With the Mayor's complaint de-legitimized, #OCCUPY went on the offensive. It personalized the eviction move. It located Bloomberg. He was at a gala dinner at Ciprianis (a Wall Street restaurant!). They surrounded the restaurant and tried to enter it to deliver a petition with 310,000 signatures. Bloomberg hid, departed from the rear. In short order the deputy mayor announced that the eviction was cancelled!
Remember, every situation is unique, but general group intelligence strategies apply.
Here are some guidelines:
Go straight for the man . Maximize the taint of an authority's actions on his personal brand. Blame him personally. Pierce his shield of bureaucratic impersonality. For example, #OCCUPY branded the park eviction with the name: BLOOMBERG. This is a global stage. Let's use it. The reputation of the president /mayor /CEO /general /police chief may not matter much to you, but it certainly matters to him.
Confuse him . Respond to his attack with lots and lots of flashmobs. Go for non-violent system disruption. Shut down bridges and major streets. Overwhelm the system with actions of unprecedented speed and unpredictable volume. As soon as the police arrive in force, disperse and reassemble at new locations. Bikes plus Kids. Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. More flashmobs equals more disruption. As long as you are under attack in one place, keep the city tied up in knots at other places. NOTE: If they lock down your area, flashmobs are the best way to participate. (Plus, as an added benefit, in running from location to location you get some needed exercise!)
Connect with more people than him . Best way to do this: Eyes in the sky. Get cameras above your action, for example. Stream the feed. The better the quality the more impact it will have. It will play across the world. Think about how important AJs video feed over Tahrir was when things got hot. Better yet, get AJ to cover it and stream it.
Success story. The flashmob tactic was tried in Panama a couple of years ago by the SUNTRACS construction workers union. With very small groups pre-planted all over the city they drove the police absolutely crazy. Police would show up at location A, the mob would disperse immediately, two text messages and then flashmobs would simultaneously block streets at locations B and C. This worked very well and with much fewer people than #OCCUPY has available. Encourage multiple #OCCUPY flashmob teams to self-organize and operate in parallel!
Continue to exist. Logistics are important. Think ahead. Cold weather is coming fast freezing food, water, everything in a few weeks. #OCCUPY will get tough, impossible with snow blowing. Instead of slowly giving it up and going home with frostbite, consider abandoning the parks. Why not do the "very small groups pre-planted all over the city for flashmobs" all winter long from warm apartments? Print an apartment hospitality directory, or put it online, like the Mennonite Your Way Directory www.mennoniteyourway.com/ It's time for tribal living.
Become Lady Randomfactor. Many random events that are out of control will wear down and use up the Jabberwock's resources. With such a disproportionate cost ratio between your actions and the Jabberwock's reactions, the Jabberwock is nonviolently bleeding itself to death.
Then become Lord Critical Mass. Except, instead of every Friday, pick one random, unpredictable day (or a couple days) each week to #OCCUPY with a critical mass of people (meaning, enough people to attract attention and cause an impact). Five hundred police come out on Monday expecting the crowd from Sunday to still be there, but people have mysteriously vanished and downtown looks like a Police State. By Wednesday there are only fifty police left, and then suddenly thousands of #OCCUPYers show up there, warm, fed, showered, shaved, and feeling quite chipper, even in the middle of winter.
4. HOW TO DISARM A POLICE OFFICER
These are notes from a video taken October 11, 2011, featuring Chicago lawyer Jerry Boyle of National Lawyers Guild giving a street workshop to #OCCUPYCHICAGO. It contains valuable legal and strategic information for protesters everywhere. It's an hour long, but completely engaging and well worth watching. It is posted at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17807926 by Linda Ross.
Police are trained to think within five legal definitions of force:
- Physical presence -- a show of force is equal to the use of force.
- Verbal direction -- instructions and commands.
- Empty hand control -- no weapons. Physical contact.
- Intermediate weapons systems -- pepper spray, baton.
- Lethal force.
In an interaction with police, you have the power to determine to what degree of force the situation escalates. For example, if an officer speaks to you and you ignore him, you force him to escalate his force. He must speak louder or get angry to get your attention.
Therefore, in non-violent #OCCUPY actions, you can de-escalate force by looking police officers directly in the eyes. Most police officers already sympathize with the goals of #OCCUPY. You can demonstrate compliance with their physical presence and verbal direction by acknowledging them, listening to what they say, and repeating back what you understood. You do not necessarily have to do what they say, but if you stay in relationship with them, acknowledging them, listening and speaking with them (perhaps even being kind to them) then there is a good chance the force can be kept at the verbal level.
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