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To grab the crowd’s attention," the IWW band often "hid in a doorway while one member dressed in a bowler hat and carrying a briefcase and umbrella, yelled to the crowd, ‘Help! I’ve been robbed!’ The crowd rushed over only to hear, ‘I've been robbed by the capitalist system! Fellow workers ...’ He then launched into a short speech, and the makeshift band stepped out of the doorway and played their songs."

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NEW YORK -- Barricades surrounding a park that served as a camp for Occupy Wall Street protesters were removed Tuesday, allowing protesters to stream back in.

The atmosphere was celebratory but calm on Tuesday evening as about 300 protesters began filling New York City's Zuccotti Park a couple of hours after the barricades were taken down and a day after a complaint about the barricades was filed with the city. Protesters milled around, eating lasagna on paper plates and playing chess.

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On Monday, civil rights groups filed a complaint with the city's buildings department saying the barricades were a violation of city zoning law because they restricted public access to the space. The New York Civil Liberties Union commended the removal of the barricades in a statement late Tuesday.

"We're pleased the city is finally giving the park back to the people," said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. "We hope Zuccotti Park can now resume its rightful place as a center for meeting and protest in New York City."

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an owners’ failure to comply with requirements applicable to public plazas “shall constitute a violation” of zoning laws and Department of Buildings may enforce the violation by revocation of building permit, revocation of certificate of occupancy, or any “other applicable remedies

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In 1916, Everett, Washington was facing a bad depression. There was ongoing confrontation between business, commercial interests, labor, and labor organizers. There had been a number of labor organized rallies and speeches in the street. These were opposed by local law enforcement, which was firmly on the side of business. IWW organizers had gone into Everett to support a five-month long strike by shingle workers. Once there, vigilantes organized by business had beaten them up with axe handles and run them out of town. The Seattle IWW decided to go to Everett in numbers to hold a rally to show their support for the striking shingle workers.[1]

On November 5, 1916, about 300 members of the IWW met at the IWW hall in Seattle and then marched down to the docks where they boarded the steamers Verona and Calista which then headed north to Everett. Verona arrived at Everett before Callista and as they approached the dock in the early afternoon, the Wobblies sang their fight song "Hold the Fort". Local business interests, knowing the Wobblies were coming, placed armed vigilantes on the dock and on at least one tugboat in the harbor, Edison, owned by the American Tug Boat Company.[2] As with previous labor demonstrations, the local business had also secured the aid of law enforcement, including the Snohomish County sheriff Donald McRae, who had targeted Wobblies for arbitrary arrests and beatings.[3]

As a result, over 200 vigilantes or "citizen deputies", under the ostensible authority of Snohomish County Sheriff McRae, met in order to repel the "anarchists." As the Verona drew into the dock, and someone on board threw a line over a bollard, McRae stepped forward and called out "Boys, who's your leader?" The IWW men laughed and jeered, replying "We're all leaders," and they started to swing out the gang plank. McRae drew his pistol, told them he was the sheriff, he was enforcing the law, and they couldn't land here. There was a silence, then a Wobbly came up to the front and yelled out "the hell we can't."[4]

Just then a single shot rang out, followed by about ten minutes of intense gunfire. Most of it came from the vigilantes on the dock, but some fire came from the Verona, although the majority of the passengers were unarmed.[5] Whether the first shot came from boat or dock was never determined. Passengers aboard the Verona rushed to the opposite side of the ship, nearly capsizing the vessel. The ship's rail broke as a result and a number of passengers were ejected into the water, some drowned as a result but how many is not known, or whether persons who'd been shot also went overboard.[6] Over 175 bullets pierced the pilot house alone, and the captain of the Verona, Chance Wiman, was only able to avoid being shot by ducking behind the ship's safe.[5]

Once the ship righted herself somewhat after the near-capsize, some slack came on the bowline, and Engineer Shellgren put the engines hard astern, parting the line, and enabling the steamer to escape. Out in the harbor, Captain Wiman warned off the approaching Calista and then raced back to Seattle.[5]

At the end of the mayhem, 2 citizen deputies lay dead with 16[5] or 20 others wounded, including Sheriff G McRae. The two businessman-deputies that were shot were actually shot in the back by fellow deputies; their injuries were not caused by Wobbly gunfire.[7][8] The IWW officially listed 5 dead with 27 wounded, although it is speculated that as many as 12 IWW members may have been killed. There was a good likelihood that at least some of the casualties on the dock were caused not by IWW firing from the steamer, but on vigilante rounds from the cross-fire of bullets coming from the Edison.[9] The local Everett Wobblies started their street rally anyway, and as a result, McRae's deputized citizens rounded them up and hauled them off to jail.[10] As a result of the shootings, the governor of the State of Washington sent companies of militia to Everett and Seattle to help maintain order.[10]

Upon returning to Seattle, 75 Wobblies were arrested as a direct result of the "Everett Massacre" including IWW leader Thomas H. Tracy. They were taken to the Snohomish County jail in Everett and charged with murder of the 2 deputies. After a two-month trial, Tracy was acquitted by a jury on May 5, 1917. Shortly thereafter, all charges were dropped against the remaining 73 defendants and they were released from jail.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_....

The most powerful weapon is the power of discharge, which may be used indiscriminately upon mere suspicion, which under certain conditions may be almost as potent, either in use or threat, as the power of life and death. It is the avowed policy of many employers to discharge any man who gives any sign of dissatisfaction on the theory that he may become a trouble maker or agitator...

The immediate cause of violence in connection with industrial disputes is almost without exception the attempt to introduce strikebreakers...

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'Why January 17th you ask? The U.S. House of Representatives convenes for the first time in 2012 on January 17th. We can’t wait until the weather gets nice and everybody has the day off.

We need to be there en mass as soon as they begin their legislative session to let them know that they’re not going to waste another year. Nothing hardly ever gets accomplished in an election year and that is part of the problem. What better way to welcome them back than to have a huge demonstration that will drive the conversation on the ground and in the media. It’s time we start holding their feet to the fire to get something done for the people.

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There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.

The artifact vanished just three weeks after a $2,400 Apple MacBook vanished from Brashear’s office. He told the occupiers that even when the 100-year-old Upper West Side church extended help to addicts during the 1980s drug scourge, no visitors touched its $12,500 sacramental instrument.

“Not even crackheads messed with that,” he said.

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manha....]

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‘God’-awful OWS mob steals sacred item from church

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COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal,[2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.

COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. Covert operations under COINTELPRO took place between 1956 and 1971; however, the FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception.[3] The FBI's stated motivation at the time was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."[4]

FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive,"[5] including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the civil rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Bosch's Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement; and additional notable Americans, such as Albert Einstein (who was a member of several civil rights groups).[6] The remaining 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert "white hate groups," including the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.[7]

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.[8][9]

"Manufacturing Consent," wikipedia wrote..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturi....

Herman and Chomsky's "propaganda model" describes five editorially-distorting filters applied to news reporting in mass media:

1. Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation
2. The Advertising License to Do Business
3. Sourcing Mass Media News
4. Flak and the Enforcers
5. Anti-Communism