First of all, there's absolutely no evidence that the shoplifters were "liberating" the purses, or making some grand - if futile - political statement. Second, Nordstrom, while a very nice department store, is hardly a symbol of the 1%. (and Walnut Creek is hardly an enclave of the uber-rich)


The Occupiers were discredited weeks ago, but their bogus "99 vs. 1" view of the world looks to live on long after the last  tent city has been torn down. 

Playground: Occupy Oakland Occupies Vacant Lot

The Occupy Oakland crowd, having been evicted from downtown, has now ceased its wanderings and have pitched their tents in a vacant lot at 18th & Linden. Oaklanders, consider yourselves re-occupied!

Occupy Oakland protesters have moved onto a vacant Oakland lot they say is being foreclosed. 

Late Monday night the group announced in a text message that they had moved to a private lot at the corner of 18th and Linden streets in West Oakland. 

About 10 tents and 30 protesters were set up on the lot Monday night. The nearby two-story home is being foreclosed and the protesters told the Associated Press they have permission to be on the lot. 

The camp went up less than a day after roughly 100 protesters were moved out of the final Occupy Oakland camp. Days after clearing out Frank Ogawa Plaza and another vacant lot, police told campers at Oakland's Snow Park early Monday that they too had to move out.

For those who don't know, Oakland is actually a pretty sizable city, and 18th & Linden is a very obscure corner of it. When the Occupiers were in front of City Hall, they could credibly claim to be at the center of things, but now they are simply squatting in a vacant lot in a residential neighborhood. I'm sure the new Occupiees are thrilled. 


(btw, have to love how the reporters working this story continue to present the Occupiers in the best possible light. With one breath they say the vacant lot is "being foreclosed," but with another they only say a near-by house is being foreclosed. Well, which is it?)


All of these machinations underscore how bogus this revolutionary movement is. They're willing to squat on property that doesn't belong to them. They are willing to be arrested for their trouble, but only if the arrests are of the catch-and-release variety that are common in the wake of political protests. But, I'm not seeing any real "To The Finland Station"-style commitment from these guys. Want to watch an Occupier move like lightning? Tell him that the police will seize his $400 tent if he doesn't move it in 5 minutes. How quickly "Hell No, We Won't Go" turns to "Run Away! Run Away!"


If the United States were so awful that it deserves to be Occupied, then nothing should be stopping these guys. That's really the essence of revolution. The Occupiers will respond that they are just behaving themselves to appeal to political moderates, but that only underscores their lameness. They are self-proclaimed revolutionary movement that hides its true aims, and avoids real confrontation with their alleged oppressors. Let them have their "foreclosed" vacant lot. It's all they can manage.

First, We Seize Their Mini-Bars!

This NY Post story is an instant classic. A couple of prominent Occupy Wall Street activists have been caught staying at, get this, the W Hotel. Cue "Animal Farm" analogies.

A key Occupy Wall Street leader and another protester who leads a double life as a businessman ditched fetid tents and church basements for rooms at a luxurious hotel that promises guests can “unleash [their] inner Gordon Gekko,” The Post has learned. 

The $700-per-night W Hotel Downtown last week hosted both Peter Dutro, one of a select few OWS members on the powerful finance committee, and Brad Spitzer, a California-based analyst who not only secretly took part in protests during a week-long business trip but offered shelter to protesters in his swanky platinum-card room.

Sptizer is a 24-year old analyst from Deloitte who apparently hasn't grown up despite working for one of the world's biggest accounting and consulting firms. As it happens the late Free Will Father was a partner at Touche-Ross, one of Deloitte's predecessor firms. All I can say is that Switzer is lucky he wasn't starting out 30 years ago because he would have been able to ply his revolutionary schtick full time  once his bosses found out about this. Still, Switzer seems more of a goof than anything else.

The other guy, Dutro, is a member of the self-selected finance committee, which has managed to take control of OWS's finances. He is one of the leaders of this "leaderless" movement, which means he gets the girls and the graft while the proles are sleeping on paving stones.

Meanwhile, Dutro, 35, one of only a handful of OWS leaders in charge of the movement’s $500,000 in donations, checked in on Wednesday, the night after police emptied Zuccotti Park. 

While hundreds of his rebel brethren scrambled to find shelter in church basements, Dutro chose the five-star, 58-story hotel, with its lush rooms and 350-count Egyptian cotton sheets. He lives only a short taxi ride away in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. 

“I knew everything was going to be a clusterf--k in the morning,” he told The Post, alluding to Occupy’s own disruption plans. “How would I get over the bridge when they were shutting it down?” 

The tattoo artist-turned-Occupy money man took the elevator up to the fifth-floor welcome desk, where a disc jockey spins tunes and guests enjoy a vista of the growing freedom tower. 

He said he spent $500 of his own money to get the room because he wanted a good night’s rest ahead of the cause’s two-month ceremony the next day and raucous post-raid protests

Like any good leader, Dutro knows how to splash around some bills to distract from his own comforts.

And he claims he took care of comrades in less-comfortable digs. 

“I took food to all those churches,” he said. “I got them cigarettes.

Ever get the feeling you've been ripped off?

The Post also says that other General Assembly and OWS leaders have been staying at the W and the downtown Marriott. That's an explosive charge, if true, since it makes clear that someone out there is leading OWS, and making out semi-well from the exertions of the Occupiers. The story has been on-line all day. Not only that, every right-wing blog in creation has taken a moment to link and chortle over it. The reaction from OWS? A big fat nothing. Sometimes embarrassed silence speaks louder than words.

UPDATE: and don't forget the last big-shot leftist who got caught at a swanky NYC hotel.

Bring Back Loyalty Oaths: Cal State Faculty Join Occupy Strike

The Bay Area Occupy (This Space) rallies appear to have begun to focus their ire on California's public universities, specifically the cuts and tuition increases that have been all too common the last few years. You can always get students upset about these things, but now the faculty for at least one East Bay university has joined in. 

They pitched no tents. They were struck by no police batons. 

But the hundreds of chanting, dancing, drum-pounding California State University faculty members who converged on CSU's Hayward campus today to demand promised raises did do a "mike check," the Occupy Wall Street movement's signature method of addressing large crowds without a microphone. 

"Mike check!" shouted a voice from within the crowd at Cal State East Bay. "When faculty are forced to leave the CSU for better pay and working conditions, the value of your degree is on the line!" 

Faculty, joined by students and some state lawmakers, repeated his words in the now familiar call-and-response fashion of Occupy protesters. 

Cal State East Bay was one of two campuses in the 23-campus system - the other was Cal State Dominguez Hills - where most faculty walked out of class in a one-day strike to call attention to the cancellation of pay raises and stalled labor negotiations

This is absurd, and not just because a bunch of educated middle-aged teachers are carrying on like they are bad-ass street rebels. (back in my younger days, I would have bust a gut laughing at any of my high school teachers or college professors joining any kind of "movement"). These teachers are one of the reasons why the public universities are in so much trouble, both because of the high cost of employing them, and the low quality of their pedagogy. Yet, clueless students upset about tuition increases are no doubt thrilled to receive this show of solidarity. Uh, guys, these teachers are not your friends. Secretly, they want tuition to go up, so their salaries go up as well. 


Not only that, they are feeding you a steady diet of nonsense, especially those hip professors who use Michael Moore movies as a teaching tool and keep a Nader For President bumpersticker on their office door. They've been telling you about how Republicans and "big business" are evil, but all of these cuts you are protesting - not to mention virtually every other problem in the formerly Golden State - are coming from Democrats in government. Wall Street isn't raising your tuition; Democrats are. 


And not only that, the Democrats - who control virtually every lever of power in the state - haven't lifted a finger trying to cut the real expenses driving the state into a hole: public employee pensions, redistributionist welfare payments, and unchecked illegal immigration. No, it's always students. That's partly because kids are always good for some dramatic "student strike" headlines, but also because there's always another group of students coming along once the previous bunch has graduated. If anyone ever manages to realize they are nothing more than human shields for some retired bureaucrat's pension, they're already long gone. 


It's days like this when you can't help thinking a good loyalty oath would do wonders. 

Piece Corps: Armed Man Shot On Berkeley Campus During Student Strike

In the wake of the high-profile eviction of Occupy Oakland, another East Bay Occupy Movement is gathering strength over at UC Berkeley, a school that feels honor-bound to participate in any and all left-wing movements that might arise. Today was the big "general strike" (by 1,000 students! Big Deal!), but about a half-mile away from the protesters, an armed man entered UC's Haas School of Business and was shot by campus police:

A man with a gun was shot and wounded by police today at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, officials said. 

The man was brandishing a handgun in a computer lab when he was shot by one of several campus police officers who converged on the business school near Memorial Stadium at about 2:15 p.m., university officials said. 

The 33-year-old suspect, whose name was not released, "displayed it in a threatening manner," said UC Berkeley Police Chief Mitch Celaya. "The officers, in fear for themselves and individuals around them, fired a shot at the individual, hitting him." 

The suspect is being treated at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Celaya said. His intentions were not immediately known, the chief said. 

At least four students were in the lab at the time of the shooting, said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. None of them was hurt. 

... 

Officials said there was no immediate evidence that the shooting was related to an Occupy Cal protest on campus, in which protesters are calling on University of California regents with ties to business and finance to do a better job funding the university.

As with the violence that sprang up at the Oakland encampment, I am sure the Occupiers will deny that there was any connection. Hell! (you can here them say) Armed men are shot at the business school everyday! And, it may be that this guy was simply disturbed, confused, or even, Republican. But, I doubt it. The fact is that this latest round of left-wing street theater has attracted an inordinate amount of violence and criminal behavior. The student strike was widely advertised in the Bay Area, and was very much seen as a reaction to the eviction of the Occupy Oakland encampment. Not only that, the rhetoric of the Occupy Movement has been unabashedly confrontational and revolutionary. Maybe this is just an incredible coincidence, but it's still a reminder that the left's methods of street protest will lead to greater and greater levels of violence. 

UPDATE: The gunman has died from his wounds. 

Martyr's Square: Drama Queen Resigns From Oakland Mayor's Staff

The Oakland PD managed to evict the Occupy Oakland encampment without much incident this morning. The Occupiers have apparently returned to the plaza outside City Hall, but now they say they will not camp there, but simply...remain. Clearly, we have not quite reached the end of this. 


In the meantime, let's spare a minute for Dan Siegel, former legal advisor to Oakland's socialist mayor and now an official Martyr For The Cause

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's chief legal adviser, a longtime friend, resigned Monday after what he called a "tragically unnecessary" police raid of the Occupy Oakland camp. 

Dan Siegel was one of two aides to defect from Quan's administration Monday. Deputy Mayor Sharon Cornu also quit but said her resignation had nothing to do with the police sweep. 

Siegel, a civil rights attorney and one of Oakland's most active and vocal police critics, said the city should have done more to work with campers before sending in police. 

"The city sent police to evict this camp, arrest people and potentially hurt them," Siegel said. "Obviously, we're not on the same page. It's an amazing show of force to move tents from a public place." 

Siegel strongly opposed any plan by the city to take down the month-old camp in the days leading up the police raid.

Laaaaaammmme!


I swear, the gap between the Occupiers' media halo of idealist dreamers versus the grubby reality of a disgusting squat is big enough to drive Michael Moore's food truck through. Siegel calls the peaceful removal of these criminals "tragically unnecessary." What was unnecessary was the faux-drama behind the removal. If they were truly peaceful, they would have left when the first eviction notices were passed out. Instead, they went on a rampage, attacking the police and the City's long-suffering small businesses.  I'd say hiring Siegel to work on the public dime was what was tragically unnecessary. 

Assignment Desk: Liberal Journalists Wonder If, Maybe, They Should Find Out Who Is Behind Occupy (This Space)

After almost two months of Occupy (This Space) protests squatting on public and semi-public land, not to mention the occasional riots and blockades, the NY Times public editor has experienced a random burst of journalism, asking himself, shouldn't we be looking into the people (not to mention the funding and programs) behind the Occupiers? Given that they are essentially calling for the complete re-writing of our Constitution and our economy, I'd say, yeah, you might want to look into that:

The Times has mentioned several times on blogs that Adbusters, a Canadian magazine,first proposed Occupy Wall Street and even set the date. Yet this intriguing nugget of information remains to be developed. Who is Adbusters? How did the idea leap the chasm between conception and action? 

An investigation into origins would lead to the identities of early leaders, at least, and the search for the broader leadership of the movement should continue from there. I polled a group of journalism educators on the question of how The Times should direct its coverage henceforth. Not all agreed on this, but most said it was important to understand who the leaders were and what demographics they represented. The point is: Who is Occupy Wall Street? 

“Leadership tells you a lot about a movement,” Jerry Ceppos, journalism dean atLouisiana State University and formerly executive editor of The San Jose Mercury News, wrote in an e-mail. “But I can’t cite the name of a single Occupy Wall Street leader. I know some members say the groups are ‘leaderless.’ But I have trouble believing this is an entirely organic movement that grew without a leader. I’d push hard to see if there are leaders and to profile them.” 

The push to establish origins and leadership would help surface the demands, or at least the most important underlying issues. Some of these are already clear, as the movement’s rhetoric returns often to income inequality, unemployment and the high cost of education.In its future coverage, The Times should examine how these issues are changing America, giving rise to movements like Occupy Wall Street and its ideological counterpart, the Tea Party.

Occupy, like the Tea Party, is billed as a "leaderless" movement, but that only means there isn't a central office where you can go to find out What They Want and, more important, who can deliver votes and/or $$. But, for a "leaderless" movement, Occupy has managed to attract some hardcore adherents willing to camp out in urban areas, and attract a few thousand riotous supporters when the police threaten eviction. Occupy has also done enough fund-raising such that hundreds of thousands of dollars are sitting in its coffers, with a (self?) selected handful having absolute control over how the funds are disbursed and spent. Occupy even has political spinners of a sort, always ready to excuse away the rapes, murders, deaths, and general squalor that have descended on the encampments. Leaderless these guys are not.  


In the case of the Tea Party, you can trace its origins from conservatives, libertarians, and disaffected independents who gathered in the wake of the leftist governance of the Obama Administration. Spread by blog posts and other social media, they eventually coalesced around the Tea Party name and began to get behind insurgent politicians like Marco Rubio in an effort to re-make the Republican Party in its image. What was unique about the Tea Party was that this was a grassroots conservative protest movement. The right has not been in the habit of Taking It To The Streets, at least not in modern American politics. 


In the case of Occupy, by contrast, they are very much of a piece with the leftist street protests that have been filling the public square, with wildly varying success, since 1789. Ten years ago, they were marching against globalization. Five years ago, they were protesting the Iraq War. This summer, the Bay Area occupiers - acting in concert with the leftist-inspired Anonymous - disrupting service on the local transit agency and protesting its transit cops. Occupy is made up of professional protesters and the college students whom they rely on for cannon fodder. Old reliables like ACORN, Van Jones, and the SEIU - not to mention the American Communist Party and Nazi Party - have offered tactical support. There is nothing new under this particular sun.


Still, someone (or several someones) is directing this stuff. Someone is writing the blog posts, Facebook message, and tweets that are animating the movement. Someone is running the General Assemblies, which are clearly designed to reach a pre-determined "consensus." The Times rightly notes that credit for conceiving Occupy goes to the anti-consumerist magezine Adbusters, which published this blogpost over the summer (sub-head "A Shift In Revolutionary Tactics". Yep! They're jes' folks!), calling for people to march on Wall Street on Sept. 17, which is what happened. I note that the post is unsigned, credited only to the Adbusters staff.  Very egalitarian, but also very suspicious. It's a strange thing when someone is unwilling to sign his/her name to a call for action. It's a reminder that obfuscation about motivation and goals have been a part of Occupy from its inception. 


The official message (from this "leaderless" movement) is that the Occupiers don't like Wall Street bailouts and want more equality and democracy, which sounds OK to the uninitiated, but are pure socialism. That's just what they let us see on the surface. It's anyone's guess what the Occupiers' program really is, but I don't think it's a stretch to say they seek to overthrow America's Constitution and capitalist system and replace it with God knows what. That is the way of the left; sow chaos in the streets, ginned up against The System, and then grasp power when chaos has destabilized the ruling order.  


It can't be denied that Occupy have struck a chord among liberals. Unions, academics, and the media were quick to glom on to the movement. They love the concept of the 99% standing against the 1%. If you are running for office, you have to love those odds. But reality has been more mundane: a few score at each encampment, augmented by hundreds spoiling for a fight whenever the authorities threaten to get serious. They are not the 99%. They are the .00000099%, if that. And yet they aren't going away, and the Democrats are doing little to distance themselves from this unappealing mess. A neat trick for a "leaderless" movement.

Riot Squad: Oakland Gets Ready To Re-Evict The Occupiers

After a shooting death at the Occupy Oakland encampment, Oakland's city fathers - well, really, mothers - are planning another eviction. 

After an intense day of behind-closed-door meetings Friday, Oakland officials are moving forward with plans to evict Occupy Oakland from Frank Ogawa Plaza. 

The eviction, which has the blessing of a majority of the City Council and the reluctant concurrence of Mayor Jean Quan, is likely to come sooner rather than later. 

That's the word we're getting from several officials who were in on the meetings Friday, trying to find a way out of the mess surrounding the month-old encampment outside City Hall. 

The first move: The notice that police handed out to Occupiers on Friday afternoon, telling them all tents, cooking utensils and the like must go and that anyone sleeping in the plaza overnight "will be subject to arrest." 

The order came after an afternoon meeting that included Quan, interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, City Administrator Deanna Santana and City Council President Larry Reid

(just as a parenthetical, I'd like to note that we don't know the identity of the guy who was murdered, nor do we have any descriptions of the suspect(s), even though the shooting happened in broad daylight across the street from City Hall in front of dozens of witnesses including members of the media. Just underscores how the Occupiers are a criminal element and heartless to boot). 


Oakland should have stuck with the original eviction, especially after it descended into chaotic rioting, but most progressive politicians and their constituents (especially white-bread bureaucrats and teachers), suffer from the leftist's Walter Mitty fantasy that they are bad-ass street rebels. It was no surprise when Occupiers began to attack the police, and it wasn't a surprise when Oakland's socialist mayor meekly let the Occupiers return to City Hall. Speaking of Jean Quan, she still hasn't bought into the idea that the City should evict the Occupiers. 

According to sources, Quan went into the meeting asking for more time for negotiations with Occupy Oakland, suggesting that its camp be transplanted to nearby Jefferson Park while an unidentified benefactor tries to line up an empty building for the movement. 

Time, however, is not something that other officials and public safety workers believe the city can spare. And when the meeting ended, Quan agreed to a police sweep if and when Jordan finds one necessary.

For those of you wondering how someone could be dumb enough to wreck their mayorality over these bums, well, it happened 20 years ago in SF when then-mayor Art Agnos let the homeless set up camp next to City Hall. The idea was to dramatize the alleged horrors of the George HW Bush recession - supposedly the worst economy since the Great Depression - but quickly degenerated into a squalid mess.  But, no matter how bad it got, Agnos could never bring himself to roust the homeless. It became a big issue that eventually scuttled his re-election, and was the last time SF elected a real leftist as mayor*. Quan is simply serving the interests of her "base" - that base being the thugs, revolutionaries, public employees, and useful idiots who are the foot soldiers for the progressive left. 


Oakland, you'll be happy to know, is going to be doing this alone. During the previous eviction, other law enforcement agencies, including the Alameda County Sheriff, and the police departments from neighboring municipalities, pitched in to help. Not this time.

The Alameda County Sheriff's Department now wants to be paid, rather than picking up its own costs for deputies' participation. 

"It's not an emergency anymore," said sheriff's spokesman Sgt. J.D. Nelson. "They basically allowed this to happen when the mayor allowed the encampment to come back in" after the Oct. 25 sweep. 

"It's changed from an emergency call to a planned event," Nelson said. 

Other agencies are also balking. The city of Alameda says it wants to be protected from any possible lawsuits that might result from its officers' actions. 

Plus, other demonstrations planned next week at UC Berkeley and Cal State East Bay are likely to tie up UC and Hayward police, along with sheriff's deputies.

Just desserts, but also a signal that this latest eviction may not work either, especially with the thoroughly unreliable Quan who will be able to throw the police under the bus at the first sign of trouble. We may yet see the spectacle of Gov. Brown, who also happens to have been mayor of Oakland, calling in the National Guard to settle this business once and for all. 




*you'll be happy to know that Agnos failed upward into a job with Bill Clinton's HUD where he did some admittedly good work tearing down SF's truly awful housing projects and replacing them with more family friendly developments.

Body Count: Man Killed Near Occupy Oakland Camp

The Occupy Oakland encampment has been the most violent of the Occupy (This Space) Movement, what with all the rioting and blockading. But even Oakland's socialist mayor may not be able to tolerate these folks now that someone has been killed there. 

A young man was fatally shot Thursday evening just yards from the Occupy Oakland encampment outside City Hall. And before the ambulance had even pulled away, people were debating whether the killing was somehow linked to the month-old gathering. 

The man, whom several Occupy campers said they did not recognize, was shot in the head at about 5 p.m. outside a BART station exit in Frank Ogawa Plaza, at 14th Street and Broadway. He was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where he was pronounced dead, said interim Police Chief Howard Jordan. 

Jordan - speaking to reporters over protesters who shouted, "This is not Occupy Oakland" - said two groups of people had gotten into a fight that ended when someone pulled out a gun and fired. Witnesses said they heard four to six shots, and saw several young men flee. No arrests have been made, and the dead man's name has not been released. 

The shooting happened in a busy section of downtown Oakland adjacent to the Occupy an encampment where drug use is prevalent, and where devoted protesters have increasingly struggled to control fights and robberies and deal with mentally ill homeless people.

Yep! Nothing but wide-eyed idealists trying to make a better world!


The excuses are flying, of course. The shooting happened next to the encampment, not inside (although the fight that preceded the murder seems to have started in the encampment). Everyone says they've never seen the victim before. Plus, murders happen in Oakland every day - well, every three days - and the open-air drug market in the area has been there for years, although I'm not aware that anyone was ever killed before. Btw, Oaklanders are always trying to think of ways to improve their city's image. My suggestion: get rid of the open-air drug market right next door to City Hall.


The shooting does seem to be drug related, but that doesn't get the Occupiers off the hook. There is quite a drug scene out there. The Occupation itself is almost like a Bizarro World version of the "broken windows" theory of policing. In this case, the Occupiers have created a thuggish, low-level air of criminality through their rioting and pig-headed refusal to leave Ogawa Plaza. Is it any wonder that a criminal element has joined the group? The Occupiers themselves are criminals. 


Oakland's hapless mayor is making noises about clearing out the Plaza again. Looks like any police she might send in will be dealing with even more violence than before. 

Civil War: Oakland's First Husband On The March

The SF Chronicle, which has bought into the "Occupy-Oakland-violence-caused-by-a-fringe-minority" spin - odd that a "leaderless" movement has spin - takes us inside the bunker when Oakland city officials decided to send in the police. News flash: hapless mayor Jean Quan was a spectator during the most important moments of her mayorality. 

Even after the bandanna-wearing, rock-throwing, fire-starting fringe demonstrators took over a downtown Oakland building and blocked off a street late Wednesday, Mayor Jean Quan did not want police to intervene. 

Instead, Quan asked that police hold off on any confrontation until daylight - or, barring that, send in negotiators to try to work out a peaceful resolution. 

"She didn't want to incite the anarchists any more than they already were," said one source who was in the city's emergency operations center when Quan stunned the assembled staffers with her comments. 

Finally, interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, with the backing of City Administrator Deanna Santana, made the call for police to take action. Both were in the emergency center with Quan.

However, the story absolutely buries the lead; mentioning only in passing that Mayor Quan's husband was part of the group that shut down the Port of Oakland.

In fact, eyewitnesses say Quan's husband was among the banner-wavers blockading the port in a nonviolent action earlier Wednesday.

Have to love the characterization of the Port blockade as "non-violent." The Occupiers weren't letting trucks drive in or out of the Port. It's not like the truck drivers were given a choice. Maybe there wasn't any actual physical violence, but the threat of violence was certainly there, and was palpable. Just the sort of thing the mayor's husband should be mixed up in. 


This only underscores that Quan's reluctance to send in the police, and her repeated undercutting of the OPD's efforts, arises from her sympathy with the Occupiers, even as they wreak havoc. Quan is a street activist of long standing. She undoubtedly thrills to the sight of banner waving crowds taking it to the streets to denounce The System. I doubt that she literally approves of the violence of the mob, but she certainly is willing to facilitate it. 


The Free Will Wife is a psychologist and has noted how tired and unhappy Quan has looked in the newspaper photos from the last couple weeks. This one is the "iconic" picture:

Hard to disagree that this is the face of someone who would rather be doing something else, like say marching at the head of a crowd denouncing capitalism.


The Occupy Oakland crowd has already "won" in that they have set up a tent city in front of City Hall - something I could never do, of course - and then successfully repelled the police's attempts to clear them out of what is an illegitimate and disgusting encampment. Quan can't admit this, but she loves this stuff. How wrecking the already wrecked Oakland economy is going to stick it to Wall Street is beyond me, but  that's why I'm not mayor of Oakland. 


Oakland residents can bitch about this now, but they got what they voted for. There was a perfectly acceptable Daley-esque machine Democrat running for mayor last time out, but the progressive left ran a slate of leftists, headed by Quan, who urged Oaklanders to vote for the three of them in Oakland's ranked choice balloting, thus ensuring that Quan, or someone similar, would win the race. At the time, this was seen as a victory for the People over yucky "downtown interests" (yes, Oakland still has "downtown interests"). Guess they didn't realize that when you elect a socialist as mayor, you get mob rule in the streets. 

Demonic: Ann Coulter Deconstructs The New Mob

Ann Coulter has really taken the lead in mocking the "Occupy This Space" movement. Shouldn't be too hard to do, it's just no one seems to want to do it. Indeed, the usual quailing GOP moderates are already talking about how to address income inequality, as if the most important thing our politics must address are the addled demands of the Ungrateful Unwashed:

Last week, the great minds of the OWS movement, bored with playing bocce ball and getting stoned, decided to protest at the homes of Wall Street's robber barons. They then proceeded to walk right past George Soros' apartment building in order to protest at the homes of Rupert Murdoch and David Koch. 

THEY'RE NOT WALL STREET! 

You may not like Koch and Murdoch's products -- fertilizer and media -- but neither one has anything to do with Wall Street. Unlike money manipulators such as John Corzine(Democrat), Robert Rubin (Democrat) and George Soros (Democrat and Obama's biggest supporter), Koch and Murdoch make money from corporations that actually produce something. 

They take risks, make things and get menaced by the government. Wall Street schemers take no risks, produce nothing and get bailed out by the government. 

Even assuming, for purposes of argument, that Koch and Murdoch are as evil as these morons seems to think, the protesters call their demonstration "Occupy Wall Street," not "Occupy Businesses Whose Products We Disapprove Of." 

This would be like protesting the Holocaust by walking past Adolf Hitler's house and protesting at O.J. Simpson's house. 

The Flea Partiers try to win good will by pretending to protest "Wall Street" -- but they ignore Wall Street's villains. They claim to speak for 99 percent of Americans, but their sponsor, George Soros, would be delighted if America collapsed and the 99 percent were impoverished. All he cares about is his own power and pocketbook.

Give Coulter credit for anticipating the progressive zeitgeist. She spent a year researching and writing a book about how the left gins up mobs to sow chaos and grasp power, and within weeks of that book's release we have seen - mobs ginned up by the left to sow chaos and retain their grasp on power. 

BTW, I've seen a lot of unctuous right-wing commentary wondering why Obama and other leading Democrats are embracing the protests without at least denouncing the tone and squalor of the various encampments that have sprung up (with the acquiesence of progressive pols, of course). Why the hell would we want Democrats to denounce these guys?! Occupy might have a glowing media halo, but they will not be able to hide the truth that idealistic movements have a scummy underbelly. The protest sites have already become fetid pits. They are attracting thieves. There are slimy sex crimes happening, and being an idealistic 20 year old psych major is no help. 

This is the left, and the world they would make for us, and the average American knows this, no matter how many polls might say they "support" the protesters. 

 

No Class War: Occupy SF Fails to Occupy SF

Looks like Occupy San Francisco is still trying and trying and trying to gin up an actual occupation of San Francisco. At first they tried to set up camp outside the SF Federal Reserve, but got rousted. Next they tried setting up an "encampment" in Justin Herman Plaza, which is at the cross-roads of The City's tourist and business districts (and which you may remember from the concert next to the highway in Rattle & Hum), but The Man said no, leading to another near melee:   

Five people were arrested Sunday night when San Francisco police raided the Occupy SF encampment on Justin Herman Plaza, police said.

Police in riot gear marched onto the plaza around 10:30 p.m. and began taking down activists' tents and other camping gear and loading them into city trucks. City law says people cannot camp on the plaza, police said.

"They were told throughout the day to remove the tents pertaining to the violation," police said in a statement.
Protesters surrounded the city trucks and refused to move, police said. One protester slashed a truck tire. Four were arrested on suspicion of being pedestrians in a roadway and resisting arrest. Another was arrested on suspicion of battery on a police officer.

This is really pathetic, and not an occupation at all. You can move freely throughout the City and engage in all sorts of fascist exploitation of the working class without having to trip over the few dozen professional protesters who say they are occupying us. The ones in Wall Street are even more useless. Have the markets missed a second of trading as a result of their occupation of Zucotti Park? Of course not. 


I keep hearing that polling majorities "support" the Occupiers. That's hard to believe as hardly anyone in the United States has had to encounter our occupiers.