In Ohio, we protested SB-5 side by side with cops. Now I see the brutality with the tactics in several OWS cities and must admit that I'm conflicted. So here's what's going on in my mind:
I have friends who are cops. I have respect for the ones who enter the field for the right reasons. Like any professional field, there's a certain number of people who are in it for the wrong reasons. Usually it's a very small percentage, but you can't say that about every field.
A couple of points: Public service positions are held to a higher level of scrutiny (i.e. cops, teachers). Most folks here disagree with the tactic of taking those "bad teacher" stories as a smear on the whole profession. But the "bad cop" stories are eagerly painted on the profession with a broad brush. I don't think it's entirely fair, but it's also hard to defend. Here's why I think so:
It's not so much the "bad apples" that piss people off. If you look at the many issues that brought this movement on in the first place, accountability is at the heart of many of them. Wall Street, regulators, elected officials, and now police. It's the lack of self-policing within the profession. It pisses freepers off when a bad-apple teacher is protected by their union. It pisses us off when bad cops are protected by "the code of silence"
So instead of an antagonistic stance against the entire profession, one of our demands should be that cops - like banksters - should be held accountable for their actions. Same problem with politicians. They should be accountable for maintaining certain standards of conduct. And if they won't hold themselves accountable within their own industry, then an outside force needs to do it. Since ever other entity built into the system for this has failed, it's come down to us to do this.
"Fuck the Police" is not a demand for accountability, and stirring up blanket anti-cop sentiment is not helping us resolve anything. It's actually more of the same and hypocritical in more ways than just being a lazy smear. It implies that we don't want to be held accountable for laws that may be broken while we protest. Nonviolent civil disobedience means sometimes breaking the law & getting arrested. We get that. In Cincinnati, peaceful protesters would line up to receive their citation. The punishment fit the crime and everybody got along...
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111010/NEWS01/111010028/Occupy-Cincinnati-protesters-line-up-citations-park-closes. I thought that was a pretty cool OWS moment.
When the black bloc starts shit, who's holding them accountable? They may be actual anarchists, or they may be cops sent to stir things up. But either way, shouldn't we be policing our own, and demand the same for every player in this? Occupy Oakland addresses this directly and appropriately:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2098891,00.htmlThere has already been times where OWS has been smeared for the actions of a few individuals. The cops, the media, the right wing are all eagerly waiting for that one fuck-up that will sink the entire movement. And there will continue to be fuck-ups and people who are intentionally trying to smear the movement from the inside. If we defend this, then it's not much different from legitimate mortgage brokers defending their predatory colleagues, or a bad cop being protected by "good cops". We need to hold ourselves to high standards as we demand the same of others.
OWS is evolving, as it must. The direction I want to see it go needs to involve a strong self-policing element to it. In the absence of justice, that's all we have to set an example and hopefully make accountability important again.
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