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Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police

173 points by nameless_noob 15y ago

nameless_noob 15y ago
What drew me to this article was it's discussion of the tactics a unorganized group can do and try all at once. A neat superposition of several topics. Like a glorified case of the wisdom of crowds.
- christkv 15y ago
  unfortunately any mass movement is dependent on being able to apply political pressure. It might work if there is a growing momentum and you end up with an 'orange' revolution. Most likely it's going to simply die out by itself unless it can actually transform into a political force. Being in Spain I can tell you the protests accomplished nothing, changed nothing politically and ended up dissolving themselves once it got cold.
  - calibraxis 15y ago
    Yes, I personally think that if these Occupy movements result in organizing long-term institutions which help people, then they're successful. Lurid riot porn is not a victory condition. One problem is the attitude mentioned in the article: "This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses." (Keep in mind that the US imprisons its populace far more than any other nation, so this is no joke.) I read this rebuttal recently: "Getting arrested as an unavoidable consequence of standing up for a cause is noble; getting arrested as a voluntary, symbolic act is widely considered bizarre, at best. Moreover, it frustrates huge sectors of the movement who see an opportunity cost to the resources that go into unnecessary jail support, bail, and legal costs. Perhaps worst of all, voluntary arrest is seen by members of especially targeted communities as flaunting arrestees’ race and class privilege." (http://www.zcommunications.org/pacifism-and-diversity-of-tactics-a-compromise-proposal-by-brian-dominick http://www.zcommunications.org/pacifism-and-diversity-of-tac...)
    - westicle 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks It might be bizarre, but it is also historically effective.
      - calibraxis 15y ago
        Yeah, those examples are discussed in the ZCommunications article, as effective in only some situations. ("True as this is, don’t forget that these movements were addressing state and societal brutality against entire groups of people as the primary focus of their strategy; state violence was thus an illustration of their point. In the case of a holistic movement primarily focused on elite rule instead of state repression, police violence is a distraction. It may earn you sympathies, but it does not help to make your point in any clearly illustrative manner, as it did in these examples.")
  - dotBen 15y ago
    On this point: while they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the Occupy movement has a lot of structural similarities to the Tea Part movement. The sad thing about grassroots politics in the US is that the conservative grassroots movements, like Tea Party, form loose, non-hierarchical yet highly organized coalitions where as the liberals end up going lowest-common-denominator and form protest groups. The problem is that the political system in America is geared up to accept pressure from political groups like Tea Party but isn't particularly affected by protect groups on the street. As a liberal I find it depressing that folks refuse to take on the political system at it's own game like the Tea Partiers have done.
    - bitwize 15y ago
      The Tea Party people think they're opposing particular liberal policies. The Occupy movement is rebelling against an entire POWER STRUCTURE, the entire hierarchy backed by corporate funding, which funding also pays the GOP apparatchiks that started the Tea Party.
graupel 15y ago
Sounds like the way Critical Mass (cycling) rides in Chicago work - with no pre-set route the police join in and make sure no one gets hurt but they can't really push the ride in one direction or another - the 'hive' decides where to go. With 5,000 to 10,000 people it's a pretty huge event/example.
- neilk 15y ago
  That's not specific to Chicago. All Critical Mass rides work that way.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  Critical Mass is a good example of how not to gain sympathy for one's cause. Blocking traffic, running red lights, and shouting at or kicking cars of people trying to commute home after a long workday does not endear bicyclists to drivers. In San Francisco, the riders are sometimes known as "Critical Massholes".
corin_ 15y ago
I don't know if this is a difference between UK and US police tactics, or if it's specific to Portland - I also don't know if it's the case that the difference was caused by not caring as much or just by not being as successful: UK police have done a much better job in the past, and rendered this article nonsense. The key difference: > Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks. If the police have such small numbers that they cannot afford to take any manpower away from the back of the march then yes, obviously this is the case. But really, with police vans offering fast transport there is no reason they cannot prevent a moving demonstration from moving. Obviously, budget comes into play, for example police helicopters can help them see what is going on and help them create tactics to counter it. An example of what I'm talking about is Kettling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling), a term which has only really gained popularity in the press in the last few years, but police (at least in the UK) have used this method for a hell of a long time - not always as viciously as the image most people think of for the term now, that of demonstrators being stuck and not allowed out for hours and hours.
- devs1010 15y ago
  I think this may have to do with cultural and geographic distances. U.S. cities, for the most part, may not be as easy to do something like kettling in as most are less dense than U.K. cities and may simply have more open space to cover to effectively "kettle" people and contain them to one area. Also, although the police are clearly acting as if they are militants at war, they still don't want the non-protesting population to feel as if they are under martial law so sectioning off a large part of a city with police in riot gear and chasing protestors around to where everyone sees this going on would probably hurt their cause more than help it.
  - radicalbyte 15y ago
    You shouldn't discount 25 years of experience trying to control football (soccer) hooligans in the UK has given the police a lot of experienced bodies and equipment (i.e. horses) to help implement such tactics. Plus, in the UK the cops aren't generally armed with anything more than a club. So they have to use their heads a bit more. This is what happens when UK cops get guns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze...
Anechoic 15y ago
"Get the music blaring [...]" This piece of advice will get people fined (and possibly arrested) for violating noise ordinances in many municipalities. You're better off marching silently.
- jfoster 15y ago
  If you're particularly worried about getting fined/arrested, then blocking traffic is also going to be a problem.
- colonelxc 15y ago
  The police were already announcing that people marching through the streets and blocking traffic were going to be arrested anyway, so it's not like marching silently would save them from the threat of arrest.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  They're already violating a lot of ordinances - a few more won't matter much.
  - dmix 15y ago
    I imagine thats how tons of kids justified breaking into stores during the Vancouver hockey riots.
    - nerfhammer 15y ago
      Those would be felonies though
andrewflnr 15y ago
If you want to destroy civilization, this is a pretty good start. Good practice anyway. But if you want to make positive change, forcing police to resort to brutality to restore order for people who are just trying to live their lives is stupid. Edit: instead of downvoting, try to explain why this is a good idea.
- barrkel 15y ago
  Your argument seems to be that anything other than obedience of authority means destruction of civilization, and sounds hyperbolic and reactionary. Apply that principle to apartheid, British Raj, Tahrir, etc. and see how it looks.
  - andrewflnr 15y ago
    Non-violent resistance to injustice is one thing. Indefinitely evading police for little other purpose, that I can see, of getting in the way is another. I'm not quite sure where the line is, but this kind of thing scares me. If a person or group deliberately incites law enforcement to escalate the level of violence in the performance of their duty, are they not partially responsible for that violence? Are their goals worth having that responsibility? They seem to be doing it specifically to get a "PR loss by the police department". What purpose does that serve, in the long run, except to undermine people's respect for the government? Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. It is supplemented by force/violence in various degrees, but most of the time it's only conditioning and conscience that keeps people in check. The restraints of force and conditioning are swept aside by just such measures as these. The article frankly uses military terminology. These are the tools of governmental overthrow, and I believe they are being used recklessly.
    - ldh 15y ago
      > Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. That sounds pretty much exactly backwards from any society I want to be a part of. I don't exist in service of a government, but can choose to tolerate a government that provides value to me.
blurbytree 15y ago
What has this got to do with HN?
tptacek 15y ago
So here's HN in 2012: the Hiring Thread, which leads this month with a chorus of comments about how effective HN has been for finding people awesome jobs or companies awesome candidates, is at the bottom of the front page just a few hours after submission. Meanwhile, "Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police" is at the top. It's unsurprising. The kinds of people who are interested in Occupy protest tactics are very vociferously interested. The kinds of people who are interested in the hiring thread aren't nearly as engaged with that topic (or, those who are aren't numerous). "Real", on-topic HN threads are at a systemic disadvantage to advocacy topics like Occupy. Flagged, for whatever good that will do.
- mhartl 15y ago
  I almost flagged this, too, but the article kind of describes a hack. I agree that it's marginal, though, and I could go either way on this one.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  Perhaps it's just that one submission is five times older than the other, as of this comment.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    It's a few hours old, and arguably the most productive recurring thread on the site. Subjectively (but you can take my word for this), the hiring thread used to be pinned to the top for a day --- I presume this was not because of something 'pg punched into a REPL.
- blurbytree 15y ago
  As t→∞, HN→Reddit
- quinndupont 15y ago
  Huh, suddenly very important political discussion is "off-topic"? I'll admit, it isn't standard fare for HN, but I'd say, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
mhartl 15y ago
The military analogy is broken. The hack isn't to use the superiority of "light infantry" over "heavy infantry", etc. The reason the protestors can "take a park" even when the police oppose them is because they operate in a political system where the police can't fire on crowds. You probably think this is always a good thing. That's the hack.
- quinndupont 15y ago
  They can't fire live rounds, but they sure can (and do) fire rubber bullets, flash grenades, tear gas, sound cannons, and tear gas.
  - ms4720 15y ago
    Completely different situations: 1: worse case in current situation, I may break a bone or get a concussion followed with medical attention and bragging rights with my peers 2: fire bullets into crowd, lots of people die. Or think about using flame throwers for crowd control
    - WanderingEnder 15y ago
      As far as the less lethal situation, using impact rounds can result in death. Fluidity of the crowd, improper use of the launcher, pure dumb luck can all play a role in where rounds land. People can, and have, died from direct fire with less lethals including the FN-303 Paint Marking launcher, various 12 gauge skip fire and direct fire munitions, 37mm gas munitions, and 40mm direct fire less lethal and gas munitions. While some rounds are designed for close quarters direct fire, many are not, and having a 40mm CS grenade hit you upside the head can be lethal.
      - ms4720 15y ago
        All right there is some risk but in general it is not perceived/judged to be a risk by the people making the decisions to protest.
      - 15y ago
namidark 15y ago
They're still around? Why dont they go protest where it matters in Washington infront of Congress et al instead of on private property or places that make small businesses lose business.
oldstrangers 15y ago
So their ground breaking discovery for outsmarting the police is to ... leave and then come back. And maybe play some music. The Art of War style write up is humorously grandiose for something so silly. These people take themselves entirely too seriously. On another note, pay attention to whats happening over on Reddit and their attempt to unseat Paul Ryan in protest of SOPA/PIPA. They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something that might actually have an effect. Ultimately, the 72 hours or so that Reddit has taken up this initiative is already appearing more effective than months of misguided OWS noise. Going back even further, look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. Get out of the streets already and go actually make a difference with some concentrated focus and brain power.
- easy_rider 15y ago
  Agreed, this should only be upped for how stupid it is.
- devs1010 15y ago
  Agreed, I am all for reform but we need to outsmart them, from what I've read lately it seems online activity, like that of Reddit, has effected more change than the in-person protests. The problem is that change won't happen overnight, its a gradual process to awaken more and more people to whats actually going on and get each person to do their small part to help change things.
- jberryman 15y ago
  > These people take themselves entirely too seriously. > ... > look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. What exactly is your metric for success here? A sleazy company changed their stance on a bill that the public is completely unaware of and couldn't give two shits about? I think "the internet" is taking itself too seriously. Meanwhile a nation-wide protest movement has at the very least succeeded in planting the issue of systemic economic injustice into mainstream public discourse on a daily basis. History may show OWS to be the catalyst for the resurrection of a real progressive movement in America.
Shenglong 15y ago
Gist of the article: They don't have to occupy jobs, so they can win their war of attrition.
pvarangot 15y ago
Please if you think you will ever take part in a protest, for the sake of your own safety and that of your co-protestors, don't read this article. Or if you already did, don't take it seriously. It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people. I do agree with most of what Occupy is about, but if the writer of this post is trying to make any political point, he is failing. Also, I think that a blog and an HN thread are so not the place to learn about how to safely occupy public space and how to participate in a protest, that I simply don't understand how hard some are trying for it to be that place...
- shadowsun7 15y ago
  >It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people. Why is his content wrong? I'm not saying it isn't - I just think more people would pay heed to your warning if you can give concrete reasons (plus, I'm curious).
  - pvarangot 15y ago
    You can find some of my opinion about the content in my other reply in this thread. Also, the whole rummaging about light infantry and heavy infantry is completely wrong, short of some movies I really don't know where the author actually saw the kind of formation he seems to think is standard. He also gets retreats completely wrong. If your adversary is competent he will actually encourage a retreat since his objective is not decimating your forces but keeping ground, that is why it's always easy to run away from the police in protests... not because retreat "conveys a tactical superiority". If you are lets say holding higher ground, or for example participating in a siege, retreat may mean you are coming back home completely decimated. Getting further into this would sort of actually be against my own perception of HN not being the place to discuss how to securely protest. I'll also like to keep the internet as free as possible of myself advocating civil disobedience in a country I'm not a citizen of.
motoford 15y ago
The writer should use his superior "military style" tactics to get a job. Maybe their plan worked because the police decided it wasn't worth wading thru their feces and syringes every few hours.
georgieporgie 15y ago
I think Occupy is the most interesting (and, yes, annoying, but that's part of the method) political development in recent history. This article, however, was very long, with little meaningful content, and I don't see how it's of particular interest to HN. Flagged.
josephkern 15y ago
The author: 1. Underestimates the superiority and effectiveness of the Command and Control of the police force 2. Overestimates the superiority of a mob vs a phalanx. 3. Makes generalized assumptions over why the police allowed them to stay. 4. Assumes that the police will not use their formation with calvary (automobiles, aricraft, and actual horses) as a means of denying the flank or the retreat. This reads like someone who just went through a college course in ancient combat and has little practical experience in the matter of Command and Control or strategic thinking.
cpeterso 15y ago
To keep the park, one must leave the park. Why the military tactics and metaphors? Many occupiers seem more interested in "fuckin' shit up" than expressing a message. In Oakland, the city was willing to let people assemble every day (when other people would actually see their protest), but the occupiers insisted that anything less than camping in Frank Ogawa Plaza was defeat.
pnathan 15y ago
Wisdom would dictate reviewing the usual fate of disorganized barbarians versus Roman legions.
jdietrich 15y ago
What annoys me most about the Occupy movement is that they aren't even intellectually active enough to study other contemporary protest movements. I'm staggered at the number of people involved in Occupy who genuinely see police as a bunch of cretinous thugs and don't imagine that they might organise international conferences or share case studies. Public order policing has been a game of cat-and-mouse for decades, following the movements of European anarchists around the usual circuit of Mayday protests, G8 conferences and arms fairs. It's a highly evolved field and there are extensive playbooks on both sides. This strategy was devised years ago, in response to police lines being used to control and prevent marching. A core group, usually a Black Bloc, lead other protesters in a fast march, choosing their direction only at the last possible second. The goal is to move faster than police dispatchers can react, preventing the police from establishing organised lines quickly enough. The police response in the UK is pre-emptive kettling[1], in much of the rest of the world a mix of roadblocks and simple brutality. Unless the protesters are angry enough to run into a baton charge or prepared enough to run into CS gas, it's a completely ineffective tactic. Some commenters seem to believe that kettling would be illegal under US law; It may well be, but that hasn't stopped the extensive use of "free speech zones"[2] to pre-emptively restrict the movement of protesters. Without a Supreme Court ruling, there's nothing to stop Portland PD or anyone else from using kettles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
marshray 15y ago
"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." - Gen. George S. Patton
da5e 15y ago
>They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something The Occupy protesters put their BODIES into something. Both approaches are important.

173 points by nameless_noob 15y ago

What drew me to this article was it's discussion of the tactics a unorganized group can do and try all at once. A neat superposition of several topics. Like a glorified case of the wisdom of crowds.

christkv 15y ago
unfortunately any mass movement is dependent on being able to apply political pressure. It might work if there is a growing momentum and you end up with an 'orange' revolution. Most likely it's going to simply die out by itself unless it can actually transform into a political force. Being in Spain I can tell you the protests accomplished nothing, changed nothing politically and ended up dissolving themselves once it got cold.
- calibraxis 15y ago
  Yes, I personally think that if these Occupy movements result in organizing long-term institutions which help people, then they're successful. Lurid riot porn is not a victory condition. One problem is the attitude mentioned in the article: "This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses." (Keep in mind that the US imprisons its populace far more than any other nation, so this is no joke.) I read this rebuttal recently: "Getting arrested as an unavoidable consequence of standing up for a cause is noble; getting arrested as a voluntary, symbolic act is widely considered bizarre, at best. Moreover, it frustrates huge sectors of the movement who see an opportunity cost to the resources that go into unnecessary jail support, bail, and legal costs. Perhaps worst of all, voluntary arrest is seen by members of especially targeted communities as flaunting arrestees’ race and class privilege." (http://www.zcommunications.org/pacifism-and-diversity-of-tactics-a-compromise-proposal-by-brian-dominick http://www.zcommunications.org/pacifism-and-diversity-of-tac...)
  - westicle 15y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks It might be bizarre, but it is also historically effective.
    - calibraxis 15y ago
      Yeah, those examples are discussed in the ZCommunications article, as effective in only some situations. ("True as this is, don’t forget that these movements were addressing state and societal brutality against entire groups of people as the primary focus of their strategy; state violence was thus an illustration of their point. In the case of a holistic movement primarily focused on elite rule instead of state repression, police violence is a distraction. It may earn you sympathies, but it does not help to make your point in any clearly illustrative manner, as it did in these examples.")
- dotBen 15y ago
  On this point: while they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the Occupy movement has a lot of structural similarities to the Tea Part movement. The sad thing about grassroots politics in the US is that the conservative grassroots movements, like Tea Party, form loose, non-hierarchical yet highly organized coalitions where as the liberals end up going lowest-common-denominator and form protest groups. The problem is that the political system in America is geared up to accept pressure from political groups like Tea Party but isn't particularly affected by protect groups on the street. As a liberal I find it depressing that folks refuse to take on the political system at it's own game like the Tea Partiers have done.
  - bitwize 15y ago
    The Tea Party people think they're opposing particular liberal policies. The Occupy movement is rebelling against an entire POWER STRUCTURE, the entire hierarchy backed by corporate funding, which funding also pays the GOP apparatchiks that started the Tea Party.

graupel 15y ago

Sounds like the way Critical Mass (cycling) rides in Chicago work - with no pre-set route the police join in and make sure no one gets hurt but they can't really push the ride in one direction or another - the 'hive' decides where to go. With 5,000 to 10,000 people it's a pretty huge event/example.

neilk 15y ago
That's not specific to Chicago. All Critical Mass rides work that way.
cpeterso 15y ago
Critical Mass is a good example of how not to gain sympathy for one's cause. Blocking traffic, running red lights, and shouting at or kicking cars of people trying to commute home after a long workday does not endear bicyclists to drivers. In San Francisco, the riders are sometimes known as "Critical Massholes".

corin_ 15y ago

I don't know if this is a difference between UK and US police tactics, or if it's specific to Portland - I also don't know if it's the case that the difference was caused by not caring as much or just by not being as successful: UK police have done a much better job in the past, and rendered this article nonsense. The key difference: > Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks. If the police have such small numbers that they cannot afford to take any manpower away from the back of the march then yes, obviously this is the case. But really, with police vans offering fast transport there is no reason they cannot prevent a moving demonstration from moving. Obviously, budget comes into play, for example police helicopters can help them see what is going on and help them create tactics to counter it. An example of what I'm talking about is Kettling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling), a term which has only really gained popularity in the press in the last few years, but police (at least in the UK) have used this method for a hell of a long time - not always as viciously as the image most people think of for the term now, that of demonstrators being stuck and not allowed out for hours and hours.

devs1010 15y ago
I think this may have to do with cultural and geographic distances. U.S. cities, for the most part, may not be as easy to do something like kettling in as most are less dense than U.K. cities and may simply have more open space to cover to effectively "kettle" people and contain them to one area. Also, although the police are clearly acting as if they are militants at war, they still don't want the non-protesting population to feel as if they are under martial law so sectioning off a large part of a city with police in riot gear and chasing protestors around to where everyone sees this going on would probably hurt their cause more than help it.
- radicalbyte 15y ago
  You shouldn't discount 25 years of experience trying to control football (soccer) hooligans in the UK has given the police a lot of experienced bodies and equipment (i.e. horses) to help implement such tactics. Plus, in the UK the cops aren't generally armed with anything more than a club. So they have to use their heads a bit more. This is what happens when UK cops get guns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze...

Anechoic 15y ago

"Get the music blaring [...]" This piece of advice will get people fined (and possibly arrested) for violating noise ordinances in many municipalities. You're better off marching silently.

jfoster 15y ago
If you're particularly worried about getting fined/arrested, then blocking traffic is also going to be a problem.
colonelxc 15y ago
The police were already announcing that people marching through the streets and blocking traffic were going to be arrested anyway, so it's not like marching silently would save them from the threat of arrest.
Symmetry 15y ago
They're already violating a lot of ordinances - a few more won't matter much.
- dmix 15y ago
  I imagine thats how tons of kids justified breaking into stores during the Vancouver hockey riots.
  - nerfhammer 15y ago
    Those would be felonies though

andrewflnr 15y ago

If you want to destroy civilization, this is a pretty good start. Good practice anyway. But if you want to make positive change, forcing police to resort to brutality to restore order for people who are just trying to live their lives is stupid. Edit: instead of downvoting, try to explain why this is a good idea.

barrkel 15y ago
Your argument seems to be that anything other than obedience of authority means destruction of civilization, and sounds hyperbolic and reactionary. Apply that principle to apartheid, British Raj, Tahrir, etc. and see how it looks.
- andrewflnr 15y ago
  Non-violent resistance to injustice is one thing. Indefinitely evading police for little other purpose, that I can see, of getting in the way is another. I'm not quite sure where the line is, but this kind of thing scares me. If a person or group deliberately incites law enforcement to escalate the level of violence in the performance of their duty, are they not partially responsible for that violence? Are their goals worth having that responsibility? They seem to be doing it specifically to get a "PR loss by the police department". What purpose does that serve, in the long run, except to undermine people's respect for the government? Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. It is supplemented by force/violence in various degrees, but most of the time it's only conditioning and conscience that keeps people in check. The restraints of force and conditioning are swept aside by just such measures as these. The article frankly uses military terminology. These are the tools of governmental overthrow, and I believe they are being used recklessly.
  - ldh 15y ago
    > Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. That sounds pretty much exactly backwards from any society I want to be a part of. I don't exist in service of a government, but can choose to tolerate a government that provides value to me.

blurbytree 15y ago

What has this got to do with HN?

tptacek 15y ago

So here's HN in 2012: the Hiring Thread, which leads this month with a chorus of comments about how effective HN has been for finding people awesome jobs or companies awesome candidates, is at the bottom of the front page just a few hours after submission. Meanwhile, "Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police" is at the top. It's unsurprising. The kinds of people who are interested in Occupy protest tactics are very vociferously interested. The kinds of people who are interested in the hiring thread aren't nearly as engaged with that topic (or, those who are aren't numerous). "Real", on-topic HN threads are at a systemic disadvantage to advocacy topics like Occupy. Flagged, for whatever good that will do.

mhartl 15y ago
I almost flagged this, too, but the article kind of describes a hack. I agree that it's marginal, though, and I could go either way on this one.
brown9-2 15y ago
Perhaps it's just that one submission is five times older than the other, as of this comment.
- tptacek 15y ago
  It's a few hours old, and arguably the most productive recurring thread on the site. Subjectively (but you can take my word for this), the hiring thread used to be pinned to the top for a day --- I presume this was not because of something 'pg punched into a REPL.
blurbytree 15y ago
As t→∞, HN→Reddit
quinndupont 15y ago
Huh, suddenly very important political discussion is "off-topic"? I'll admit, it isn't standard fare for HN, but I'd say, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.

mhartl 15y ago

The military analogy is broken. The hack isn't to use the superiority of "light infantry" over "heavy infantry", etc. The reason the protestors can "take a park" even when the police oppose them is because they operate in a political system where the police can't fire on crowds. You probably think this is always a good thing. That's the hack.

quinndupont 15y ago
They can't fire live rounds, but they sure can (and do) fire rubber bullets, flash grenades, tear gas, sound cannons, and tear gas.
- ms4720 15y ago
  Completely different situations: 1: worse case in current situation, I may break a bone or get a concussion followed with medical attention and bragging rights with my peers 2: fire bullets into crowd, lots of people die. Or think about using flame throwers for crowd control
  - WanderingEnder 15y ago
    As far as the less lethal situation, using impact rounds can result in death. Fluidity of the crowd, improper use of the launcher, pure dumb luck can all play a role in where rounds land. People can, and have, died from direct fire with less lethals including the FN-303 Paint Marking launcher, various 12 gauge skip fire and direct fire munitions, 37mm gas munitions, and 40mm direct fire less lethal and gas munitions. While some rounds are designed for close quarters direct fire, many are not, and having a 40mm CS grenade hit you upside the head can be lethal.
    - ms4720 15y ago
      All right there is some risk but in general it is not perceived/judged to be a risk by the people making the decisions to protest.
    - 15y ago

namidark 15y ago

They're still around? Why dont they go protest where it matters in Washington infront of Congress et al instead of on private property or places that make small businesses lose business.

oldstrangers 15y ago

So their ground breaking discovery for outsmarting the police is to ... leave and then come back. And maybe play some music. The Art of War style write up is humorously grandiose for something so silly. These people take themselves entirely too seriously. On another note, pay attention to whats happening over on Reddit and their attempt to unseat Paul Ryan in protest of SOPA/PIPA. They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something that might actually have an effect. Ultimately, the 72 hours or so that Reddit has taken up this initiative is already appearing more effective than months of misguided OWS noise. Going back even further, look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. Get out of the streets already and go actually make a difference with some concentrated focus and brain power.

easy_rider 15y ago
Agreed, this should only be upped for how stupid it is.
devs1010 15y ago
Agreed, I am all for reform but we need to outsmart them, from what I've read lately it seems online activity, like that of Reddit, has effected more change than the in-person protests. The problem is that change won't happen overnight, its a gradual process to awaken more and more people to whats actually going on and get each person to do their small part to help change things.
jberryman 15y ago
> These people take themselves entirely too seriously. > ... > look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. What exactly is your metric for success here? A sleazy company changed their stance on a bill that the public is completely unaware of and couldn't give two shits about? I think "the internet" is taking itself too seriously. Meanwhile a nation-wide protest movement has at the very least succeeded in planting the issue of systemic economic injustice into mainstream public discourse on a daily basis. History may show OWS to be the catalyst for the resurrection of a real progressive movement in America.

Shenglong 15y ago

Gist of the article: They don't have to occupy jobs, so they can win their war of attrition.

pvarangot 15y ago

Please if you think you will ever take part in a protest, for the sake of your own safety and that of your co-protestors, don't read this article. Or if you already did, don't take it seriously. It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people. I do agree with most of what Occupy is about, but if the writer of this post is trying to make any political point, he is failing. Also, I think that a blog and an HN thread are so not the place to learn about how to safely occupy public space and how to participate in a protest, that I simply don't understand how hard some are trying for it to be that place...

shadowsun7 15y ago
>It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people. Why is his content wrong? I'm not saying it isn't - I just think more people would pay heed to your warning if you can give concrete reasons (plus, I'm curious).
- pvarangot 15y ago
  You can find some of my opinion about the content in my other reply in this thread. Also, the whole rummaging about light infantry and heavy infantry is completely wrong, short of some movies I really don't know where the author actually saw the kind of formation he seems to think is standard. He also gets retreats completely wrong. If your adversary is competent he will actually encourage a retreat since his objective is not decimating your forces but keeping ground, that is why it's always easy to run away from the police in protests... not because retreat "conveys a tactical superiority". If you are lets say holding higher ground, or for example participating in a siege, retreat may mean you are coming back home completely decimated. Getting further into this would sort of actually be against my own perception of HN not being the place to discuss how to securely protest. I'll also like to keep the internet as free as possible of myself advocating civil disobedience in a country I'm not a citizen of.

motoford 15y ago

The writer should use his superior "military style" tactics to get a job. Maybe their plan worked because the police decided it wasn't worth wading thru their feces and syringes every few hours.

georgieporgie 15y ago

I think Occupy is the most interesting (and, yes, annoying, but that's part of the method) political development in recent history. This article, however, was very long, with little meaningful content, and I don't see how it's of particular interest to HN. Flagged.

josephkern 15y ago

The author: 1. Underestimates the superiority and effectiveness of the Command and Control of the police force 2. Overestimates the superiority of a mob vs a phalanx. 3. Makes generalized assumptions over why the police allowed them to stay. 4. Assumes that the police will not use their formation with calvary (automobiles, aricraft, and actual horses) as a means of denying the flank or the retreat. This reads like someone who just went through a college course in ancient combat and has little practical experience in the matter of Command and Control or strategic thinking.

cpeterso 15y ago

To keep the park, one must leave the park. Why the military tactics and metaphors? Many occupiers seem more interested in "fuckin' shit up" than expressing a message. In Oakland, the city was willing to let people assemble every day (when other people would actually see their protest), but the occupiers insisted that anything less than camping in Frank Ogawa Plaza was defeat.

pnathan 15y ago

Wisdom would dictate reviewing the usual fate of disorganized barbarians versus Roman legions.

jdietrich 15y ago

What annoys me most about the Occupy movement is that they aren't even intellectually active enough to study other contemporary protest movements. I'm staggered at the number of people involved in Occupy who genuinely see police as a bunch of cretinous thugs and don't imagine that they might organise international conferences or share case studies. Public order policing has been a game of cat-and-mouse for decades, following the movements of European anarchists around the usual circuit of Mayday protests, G8 conferences and arms fairs. It's a highly evolved field and there are extensive playbooks on both sides. This strategy was devised years ago, in response to police lines being used to control and prevent marching. A core group, usually a Black Bloc, lead other protesters in a fast march, choosing their direction only at the last possible second. The goal is to move faster than police dispatchers can react, preventing the police from establishing organised lines quickly enough. The police response in the UK is pre-emptive kettling[1], in much of the rest of the world a mix of roadblocks and simple brutality. Unless the protesters are angry enough to run into a baton charge or prepared enough to run into CS gas, it's a completely ineffective tactic. Some commenters seem to believe that kettling would be illegal under US law; It may well be, but that hasn't stopped the extensive use of "free speech zones"[2] to pre-emptively restrict the movement of protesters. Without a Supreme Court ruling, there's nothing to stop Portland PD or anyone else from using kettles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

marshray 15y ago

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." - Gen. George S. Patton

da5e 15y ago

>They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something The Occupy protesters put their BODIES into something. Both approaches are important.