Mayors Come Together Under the Threat of (Gasp!) Free Speech

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By gerard, November 18, 2011 at 2:53 pm Link to this comment

Regarding (more or less) coordinated highly militarized raids to take down OWS camps and supervise protest movements: The truth is that police have very little to (mostly) no training in what nonviolence is, how to “manage” nonviolent protests of various kinds, and why it is a tactical error to expect violence from nonviolent demonstrations (except from a few “insurgents” whose intentions are to deliberately cause violence and misunderstandings, hence to disrupt nonviolent tactics).
Training on alternatives to violence is available, and used successfully for supervising (“policing”) civil disobedience, etc. under Alternatives to Violence programs and training sessions.
Coming into nonviolent demonstrations is riot gear sends counter-productive signals and indicates rigid unwillingness to “defuse.” It also makes over-armed police look ridiculous, which creates the wrong psychologicall “climate.” When will they ever learn—these mayors and governors and city councils who are all living in a previous age and are caught without sufficient preparation and desire to avoid trouble? Instead, they tend to create it (perhaps to justify the expense of all the heavy equipment??)
In the many recent videos, if you look at the close-ups of police faces, you can detect the insecurity they are feeling because, without admitting it, they secretly know that they are “out of their depth” somehow. Some protesters in LA chanted “Take off your riot gear. There ain’t no riot here!” and “Put down your weapons! Put down your guns!” indicating that the protesters are more “in tune” with what is going on than the police—a sad and dangerous “information gap.” (Dangerous because of misperceptions on both sides that tend toward fear and over-reaction.)

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