Occupiers, Watch Out For Provocateurs

[Mimosa]

I am a veteran of anti-war protests, civil rights and other demonstrations during the late 60s and early 70s.

You all need to keep it peaceful like Gandhi and MLK Jr. But you know that. :)

The other side wants to start TROUBLE to discredit us.

There are more recent examples like the 'anti-gay preachers' in Los Angeles. Those are obviously retired old mercs who need money. :7 No 'preachers even in the right wing look like them. :7

But the worst types are even sneakier. They may even pose as journalists. There are photos at the link.

http://www.inthemindfield.com/2011/10/24/bring-in-the-drones-provocateurs-and-moral-protest/

After a pepper spray melee October 8th at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC in which several people I know were painfully sprayed, it was revealed that one of at least two provocateurs whipping up the guards and cops was a writer from a right-wing magazine, The American Spectator.

“As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator — and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story,” wrote Patrick Howley, an editorial assistant at The American Spectator.

Op-ed News photographer Cheryl Biren was at the museum and noticed a beefy man in a black t-shirt whose aggressive actions seemed to her the actions of a “provocateur.” She sent out a query with photos she’d taken of the man to see if anyone knew who he was. He’s seen charging a guard in Biren’s photo below; the man directly behind him in a tan jacket is Patrick Howley.


Those of us who have worked for decades as non-violent antiwar peace activists talk about these sorts of individuals in cretinous terms. They are the bane of our existence. Why? Because they intentionally whip things up to distract from a non-violent protest’s intended message. They do this by provoking the police into what might be called cop-riot-mode where officers feel their sense of control is threatened and, thus, indiscriminately begin whacking people with batons and/or spraying them with pepper spray to retain that control.

This is exactly what happened October 8th at the Air and Space Museum, where these men and possibly others shoved their way into the museum lobby and helped create a melee out of what was to be a non-violent, moral protest of the US drone program.

[starroute]

1. There's an additional problem with provocateurs

The several threads today referring to a court decision against the unrestrained use of pepper spray on non-violent demonstrators made me think about Earth First! -- since they were the organization involved in that case. And I started to remember all the crap that went down when I was subscribing to the Earth First! Journal in the late 1980s and early 90s.

This is from memory, but basically the government sent a provocateur to infiltrate one small local group and prod them into an act of sabotage -- I think it was against an environmentally destructive ski lift. This led to charges not only those against involved in planning the action but also against a founder of the movement, who was hauled in for conspiracy under the RICO statute solely because he'd written a book that encouraged monkey-wrenching. If I remember correctly, he then accepted a plea bargain that required him to testify against the others -- and the whole thing ended with bad feelings all the way around, and Earth First! never fully recovered.

This is the sort of thing the government tends to do. More than that -- since they're not very good at coming up with original ideas, this is something they're almost certain to try to do. The current phase of direct crackdown will assuredly be succeeded by one in which they try to identify the "leaders" of OWS and find ways to discredit them -- either in the eyes of the general public or with the movement at large.

So not letting random street-corner provocateurs incite violence is one thing. But a far more serious concern is not letting more credible infiltrators incite felonies that could become a basis for arrests, conspiracy charges, and plea bargains -- as well as grand juries and that whole horror show.