I'd like to emphasize this because when I first mention this, the usual reaction, from reporters or even some ordinary citizens, is incredulity. "Surely this must be a matter of a few rogue officers!" It is difficult to conceive of an American police commander directly telling officers to grope women's breasts -- even through indirect code words. But we know that in other countries, such things definitely happen. In Egypt, for example, there was a sudden spate of sexual assaults by security forces against protestors in November and December 2011, and followed a very similar pattern: while women activists affirmed there had been beatings, but relatively few specifically sexual assaults during the height of the protests, starting in November, there were dozens of reports of women being groped or stripped while they were being beaten. The level of the violence in Egypt may have been more extreme, but the circumstances were identical: an attempt to revive a protest movement through re-occupation is met by a sudden ratcheting up of tactics by the security forces, and in particular, the sudden dramatic appearance of a tactic of sexual attacks on women. It is hard to imagine in either case it was a coincidence. In Egypt, no serious observer is even suggesting that it was.
Of course we cannot know how such decisions are made, or conveyed; in
fact, most of us find it unpleasant even to contemplate the idea of
police officials ordering or encouraging sexual assault against the very
citizens they are sworn to protect. But this seems to be precisely what
is happening here.
For many, the thought of police officials ordering or condoning sexual
assault -- even if just through a nod or a wink -- seems so shocking that
absolute proof would be required. But is it really so out of character?
As Naomi Wolf has recently reminded us, the US security apparatus has
long "used sexual humiliation as a tool of control." Any experienced
activist is aware of the delight police officers so often take in
explaining just how certainly they will be raped if placed in prison.
Strip searches -- which the Supreme Court has recently ruled can be
deployed against any citizen held for so much as a traffic violation -- are
often deployed as a tool of humiliation and punishment. And one need
hardly remark on well-documented practices at Guantanamo, Bagram, or Abu
Ghraib. Why target women in particular? No doubt it's partly simply the
logic of the bully, to brutalize those you think are weak, and more
easily traumatized. But another reason is, almost certainly, the hope of
provoking violent reactions on the part of male protestors. I myself
well remember a police tactic I observed more than once during the World
Economic Forum demonstrations in New York in 2002: a plainclothes
officer would tackle a young female marcher, without announcing of who
they were, and when one or two men would gallantly try to come to her
assistance, uniforms would rush in and arrest them for "assaulting an
officer."
The logic makes perfect sense to someone with military background. Soldiers who oppose allowing a combat role for women almost invariably say they do so not because they are afraid women would not behave effectively in battle, but because they are afraid men would not behave effectively in battle if women were present -- that is, that they would become so obsessed with the possibility of women in their unit being captured and sexually assaulted that they would behave irrationally. If the police were trying to provoke a violent reaction on the part of studiously non-violent protestors, as a way of justifying even greater brutality and felony charges, this would clearly be the most effective means of doing so.
There's a good deal of anecdotal evidence that would tend to confirm that this is exactly what they are trying to do. One of the most peculiar incidents took place on a recent march in New York where police seem to have simulated such an assault, arresting a young women who most activists later concluded was probably an undercover officer (no one had seen her before or has seen her since), then ostentatiously groping her as she was handcuffed. Reportedly, several male protestors had to be physically restrained (by other protestors) from charging in to help her.
Why is all this not a national story? Back in September, when the now famous Tony Bologna arbitrarily maced several young women engaged in peaceful protest, the event became a national news story. In March, even while we were still hearing heated debates over a single incident of window-breaking that may or may not have been by an OWS activist in Oakland four months earlier, no one seems to have paid any significant attention to the first major incident of window-breaking in New York -- even though the window was broken, by police, apparently, using a non-violent protester's head!
I suspect one reason so many shy away from confronting the obvious is because it raises extremely troubling questions about the role of police in American society. Most middle class Americans see the primary role of police as maintaining public order and safety. Instances when police are clearly trying to foment violence and disorder for political purposes so fly in the face of everything we have been taught that our instinct is to tell ourselves it isn't happening: there must have been some provocation, or else, it must have just been individual rogue cops. Certainly not something ordered by the highest echelons. But here we have to remember the police are an extremely top-down, centralized organization. Uniformed officers simply cannot behave in ways that flagrantly defy the law, in full public view, on an ongoing basis, without having at least tacit approval from those above.
In this case, we also know precisely who those superiors are. The commander of the First Precinct, successor to the disgraced Tony Bologna, is Captain Edward J. Winski, whose officers patrol the Financial District (that is, when those very same officers are not being paid directly by Wall Street firms to provide security, which they regularly do, replete with badges, uniforms, and weapons). Winski often personally directs groups of police attacking protestors:
Winsky's superior is Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, former director of global security of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns:
And Kelly's superior, in turn, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- the well-known former investment banker and Wall Street magnate. The 11th richest man in America, he has referred to the New York City Police Department as his own personal army:
One of the great themes of Occupy Wall Street, of course, is the death of US democracy -- the near-total capture of our political system by Wall Street firms and the financial power of the 1%. In the beginning the emphasis was on political corruption, the fact that both parties are so beholden to the demands of Wall Street and corporate lobbyists that working within the political system to change anything has become simply meaningless. Recent events have demonstrated just how much deeper the power of money really goes. It is not just the political class. It is the very structure of American government, starting with the law and those who are sworn to enforce it -- police officers who, as even this brief illustration makes clear, are directly in the pay of and under the orders of Wall Street executives, and who, as a result, are willing to systematically violate their oaths to protect the public when members of that public have the temerity to make a public issue out of exactly these kind of arrangements.
As Gandhi revealed, non-violent protest is effective above all because it reveals how power really operates: it lays bare the violence it is willing to unleash on even the most peaceful citizens when they dare to challenge its moral legitimacy. And by doing so, it reveals the true moral bankruptcy of those who claim authority to rule us. Occupy Wall Street has demonstrated this time and time again. What the current spate of assaults shows is just how low, to what levels of utter moral degradation, such men are really willing to sink.
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