|
|
May 21, 2013
|
|
|
|
 Mayors Come Together Under the Threat of (Gasp!) Free SpeechPosted on Nov 17, 2011
The AP reveals information about how cities organized the Occupy evictions; IMDb.com says, no, you can’t be forever young; and a study exposes the dangers of using mice to study every disease. These discoveries and more below. On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies. The links below open in a new window. Newer ones are on top. How mayors and police chiefs coordinated raids Marketing Jesus IMDb Strikes Back at ‘Selfish’ Actress Suing Over Age Disclosure Groups Urge Supreme Court to Halt FCC Broadcast Censorship Not Guilty by Reason of Neuroscience Because of your niceness: Taylor Swift and fan intimacy How one rodent rules the lab Cops Release Broken iPhone 911 Calls Advertisement TAGS:
|
Real American Boy: How Our Byzantine Immigration System and Failed Economy May Have Made a Terrorist
Email 
Print
Share
Email to a friend
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
Tags|Bazaar|Podcast|About Us|Contact Us|User Agreement|Privacy Policy|FAQ: Comments and Moderation | Google+
© 2013 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
By gerard, November 18, 2011 at 3:53 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).
Report thisTraining 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.)