Damn No 1
LadyImpactOhio has given us a heads-up on a series of rolling protests beginning with the Day of Rage in New York on Saturday. It was designed to be like the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square (with many of the same union sponsors) which brought down a moderate pro-West authoritarian, Mubarak, and replaced it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood. On its face the Day of Rage is designed to shut down Wall Street and parts of the banking sector in New York City.
After that? “Let’s just see how lucky we can get.”
Several similar events are scheduled in Sept-Oct, worldwide, all with a common objective; chaos.
“We consider the entire island of Manhattan and even the Citicorp building in Long Island City, Queens to be ‘Wall Street’. The NYPD may kettle or blockade Wall Street, but they cannot kettle or blockage (sic) Manhattan.” (from their website)
There is a sub-text (my words, not theirs):
If we get lucky, somebody will hit, shoot, stab, club, or kick somebody else and the whole thing will get out of hand.
This is an old anti-war tactic from the 60s-70s; lure enough kids to a place, get them juiced on beer and dope, feeling their inner urban warrior selves…and a few handlers can turn them into any kind 0f mob they want. All they have to do is get lucky. Push the envelope, and within a day or two those original 20,000 can swell to 200,000. Tents will pop up. And the cops won’t be able to contain them.
Then it will be an occupation.
This event is scheduled for a Saturday, so apparently the strategy isn’t to lock Wall Street brokers in, but rather, come Monday, if the dam breaks, to lock them out. (Berkeley, 1964)
There has been enough advanced intel on this entire process, a lot of could have been done to deter, impede or even prevent things getting out of hand. This is both political and financial (corporate) so no one seems impelled (yet) to spend assets getting out in front of these kinds of radicals, but we’re past that now, for New York at least. But if this indeed becomes a snowball, our side may never be able to get out in front of it. (That is called a successful sneak attack in plain sight as when a bunch of people show up, as expected, lock arms as expected and do a snake dance, as expected, then get hauled off to the paddy wagon, as expected…only this time they don’t.)
The cops in NYC are on top of this, intelligence-wise, I’m sure, and are probably equipped for the standard amount of rowdy behavior and disruptions. St Louis cops got lucky on this account a month ago. The banks and Wall Street are also aware, and are taking, (we assume) necessary precautions to protect lives and property.
But exact justice? Deter?
Pay attention to the sub-text, above. Those are my words, but make no doubt about it, there is a willingness, even a tactical preparedness for things to get out of hand, with some tools ready-at-hand to spread the fire. How that spark may be lit is anyone’s guess as I doubt there will be counter-protests, so it will hard to pick fights with on-lookers. After all these protesters aren’t Westboro Baptist Church, who bring their own counter-protests with them. This will start out as a standard cop vs mob confrontation, where the mob will, like G8 summits, probe and test the cops’ patience.
I hope NYC police are good at preventive law enforcement, for I already know that Mayor Bloomberg hasn’t the stomach for cracking down, or cracking heads, as Mayor Richard Daley did in 1968, it things get out of hand. I assume this is also part of the organizers’ assumptions.
Explaining the Rage
A note here: the idiot planners behind this event, guys like Stephen Lerner, who came from the same classrooms as Obama, think the banking sector and stock market are the cause of capitalism, when in fact they are its result.
Since the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, more and more wage earners, going way down the income ladder, have been investing their money the same way rich fat-cats do.. 401K’s have been a principal vehicle. The working classes have had a vested interest in both Wall Street and the banking sector.
Result: Getting middle class investors out of the market has been a major objective of the Left since the Clinton days.
That’s the real rage of which they speak. It is political, it is not financial or corporate.
The Dam Break #2
I don’t plan to see a lot of citizen, by-stander participation in New York this weekend. But it’s a great lead into the kind of mood the country’s being set up for, much like the riots of summer ’67. It was a convergence of race, anti-war and radical leftist agitprop, where soon no one knew what was what. Just chaos.
Behind all these activities now, often as a silent partner, as they were in Athens, Cairo, and in St Louis, are the unions. There will be union hirelings, instigators, provocateurs, whatever you want to call them, among the young lefties who will gather on Saturday.
Now this is not their typical gig, but there is a Big labor finger print, if not a heavy hand, on all these events.
We need to be aware of them now, for they are the de facto military arm of the Democrat Party, and analysts such as myself have to look at them in this way.
You no doubt noticed the raised rhetoric by the Tweedles Dee and Dum of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumpka and Jimmy Hoffa, Jr in recent days. A new guest writer here, HoneyBadger, calls them “girlie-men”.
But while union bosses may wear skirts out of deference to their bosses in the government, they do have money, and can afford to buy some heavy-duty assets to do whatever needs to be done. These assets won’t be hard to find in New York on Saturday as they will be the ones wearing coach’s shorts and steel-toed loggers’ boots…calling out for pizza.
There will be people in New York taking notes. Still others will be taking pictures. A few will even be taking names. And even the authorities, Homeland Security (DHS) will be there as well, for whatever purpose they have,
The problem with events like this in NYC is union goons normally don’t have anyone to pick a fight with.
My advice is this as to the wisest citizen’s response, should you be in the area (or others coming to cities near you):
There are ways to take care of union goons, but a pitched street-battle isn’t the way. With loopy kids, the old rolled up newspaper works fine. It is even a fair truncheon to the gut, but only once. With goons, I recommend a retreat.
Far better is to stand at a distance and take notes, names and pics, but less of the goons that the onlookers, for are they not already recorded in the Book of Annals of the Thugs of Goonion, and rest with their ancestors, for they did what was displeasing in God’s eyes? (I Thugs 10:32)
For instance, if police stand-by and watch, this is news we can use. We can do things to them we cannot do to goons, such as shine a public spotlight on them. Some cops act alone, some out of solidarity with other cops, some because they are told do stand down…perhaps by a squad leader, but also perhaps by police union boss. As we saw with the SEIU seige in Connecticut in 2009, there is always an element of coordination with police and some town officials.
Our job is to find out who they are, and seek a reckoning there.
Goons can drive in from Jersey, even fly in for special duties, but these cops on the beat, and the chains of command, including civilians at the precinct and borough level, who are complicit (accessories before the fact) in acts injurious to people and property, are far more reachable by citizens. Get their names.
The ugly truth is that the unions and Left have joined hands to try to incite ordinary citizens to strike out at them….first. They have a purpose in this.
We have to deny them that. Hold your temper, hold your formation, then get to higher ground. Travel in pairs, up to fours, fives. Move around. Try not to look like a sentinel.
Then watch to see what the police do when the damn breaks.
For if it breaks big, we have to know whose side they will be on.
Then bide your time.
