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Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

portlandoccupier.org

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Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#3

What drew me to this article was it's discussion of the tactics a unorganized group can do and try all at once. A neat superposition of several topics. Like a glorified case of the wisdom of crowds.

unfortunately any mass movement is dependent on being able to apply political pressure. It might work if there is a growing momentum and you end up with an 'orange' revolution. Most likely it's going to simply die out by itself unless it can actually transform into a political force.

Being in Spain I can tell you the protests accomplished nothing, changed nothing politically and ended up dissolving themselves once it got cold.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#4
Sounds like the way Critical Mass (cycling) rides in Chicago work - with no pre-set route the police join in and make sure no one gets hurt but they can't really push the ride in one direction or another - the 'hive' decides where to go. With 5,000 to 10,000 people it's a pretty huge event/example.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#5
I don't know if this is a difference between UK and US police tactics, or if it's specific to Portland - I also don't know if it's the case that the difference was caused by not caring as much or just by not being as successful: UK police have done a much better job in the past, and rendered this article nonsense.

The key difference:

> Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks.

If the police have such small numbers that they cannot afford to take any manpower away from the back of the march then yes, obviously this is the case. But really, with police vans offering fast transport there is no reason they cannot prevent a moving demonstration from moving. Obviously, budget comes into play, for example police helicopters can help them see what is going on and help them create tactics to counter it.

An example of what I'm talking about is Kettling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling), a term which has only really gained popularity in the press in the last few years, but police (at least in the UK) have used this method for a hell of a long time - not always as viciously as the image most people think of for the term now, that of demonstrators being stuck and not allowed out for hours and hours.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#6
post #5

I don't know if this is a difference between UK and US police tactics, or if it's specific to Portland - I also don't know if it's the case that the difference was caused by not caring as much or just by not being as successful: UK police have done a much better job in the past, and rendered this article nonsense. The key difference: > Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and s…

I think this may have to do with cultural and geographic distances. U.S. cities, for the most part, may not be as easy to do something like kettling in as most are less dense than U.K. cities and may simply have more open space to cover to effectively "kettle" people and contain them to one area. Also, although the police are clearly acting as if they are militants at war, they still don't want the non-protesting population to feel as if they are under martial law so sectioning off a large part of a city with police in riot gear and chasing protestors around to where everyone sees this going on would probably hurt their cause more than help it.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#8
If you want to destroy civilization, this is a pretty good start. Good practice anyway. But if you want to make positive change, forcing police to resort to brutality to restore order for people who are just trying to live their lives is stupid.

Edit: instead of downvoting, try to explain why this is a good idea.

Re: Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

#9
post #5

I don't know if this is a difference between UK and US police tactics, or if it's specific to Portland - I also don't know if it's the case that the difference was caused by not caring as much or just by not being as successful: UK police have done a much better job in the past, and rendered this article nonsense. The key difference: > Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and s…

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