Weekend Economists Merry Little Christmas December 23-26, 2011

[Demeter]

40. NYPD Continues to Harass, Arrest Video Streamers & Journalists Covering the Occupy Movement By Yasha

http://exiledonline.com/domestic-war-on-press-freedom-nypd-continues-to-harass-arrest-video-streamers-journalists-covering-the-occupy-movement/

I gotta say, this newfangled live phone cam streaming technology is off the hook. Now anyone with an Android and an unlimited data plan can stream amazing embedded protest footage from anywhere to anyone–all of it in real time. Forget CNN’s 24-hour cable news revolution. This is CWNN–the Class War News Network.

Last Saturday I was at home in Venice, California, glued to the screen watching a live Ustream feed from Manhattan, where a few thousand protesters gathered to celebrate the three-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and to march on Times Square. It was being broadcast by the hardworking citizen journos of wearetheother99, and was packed with all sorts of class-war action you’d never see on TV: kettling maneuvers; cops on scooters trying to ram protesters just like those Ahmadinejad protest goons on bikes, with some dude on the street yelling “get off the bike, pussy!”; and a bunch of brutal and seemingly random arrests, including a close-up of a couple of cops tackling a biker and punching him in the face because he wouldn’t let got of his bicycle. There were some great scenes of protesters sprinting through stalled Manhattan traffic, trying to frantically outflank a police line moving in to pin them down on some narrow street–all while the camera guy narrated the action: “The police vehicles just can’t get in. There’s too many cars. The people are running too quickly and they’re too dispersed….I’m not sure how long I can keep running. My legs are really cramping up.”

While all this was going on, the NYPD was apparently busy targeting certain protesters for extraction. At some point the, the stream caught the tail end of what people on the scene described as a targeted arrest of a pacer–someone who had been chosen to keep the protest march on track and lead it along a certain route. Apparently the guy had been tazed, and you could see him being carried away to a paddy wagon while a couple of mounted cops kept the crowd away. Without someone in the driver’s seat leading the group, the procession quickly ground to a halt, and people stood around squabbling about which way they should go. If the NYPD’s goal was to slow down and fragment the march, then that one targeted arrest worked like a charm.

Speaking of disruption and the jamming of information…

Remember how in November, Bloomberg and the NYPD got a lot of heat from the city’s media establishment for the arrest rampage they unleashed on journalists covering the eviction raid on Liberty Plaza? Cops arrested more than two dozen accredited journalists from major news outlets, including the New York Post, NPR, AFP and The Associated Press. Hell, cops even clubbed a couple of reporters for the baggertarian rag The Daily Caller. As a result, New York’s police commissioner made a big show of issuing an order that instructed police officers not to interfere with journalists covering OWS.

But clearly that was just for show.

Because this month the NYPD has gone out of its way to harass and arrest journalists covering OWS, especially targeting live streamers and indie journalists who can’t be counted on for propaganda support like the mainstream folks. According to Free Press’ Josh Stearns, who has been maintaining a list of journalists arrested while covering the Occupy Movement across the country, at least five journalists and seven live streamers were arrested by the NYPD in the first half of December....MANY INCIDENTS SINCE...You gotta wonder if these intimidation tactics against journalists and news media will work to stifle coverage like it has in the past. Or will it backfire, creating shared grievances and experiences between journalists and protesteRs, and solidifying media’s sympathy for the Occupy movement?