#Black Lives Matter Movement Has Legs, Runs Past Power Elite

Yesterday I sensed a shift. I don't know if it is entirely subjective on my part. I'm tired of the massive police presence downtown. Every night I get off the train I'm greeted by milling pockets of law enforcement -- from the sheriff's department to the city police, with a robust helping of transit security. 

Last night there had to be a dozen bicycle cops from the sheriff's department clogging the platform of the transit center. I banged my left leg, tender from a hamstring pull while out on a run Sunday morning, on the front wheel of one of their trail bikes. I apologized. The cop said nothing.

There is a new surliness. When I got topside out of the station there where so many police at the entryway I brushed chests with one of them. He could pick up my vibe, which was not happy and welcoming.

As I walked east, passing more pockets of law enforcement, I could see or hear no evidence of protest that could possibly justify such a display of force. And in the end that is what we are dealing with here -- a naked display of force.

During Occupy which from what I can tell put a lot more protesters on the street than the last couple weeks of the #Black Lives Matter intifada, there was nowhere near the amount of police. During Occupy, there was usually a bunch of bicycle cops, but that was mostly it.

So what has changed? Why suddenly is all the machinery of the American police state visible?

I think if has something to do with the "flash mob"nature of these "die-ins" that are targeting gigantic corporate retailers. It is holiday season, a time when the corporate behemoths make most of their sales; so mayors are being pressured to mobilize the gendarmes to guard the gates of the citadels of consumption. In comparison, Occupy, with its myriad centrally-located encampments in cities coast to coast, seems old fashioned; easily policed at least. There would often be marches that would originate at the Occupy encampments, spreading out from there. But, once again, these could be easily policed.

The #Black Lives Matter Movement is much more disposed than Occupy to put bodies on the gears -- to shut down highways and mass transit and commercial holiday hubs. Call it today's equivalent of the Deep South Woolworth lunch counter of the Jim Crow era.

To her credit, so far the Gray Lady has been on board the #Black Lives Matter Movement. But yesterday, when news of the Berkeley weekend protests was topping Google News, nothing could be found on the New York Times web site. I didn't spend a lot of time searching. But usually when there is breaking news of importance the Gray Lady pushes it to the top of her home page. Nothing. Then this morning the story by Carol Pogash and Barbara Grady, "Berkeley Protesters Block Freeway Over Garner and Brown Killings," is a tepid rehash of some of the standard rhetorical devices meant to diminish a protest movement: 1) play up property damage, 2) accentuate division among the protesters and 3) never tarry too long on police violence. For example, note the following from the Pogash and Grady article:

On Saturday night, demonstrators had clashed with the police, who used tear gas on the crowds, drawing criticism for tactics seen as heavy-handed. On Sunday night, the police held back while some people set garbage fires and smashed windows at Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank and other buildings, primarily ones occupied by big corporate tenants. The vast majority of shops along Shattuck Avenue, the main shopping district, were left untouched. 

“It’s ironic that the place with probably the strongest supporters is being trashed,” said Tom Bates, Berkeley’s longtime mayor, said in a telephone interview. “What we have are a lot of people who are outside agitators who want to disrupt and cause violence with the police.” 

Mr. Bates said he was “totally devastated and disappointed” that “what could have been peaceful deteriorated into people attacking the police and doing damage.”

If you have ever been involved in protests, you can read between the lines and piece together what really happened in Berkeley over the weekend. The police went apeshit on Saturday and attacked protesters, the overwhelming majority of whom were orderly, with volley after volley of tear gas. This pissed people off and brought more into the streets the next night at which time the police let the Black-Bloc types trash some corporate storefronts. Vandalism then becomes the primary focus for the media, not police tactics; hence, the quotes from Berkeley mayor Bates denouncing "outside agitators," that old chestnut, for causing the violence with the police.

Imagine if that had been the focus of the Gray Lady's Hong Kong team of Chris Buckley and Alan Wong. Chief executive Leung Chun-ying would have been given prominent placement to dismiss the Umbrella Movement protesters as outside agitators. Instead the Gray Lady focused her attention overwhelming on the police use of tear gas to clear protesters from Hong Kong government buildings, an incident that originated the Umbrella Movement to begin with (umbrellas to protect protesters from pepper spray and the sun).

So based on this report of the weekend protests in Berkeley it appears that the Gray Lady might be trimming back her advocacy of #Black Lives Matter. The protests are getting too broad and showing signs of continued life. Obama's diffident pronouncements regarding the edicts of the Mike Brown and Eric Garner grand juries are eroding his support among his last solid constituency, blacks. As Julia Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear note in "Unrest Over Race Is Testing Obama’s Legacy,"

At this point, Mr. Obama’s response to Ferguson, Staten Island and the unrest across the country has diminished his image with important groups, according to new polling figures. Half the respondents in a Pew Research Center survey conducted Wednesday to Sunday disapproved of the president’s handling of race relations, compared with 40 percent who approved — a reversal from August, when 48 percent approved and 42 percent disapproved. While the majority of African-Americans still said the president had handled race relations well, support among them had dropped 16 points since polling in the summer.

Charles Blow had a generally positive view of the #Black Lives Matter Movement in a column yesterday, "A New Age of Activism: From Eric Garner and Michael Brown to the Ballot Box," but he misses the mark when he directs the protesters to move to the voting booth:

Indeed some activists have already moved beyond chants for “change” and begun to develop sophisticated answers to the retort, “change what?”. The trick is to redirect the passions before they dissipate, to maintain momentum when the media attention fades, and to amplify raised voices with votes cast. 

I believe — because the optimist in me must — that votes will soon, somehow, follow the passion, that people will come to see marching not as a substitute for voting but a supplement to it, that more people will work to effect change inside the system as well as outside it.

Blow should know that Obama's presidency itself is all the proof people need to know that voting does not deliver change. More is needed. Direct action must proceed the election of captive politicians. The #Black Lives Matter Movement knows this.

Ferguson vs. Hong Kong: U.S. More of a Police State Than China

We here in the Land of the Free fancy ourselves a "shining city upon the hill" (see Jesus' Sermon on the Mount; John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity"; Ronald Reagan's 1984 Republican National Convention acceptance speech). We like to imagine ourselves living in the most open of open societies; our institutions lawful and corruption-free; our democracy vibrant and fair.

Then there is a moment like yesterday's announcement by Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, that Missouri is in a state of emergency pending a decision by a grand jury on whether to indict the police officer who gunned down an unarmed black teenager in broad daylight in August. Monica Davey reports in "State of Emergency Declared in Missouri for Grand Jury’s Decision on Ferguson" that

FERGUSON, Mo. — Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency on Monday, allowing him to activate the Missouri National Guard in preparation for a grand jury decision on whether to indict a white police officer for shooting to death an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, three months ago. 

The declaration was certain to add to mounting tension here as people awaited the grand jury’s decision, which officials have said is expected in mid- to late November. Many here have said they expect the grand jury to decide against indicting the Ferguson officer, Darren Wilson, and they anticipate a show of anger and protest afterward. Some protesters said that calling up the Guard before a grand jury decision was a premature, antagonistic move that presumed that demonstrations would be violent.

Mr. Nixon called up the Guard in August during demonstrations that sometimes grew violent. Although the Guard’s role was limited to protecting a police command post, its presence drew vehement criticism from demonstrators, who said it was further indication of a military-style approach by the law enforcement authorities.

Compare this with a story (Chris Buckley and Alan Wong, "Hong Kong Clears an Area of Pro-Democracy Protesters") about the orderly removal of a slice of the Umbrella Movement encampment in the Admiralty District where the main Hong Kong government buildings are located:

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government moved to clear pro-democracy protesters from a small area in front of an office building on Tuesday morning in the first move against the demonstrators in weeks. The authorities met no resistance, with student protesters saying they would not oppose the court order. 

Dozens of bailiffs wearing black vests, backed by the police, supervised the removal of barricades in a small section of the main protest area around the Citic Tower after reading aloud a court injunction. They took hours to methodically clear metal barriers and the random items left from protesters who had been living there in tents for weeks, from books to undergarments. 

The operation’s timing was no surprise; it was announced ahead of time. Demonstrators had largely vacated the area, and the police, unlike in past operations against the movement, did not wear riot gear.

Imagine if Hong Kong's leader, CY Leung, had declared a state of emergency and requested troop support from mainland China when students failed in an attempt to occupy government buildings on September 28 which then ballooned into mass protests. The outrage in the West, both official and from the Fourth Estate, would have be volcanic; proof, we would have been lectured, that the People's Republic of China is a totalitarian state hungering to snap under its iron boot heel the supple neck of a democracy-loving, Western-oriented youth.

But when police in St. Louis County, Missouri responded with assault rifles, APCs, flash grenades, tear gas, and helicopters to protesters outraged by the murder of an unarmed teenager there is no parallel outcry.

Yes, the Gray Lady published some excellent stories on 1) the massive militarization of local police forces, and 2) the Jim Crowesque justice system that sees a traffic ticket turn into fines and jail time for mostly black men. Nowhere though was there a thoughtful think piece or unsigned editorial connecting the U.S. with the world.

In Hong Kong, there has been an active occupation of public spaces since September. Police have been reticent to engage the Umbrella Movement youth. In Ferguson, protests have continued since August, but the protesters have never been given any leeway; at one point, during the peak last summer, they were not allowed to stand still, nevermind erecting an encampment complete with barricades. Plus, protesters in Ferguson were faced with a mustering of the Missouri National Guard.

Now the Guard has been activated once again. At this point any kind of indictment of Darren Wilson would come as a shock. The prevailing wisdom is that there will be no indictment. In other words, it is permissible to blow away an unarmed youth. Clashes clearly are anticipated. The injustice is too glaring.

Protesters appear to be well organized. Over 50 groups on the ground. We could be looking at another Seattle WTO or anti-war mobilization in the run up to Bush's invasion of Iraq. The police and the Guard invariably overreact because at the core of their training is the idea to brook no challenge to their use of overwhelming force. (Here, from what I've seen, the Hong Kong police seem much better trained than your average U.S. peace officer.)

The question is what will the Michael Brown protest movement do when confronted with the overreaction. There is a golden opportunity to expand the movement and shut down, albeit for a moment, the police state.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Speaks for Leaders Worldwide: You Can't Have Open Elections Because Then Poor People Will Have Power

Yesterday government officials in Hong Kong debated leaders of the Umbrella Movement on television, something that would never happen in the United States, and something which did not happen during the Occupy Wall Street protests of autumn 2011. Then protesters were dismissed as infantile Utopians who were unreasonable for not articulating a list of demands that could be conveniently translated into the political/legislative process. At the same time, Obama and the Democrats appropriated the main Occupy argument about income inequality, which carried them to an impressive victory over Romney and the GOP in 2012.

Reuters has a handy story about the TV debate, "Hong Kong students put their case to government, but no breakthrough":

Communist Party rulers in Beijing in August offered Hong Kong people the chance to vote for their own leader in 2017, but said only two to three candidates could run after getting majority backing from a 1,200-person nominating committee, which is widely expected to be stacked with Beijing loyalists. 

The protesters decry this as "fake" Chinese-style democracy and say they won't leave the streets unless Beijing allows open nominations. 

"We hope the Hong Kong government doesn't become an obstacle on the democratic road for Hong Kong people," [student leader Alex] Chow added. "But that it will help us dismantle these road blocks and to lead Hong Kong people to bring about true democratic reform." 

[Chief Secretary Carrie] Lam reiterated the government's position that open nominations were not possible under Hong Kong law. 

"The students' voices and demands have been clearly heard by the special administrative region government, Hong Kong society and the central government," said Lam, seated on one side of a U-shaped table with four colleagues facing an equal number student leaders wearing black t-shirts. 

"But no matter how high the ideals, they must be strived for through legal, appropriate and rational means." 

The unprecedented open debate on democracy, that put protesters on an equal footing with Hong Kong officials who have branded their acts illegal, reflected a shift in the government's approach to engage rather than shun a movement that has lasted beyond most people's expectations.

Chief Secretary Lam was careful to note that no other nominating process exists in the Basic Law other than by nominating committee. The students of the Umbrella Movement want to abolish the constituent groups that are represented in the Hong Kong legislature and make up the nominating committee. As Michael Forsythe and Alan Wong report in "On TV, Hong Kong Openly Debates Democracy":

The students and other protesters want a more open nomination process as well as the abolition of so-called functional constituencies, which are industry, professional and social groups that are represented in Hong Kong’s legislature and in the committee that currently picks the chief executive. 

The government has rejected or ignored all of the students’ demands, except for their request to talk.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, made clear on Monday that the government would only listen to what the students had to say and explain to them how Hong Kong’s political process works. The territory has a great deal of autonomy from Beijing, and its people enjoy a broad range of civil liberties that mainland Chinese lack, including freedom of speech and assembly.

If the Umbrella Movement, seeking a more popularly democratic way to elect the chief executive of Hong Kong, dismisses the pre-selection of two or three candidates by a rigged nominating committee as a "fake," then the democracy of "the greatest nation on Earth," a.k.a., the United States is also a "fake," which it of course is.

Speaking for all plutocrats worldwide Hong Kong's top official Leung Chun-ying laid it shockingly bare the other day (which surprisingly received little comment, really no comment that I saw): that a government cannot have truly popular, wide-open nominations because then the poor will have a majority voice and they might vote themselves a welfare state. The amazing story by Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley,"Hong Kong Leader Reaffirms Unbending Stance on Elections," appeared yesterday:

HONG KONG — The Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said Monday evening that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. 

Mr. Leung made the statement during a broad-ranging defense of his administration’s handling of pro-democracy protests that have disrupted the city for more than three weeks. 

In an interview with a small group of journalists from American and European news media organizations, his first with foreign media since the city erupted in demonstrations, he acknowledged that many of the protesters are angry over the lack of social mobility and affordable housing in the city. But he argued that containing populist pressures was an important reason for resisting the protesters’ demands for fully open elections. 

Instead, he backed Beijing’s position that all candidates to succeed him as chief executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a “broadly representative” nominating committee appointed by Beijing. That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead. Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive of Hong Kong, supports Beijing’s lead role in screening the region’s future leaders.  

Mr. Leung’s blunt remarks reflect a widely held view among the Hong Kong elite [and elite world over] that the general public cannot be trusted to govern the city well. His statements appeared likely to draw fresh criticism from the democratic opposition, and to inflame the street struggle over Hong Kong’s political future.

***

Mr. Leung said that if “you look at the meaning of the words ‘broadly representative,’ it’s not numeric representation.” 

“You have to take care of all the sectors in Hong Kong as much as you can,” he said, “and if it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” 

“Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies,” he continued.

The philosophy C.Y. is espousing is of course the American way of thinking, so American it is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers were as paranoid -- if not more so -- with popular democracy as they were with monarchy or oligarchy.

So for the Gray Lady to continue to favorably spotlight the young protesters of the Umbrella Movement who are trying to implement a form of democracy that the owners and editors of the paper clearly do not support, which is to say a broadly egalitarian system, one has to note the glaring display of bad faith. This then lends weight to the notion that U.S. mainstream advocacy of the Umbrella Revolution -- something that would never be tolerated in the homeland; look at Ferguson: protesters were not allowed to stand still let alone sit down -- is part of a Color Revolution scheme "Pivot to Asia."

After what happened in Kiev last February, no wonder Beijing is paranoid.

Umbrella Revolution Folding Up After Only a Week

I should be clear. I am not opposed to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

What I am opposed to is the official narrative of the protests as told in the Western mainstream media. That narrative goes something like this: a peaceful, industrious, capitalist people struggles to free itself from the tentacles of a totalitarian Communist China by embracing the kind of democratic reform we enjoy in the egalitarian, modern West.

It is a crock of shit, a lie, part of the larger narrative of official enemies. There are bad actors on the global stage, according to the Gray Lady, and these number Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, as well as others. The official enemies found in the mainstream media almost always align with those that the U.S. State Department considers antagonists.

Take today's paper for instance. the number of major stories devoted to Occupy Hong Kong equal that of the West African Ebola outbreak. All this week there have been saturation levels of coverage of the pro-democracy protests; Occupy Wall Street never garnered anywhere near the attention.

So what are we to make of this? The obvious, I would think: We are dealing with an official enemy here, the People's Republic of China; so no expense will be spared. In the case of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), the enemy in question was the be-all and end-all of the U.S., "capitalism in one country" state itself, a nominally democratic massively plutocratic neoliberalism.

As the Hong Kong Occupy protests begin to splinter today, it is interested to note the differences and similarities with Occupy Wall Street. Of significant differences, I think there are two. First, Occupy Wall Street was very careful never to articulate specific political demands, as have the two main student groups and Occupy Central With Love and Peace have in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong the two demands are that chief executive Leung Chun-ying resign and that going forward his successor can be elected by popular vote without first being approved by a nominating committee selected by Beijing. OWS was a Utopian movement, a grand gesture rejecting pretty much the entire cultural project of the West -- its consumerism, its pay-to-play representative democracy, its pauper's wage slavery careerism. There have been indications that this sensibility is also at work in Hong Kong. Good.

Second, the street occupations in Hong Kong are more akin to what went on in Bangkok in the run up to the military coup there than Occupy Wall Street and its various epigones across the United States. OWS was very careful to choose parks, usually located downtown and relatively small, for its occupations. Marches would proceed from those spaces. But mass sit-ins at several locations of the type that protesters in Hong Kong are undertaking were never a feature of Occupy Wall Street -- for the simple reason that, without a doubt, the police would crack down quickly and harshly and be applauded in the prestige press for doing so.

The main similarity between OWS and Hong Kong is the commitment to leaderlessness and consensus in decision making and a lateral rather than hierarchical social structure. This is creating the obligatory splintering and chaos, as Austin Ramzy and Keith Bradsher describe in "Hong Kong Leader Refuses to Resign, but Deputy to Meet With Protesters":

“We don’t have a leader,” said Irene Ng, an English major at Hong Kong Baptist University. “This is trying to be a democracy, but then you try to reach a decision and you can’t. Nobody can decide. The ultimate problem is it might split us apart.” 

The protesters interviewed gave no indication that a retreat was imminent. But many wondered how long they could sustain the turnout necessary to block crucial roads in the city and just what would constitute an acceptable victory. 

Tim Lam, an engineer who said he had joined the sit-ins every day since Sunday, said he expected the occupation to last another week at most. “That’s about how long the protesters’ passion can last,” he said. “After one, two weeks of occupation, protesters would start to think about how it affects the economy, the everyday lives of people.” 

Further escalation by the protesters could alienate members of the public resentful of a demonstration that affects their daily lives. But without more aggressive steps, the protests could fade. “If we take rash actions, we may lose people’s sympathy,” said Niko Cheng, a recent college graduate and protester in Mong Kok, a densely populated area of Hong Kong on the Kowloon Peninsula. “But if this drags on — it’s already turning into a carnival, with people dancing, singing and all that — people may forget what they’re here for.” 

Prominent voices in the pro-democracy campaign have indicated that there is no consensus on what, short of an unlikely reversal of the central government’s position, would lead to an end of the protests.