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Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS

Juan Cole 11/16/2011

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Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement. That is, municipal authorities appear to have been conspiring to deprive Americans of their first amendment rights to freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Likewise, A Homeland Security official let it slip in a phone interview that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had been strategizing with cities on how to shut down OWS protests. The FBI is said to have advised using zoning ordinances and curfew regulations, and to stage the crackdown with massive police force at a time when the press was not around to cover the crackdown.

Wonkette suggests that the PATRIOT Act is implicated here, but I’m not sure how that works. Actually the techniques discussed are standard for US police forces in dealing with peaceful protests (the only routine technique missing is that of putting saboteurs among the protesters who cause destruction and create an image of them as violent.

What these two reports show is a high-level conspiracy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to protest peacefully.

When will we see Occupy Wall Street protesters hooded, dressed in orange jump suits, and sent to Guantanamo for military trials? When you let the government act without regard for the rule of law toward foreigners suspected of terrorism, you open yourself to be treated the same way if the rich decide to sic their police on you (it is mostly their police). This is why a rule of law has to be maintained. Anything less ratchets toward tyranny.

——
A reader wrote in:

‘ The article at CBS mentioned there was a conference call with 40 cities as to what to do with OWS. They go on and say that Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum said:”It was a spontaneous movement…”.

The problem with the article is CBS failed to mention that Chuck Wexler is not only what they say he is, but really EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the Police Executive Research Forum, but also serves in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) he is on the HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISORY COUNCIL.

The link provided below, is a DHS link. You can see at the bottom of the list, second from the last name. Mr. Chuck Wesler is on the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

This is the DHS link.

These links were provided by “A Moving World.” ‘

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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