Reflections on the Metro Police Chief's Christmas message

Many here are now well aware of Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson's open letter published the day after Christmas on the news page of the Metro government website (and then in the Tennessean). Since it has gone national, many outside of Nashville have seen it, too.

Perhaps it gets so much attention home and away because of the marked contrast between the Chief's tone and that of police in other places, especially in St. Louis and New York City.

We should positively reinforce accommodating and tolerant stances of police to protesters. Cops should respect freedom of speech, assembly and dissent. Steve Anderson deserves our thanks for acknowledging as much and distancing his department from law-and-order, shoot-first rightwingers who fail to see that even police officers have organized in order to protest, shut down major roadways and expressed civil disobedience when they believed they had the right to.

Perhaps we are so desensitized by cop violence in African American communities, by police donning anti-mine vehicles and military armor to crush popular dissent, and by thin-blue-line hubris in general that we shocked into viral elation by the words of Chief Anderson, which are no more than what we should expect and demand from the police.

While Chief Anderson is getting unqualified praise for his remarkable letter, there are caveats to his arguments and qualifications to the popular response that deserve expression.

Let's start with Chief Anderson's comments in the letter (all in bold from here on) about the peaceful nature of protesters:

Here in Nashville, persons have gathered to express their thoughts in a non-violent manner. I thank all involved for the peaceful manner in which they have conducted themselves .... None of the demonstrators in this city have in any way exhibited any propensity for violence or indicated, even verbally, that they would harm anyone.

Protesters, while disrupting business-as-usual in downtown Nashville, have indeed been non-violent and MNPD restraint is laudable. However, the Nashville protests have not reached the national notoriety via the news media to attract more opportunists who are drawn to the attention every robust social movement draws:

In every vibrant progressive social movement there comes a moment when a psychologically or emotionally disturbed person, an agent provocateur, or a political extremist commits an atrocious act that is seized upon by the State and/or the political Right as a means of attempting to discredit or outright repress the movement. The action, committed for whatever reason, is sufficiently heinous that confusion develops within the movement and the movement can lose both its momentum as well as a segment of its less committed or more ambivalent supporters.

In his comparison of recent events in NYC to backlash against protest movements in history, Columnist Bill Fletcher, Jr. insists that there will always be those drawn to movements who strive to be vicious regardless of the higher purposes of the protest. In every snowballing protest, extreme and disturbed people attempt to wreak havoc. Nashville has not reached that point, yet. We have not seen violence toward people or property during the protests. Even when state police moved in with their typical heavy hands and stopped protesters from shutting down interstates, protesters restrained themselves.

Photo credit: Ferguson Grand Jury Candlelight Vigil

Let's be fair to other cities. That does not make Music City exceptional when it comes to social protest. It could mean that we have not reached the crisis point or made the progress to gain the visibility that other protests have. When we are rocked to a scale of Greater St. Louis, New York City or Los Angeles and we still don't attract more destructive personalities, then we can claim to be different. The real test for Nashville will come if we are visited by the disturbed, the provocateurs and the extremists.

That is the actual point where police restraint and tolerance will be challenged. We should acknowledge that even as we applaud Metro Police for doing the right thing. If such an unfortunate event were to land in front of Metro Police, would they use it as a pretense to shut down, undermine and attack legitimate protesters (and in the case of Ferguson, innocent neighborhoods)? We do not know yet because we are not there yet. Social protest in Nashville is not currently at a crisis pitch.

Then there was this exchange between a complaining letter writer and Chief Anderson (bolded) about Mayor Karl Dean, which I thought was odd:

I also understand that you get direction from the mayor's office, but these actions are putting the department at disharmony from the majority of the citizens. At some point you are going to have to answer this question to yourself - "Am I following or giving orders that help or hurt the community?" In closing, if these recent actions have been due to pressure from the mayor's office, please reach out to the people of Nashville, there are many who will gladly contact the mayor's office as well ....

While I certainly appreciate your offer to intercede on my behalf with our Mayor, you should know that the Mayor has not issued any order, directive or instruction on the matter with which you take issue.  All decisions concerning the police department’s reaction to the recent demonstrations have been made within the police department and approved by me.  Therefore, any reasons or rationale supporting your proposal as what would be the best approach for all of Nashville, and not just a method of utilizing the police department to enforce a personal agenda, should be directed to me.

I do not claim to know the identity or motives of the emailer to Chief Anderson, but in case the letter was not written in good faith, in case there it was an attempt to drive a wedge between the cops and the mayor, it is worth keeping the specter of partisanship on the table as a motivating factor. There is evidence that the Tea Party, those in the Republican Party establishment and NYPD union leaders have stirred the anti-Mayor de Blasio pot, including organizing conservative cops from all over North America to attend the funeral of Ofc. Rafael Ramos and turn their backs on cue when the Mayor arrived.

Acknowledging how effective the GOP and conservatives are at online organizing, I would not put it past them to encourage one another in the various cities where protests are occurring to try to pries and polarize government executives and police departments. I am positive that red-state Tennessee Republicans are no different.

Does the letter to Chief Anderson reflect party coordination? Maybe not, but it is consistent with the strategy now afoot, the agenda conservatives flash. Karl Dean has widely-acknowledged aspirations to higher office. The complaint letter does not pass the smell test of nonpartisan innocence and thus it is not above the charge. Someone may be attempting to make some dirt stick on a Democrat.

But make no mistake. Mayor Dean is the CEO of Metro government. He has embraced that brand, particularly when it make grants him executive airs. One of three unwavering Dean campaign commitments in two elections was to public safety via Metro Police. I have heard him tout Nashville's lower rates of violent crimes on his watch. While all of the decisions on how to respond to protesters may have belonged to Chief Anderson so far, to insinuate that the Mayor will not cross the line at some point is to be disingenuous to the reality of the Metro Charter, which gives Hizzoner control over MNPD. There is no great distance between mayor and MNPD.

I am not sure it would even take a coalition of police brass, Republicans and Tea Party flunkies to push Karl Dean to lean on Chief Anderson if the protests grow as elsewhere.

Local business interests centered in the Chamber of Commerce and the Nashville Business Alliance along with wealthy campaign donors might provide the efficient cause of the Mayor stepping in to change the tolerance MNPD has shown local protesters. I hardly see him taking the risk Bill de Blasio did to provoke ire: criticizing a judicial decision not to indict an officer for his fatal chokehold on an African American man and expressing solidarity with the bereaved family. The conservatives pounced on de Blasio for that.

What do risk and solidarity mean to Mayor Dean? He did not even change his schedule to attend the North Nashville mass meeting to listen to community anger in the wake of Michael Brown's slaying in Ferguson, MO. He could not even risk the symbolism of being present. I can easily see Hizzoner putting pressure on MNPD to limit protests if they grow in order to avert risk with the business class. I cannot wrap my brain around the day he might take the stand that Chief Anderson did for the rights of Nashville protesters.

But at least the Chief is leading Metro in the right direction. He deserves credit for that.

Protest in Nashville and the conflict avoiders

It has been an eventful 24 hours on the social protest front. 170 organized protests occurred across the United States in the wake of the grand jury acquittal of Ferguson, MO cop Darren Wilson in the shooting of Mike Brown, a teenager.

I-24 shutdown. Photo credit:
Ferguson Grand Jury Candlelight Vigil

One of those protests happened here in Nashville, generated by a Facebook group and expanded after 200 were gathered at the downtown police station last night. How a Tennessean reporter interpreted the next sequence of events:

Then, at Commerce Street and 5th Avenue, around 8:47 p.m., the demonstrators talked among themselves and decided to lie down for the first time. By this time, people were walking from various side streets to join the protesters.

In the middle of one intersection, one woman turned to the protesters, raised her hand and asked: "Are you ready to lay down for Michael Brown? Are you brave enough to lay down for him?"

This scene played out at several intersections along the city, but no instance of protesters moving toward a high-traffic thoroughfare was more dramatic than when protesters left the intersection of Woodland Street and Interstate Drive and started up the entrance ramp to Interstate 24.

The reporter also wrote that the police did not attempt to suppress the demonstrations, but did try to talk protesters out of going on to the interstate to no avail. I-24 was blocked for awhile. Protesters eventually left on their own. Police restraint and nonmilitarism drew the predictable hail of ire from local conservative social media.

So, Metro Police deserve credit for showing protesters respect. Will they continue to do so if protests here reoccur with what will inevitably result in rising pressure from business special interests and red-state conservatives to crack down?

Compare last night's protests and shutdowns to a letter published two days ago by Nashville Unites leader Bishop Joseph Walker, III. I do not see how this letter calls anyone in Nashville--beyond people most likely to take to the streets in protest--accountable for making our city a better place to live. Instead, it seems to single out the protesters and it gives movers and shakers the benefit of the doubt:

A Grand Jury in St. Louis County, Missouri has made its decision. Ferguson Police Office Darren Wilson will not be indicted for the killing of Michael Brown. I know this will pain and anger many in America, particularly African Americans. But I implore you to think and pray before you react.

Today, we must reach out, not strike back. Turn your anger into productive energy. Speak up and speak out, but don¹t scream. The physical and verbal violence has got to stop. We have the power to end it by starting substantive conversations in our communities.

Today, think about Jesus's message of peace and understanding. Then put His message into a modern context. Move from the street to the sanctuary ­and bring the entire community with you. Wherever you are in America right now, go to your churches and invite others whom you perceive to be the other to join you. Invite law enforcement in. Invite a broad spectrum of community leaders in ....

We have begun this process in Nashville by forming Nashville Unites. It encourages ongoing dialogue between communities, law enforcement, educational institutions, and governmental and non-governmental organizations. It aims to establish and promote shared goals for a better city. Nashville Unites represents organized momentum towards understanding.

Let today¹s decision out of Ferguson be the day we stop the useless posturing and finger-pointing on all sides. The time has come to reach out and invite each other in.

Unless you have a broad definition of "sanctuary," you would have to confess that last night protesters in Nashville did not heed Bishop Walker's call to bring it into church. Protesters essentially invited police into dangerous roadways to block traffic and temporarily halt commerce, transit and entertainment in the city (not the first time this has happened in Nashville).

And who can blame them? Nashville Unites was formed several months ago. Instead of getting out ahead and being a drum major, that organization has been incremental at best, quiet at worst about police militarization and brutality. It is street-level invisible. Why should protesters feel any need to heed such a letter? They pushed the limits of the possible last night and exercised some power.

Preaching peace where there is no justice is offering sedatives to those who would otherwise organize to claim their place at the table. They have been cut off from opportunities and equal rights. They need leaders who will help them focus anger and frustration in empowering ways rather than deadening the bounce. The Nashville way of politics seems to be: "Let's all act like we get along, collaborate and pretend there are no problems. Those dissenters? Ignore them and they'll stop. Nothing to see here. Move on." Speaking truth to power is highly risky in a city that strives to shield its power networks of patronage with a window-dressing of popular togetherness.

For the first time in a long time, Metro Nashville is starting to get tested by popular protest. It should have been tested by the local Occupy Wall Street movement, but that protest failed to challenge the Courthouse and Chamber of Commerce. I am curious to see whether these demonstrators can keep it up and how the police decide to deal with future shutdowns.

As long as I am ending this post with conflict avoiders, it is worth pointing out that the 2015 mayoral candidates continue to run silent on this question. What will it take for them to come out of hiding?


UPDATE: During an interview with reporters on last week's Nashville Ferguson protest the police chief said that if Nashvillians want to express their thoughts in a public forum "even if it against the government," their 1st Amendment rights will be protected and "be treated fairly by the police officers involved." Asked if Metro Police would "be more assertive" in cracking down on future protests, the chief said that they evaluate each situation individually and "have the most appropriate response possible."  Here is the entire interview:




It is worth noting that the reporters' questions were bent toward assumptions that protesters should be controlled above all else, and they asked no questions about militarization or when police would consider it necessary to use military-style weaponry on nonviolent protesters. It is clear to me that the local news media is bent more toward law and order over justice and protection of rights. They constitute one more source leveraging cops to misbehave and crack down on dissent and on organized interruption of business-as-usual.

Recap of last night's North Nashville town hall meeting on concerns about police after Ferguson

Last night I left my daughter's school orientation events early to attend the "town hall" meeting at Mount Zion Baptist Church on Jeff St. I arrived 30 minutes before it was supposed to start. That was a good thing because the pews of the sanctuary were nearly full by 7:15. They had an overflow crowd in their fellowship hall in the basement to watch a video feed.

There was a panel of African American community leaders and Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson. Those are the folks who did most of the speaking. Police commanders and other cops filled the choir loft while the candidates for mayor and other elected officials not on the program sat in audience at the front.

Meeting organizer, Bishop Joseph Walker, told the audience that the Mt. Zion meeting is the first time in the US that the protests over Michael Brown's death have moved out of the street and into a building for discussion with police and other leaders.

I sat next to a woman from South Nashville who told me that the event had been announced in church at Mt. Zion last Sunday. As far as I know, the mainstream news media did not announce it until Wednesday. What kind of crowds would have shown up if the announcement had gone out across the city over the weekend?

The predominantly white mainstream print and broadcast media looked like it was in full force, so you can probably read or listen to major details and talking points any place today. I'll stick with my own impressions here.

The first thing I have to say about the meeting was that it was a bona fide town hall complete with comments and questions from the audience. It was not a faux community meeting along the lines of the Mayor's bus rapid transit plan or a planning meeting where the only way you can have your questions answered is if you write them down on a permission slip. It was not a NashvilleNext "lounge" designed to lure hipsters and Millennials. It was unadorned, free-style, old-school town hall, which was fine with me. Democracy is messy business.

Beyond meeting logistics the takeaway for me is that Chief Steve Anderson was the main focus of the meeting. I was there until about 8:45 and Chief Anderson took the brunt of questions from the panelists and from the audience on what Metro cops would do if faced with the same events as they unfolded in Ferguson and on how Metro Police are working internally and with the community to prevent racism and brutality.

His department received praise, criticism, questions and notes of caution.

He handled himself serviceably. And I got the impression from audience and panelist responses that people were satisfied with his answers. Chief Anderson opened his comments with a list of mistakes he thought Ferguson police made, the most important one: failing to diffuse the situation two weeks ago when Mike Brown was shot dead (to be specific, he was shot six times, twice to the head) by a cop and kept in the street for hours afterward. The chief also said that not releasing shooting officer Darren Wilson's name immediately was a lapse. "Within the hour there should have been a statement," he told the audience. He described the way that the police handled the aftermath as appearing to be a conspiracy. He argued that they should have been more transparent from the beginning.

However, his ostensible list of mistakes did not include any mention of use of military equipment by police in protest situations. I was troubled by that.

In his comments on how the police would handle protests after police shootings, Chief Anderson told the audience that his department would meet with community leaders before the protests in order to cover organizing and coordination. He said something about "wanting to be with" peaceful protesters. He said that he would allow protesters to break "some of the law" by marching in the streets as long as community leaders understood that the police would maintain order at the end of the day.

Again he had the opportunity to address the use of military weapons on innocent protesters, but did not.

Finally, after a representative from Pacify Nashville read off a list of military weapons that Metro Police could use on the community, Chief Anderson spoke to the problem; but only after he read a list of the ways that military equipment had been used in the 2010 flood and in other emergency situations to help people in distress. It came across to me as dancing around the problem. The real issue here is that the weapons are designed for the battlefield. The possibility of using them against strikes and marches flips social protest to war. They were not designed for less grisly pursuits.

The police chief said that he would not use military equipment in the community "unless absolutely necessary." He only elaborated by saying that police would use it to protect property and life. Then again, the St. Louis County cops would probably argue that they only used it because it was absolutely necessary to protect Ferguson property and life last week as they were gassing residential areas from armored vehicles. The Pacify Nashville rep asked him point blank and the police chief seemed to be reserving the right to use them. Can you imagine a natural disaster where sound cannons like the ones used to drive away Ferguson protesters would be needed by the Metro Police? I cannot.

You can jump to a list, culled by the New York Times a few months ago, of the $4 million in military toys Metro Police has to play with. It is one thing to have an armored truck for use in authentic hostage situations; it is quite another to own a $600,000 "mine-resistant vehicle" and to reserve the right to use it to protect property during social protests. When was the last time Metro Police had to deal with mines?

In the end, I was left with the impression that we are just supposed to trust that the police won't viciously use the military weapons according to the purpose for which they were made. Is trusting the police good enough for the North Nashville community?



UPDATE: Pacify Nashville posted a video of the question they posed to Steve Anderson as well as his response. You will see that as Pacify Nashville read the list of military weapons in the question, gasps and shouts from the audience became louder. After Pacify Nashville asked Chief Anderson to define "strikes and riots" as situations that allow military weapons to be used, the audience applauded in response before the Chief's reply.





Clearly there is great concern in the community about weapons that allow police to scale up police brutality with military weapons. Military weapons do nothing to promote community policing and civil contact with neighborhoods. If there is a committee formed between the police and local citizens in the aftermath of Ferguson, it needs to come up with proper guidelines on the acquisition and use of military weapons by police departments. At some level, Metro Police will have to demilitarize if they want to earn the trust of the community.

Metro Nashville Police and their military-style hardware

I have been closely following the fallout of police officer Darren Wilson's shooting of teenager Mike Brown and the resulting protests in Ferguson, MO for the past week or so. I have many impressions I could share, but for now I want to focus on the use of military-style armored vehicles in residential neighborhoods to control violent "agitators". Many of you, like me, have seen Metro Nashville Police display their armored vehicles at community events, and I have to say that I will never look at any of MNPD's military-style weaponry the same way again.

Why not? Because I have seen them deployed against peaceful protesters as well as the "agitators" in Ferguson. I've seen, via Vine videos, innocent kids tear-gassed. I've seen pictures of people gassed in their own yards away from the main sites of protests. I've read accounts of armored vehicles rolling through neighborhoods shooting rubber bullets, pepper-spray-filled paintballs and unleashing enough toxic particulates that--even in closed homes--can endanger the lives of asthmatic children. I've read of a teenager begging a reporter not to leave her neighborhood because she was certain that the only thing between her and a round from a police assault rifle was the watchful presence of journalists.

So, I cannot look at these death-dealing armored vehicles the same way anymore. Even when they are proudly displayed at community events. (And why did we never stop to question how much these rolling behemoths cost taxpayers? Why give the authorities the benefit of the doubt in the first place?) I fail to see any justification for using military-style weaponry in largely pacified residential neighborhoods. It seems like overkill when the biggest threat coming from the handful of "agitators" is something like a couple of handguns and a single Molotov cocktail.

This is what Nashville police used to consider armor:

This is what Nashville police now consider armor:

The changes reflect the political climate post-9/11, but they also reflect a futile "war on drugs," which has been conducted since the 1980s. They also reflect a military-industrial complex, a defense industry that has been allowed to market their wares unchecked by government regulations and encouraged by elected officials who strive to bring home more pork. What they do not reflect is any change in the racial climate since the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s. Police are simply more efficient at dealing out pain and death disproportionately to people of color and to working-class people with military-style plating and and assault weapons (by the way, tear gas is banned from battlefields by international treaties).

Ferguson shows that the most modern armor is overkill outside the battlefield. Police are not just "taking out bad guys" (as they like to say), they are endangering innocent lives and unleashing unnecessary collateral damage. They are laying waste to neighborhoods and people's lives.

Whether you believe that you will ever see one of these military-style monsters roll down your street or cut through the clouds above, unleashing a firestorm of injustice, there are honest poor people, honest people of color who do believe it to be a distinct possibility. If it can happen to them those of us who question the possibility are merely the next in line.

Asphalt plant expansion opponents are mobilized

A couple of months ago CM Duane Dominy caused a community firestorm around Franklin Limestone Road by introducing a bill to expand asphalt production among the neighborhoods there. An opposition group was born and here is the latest from their Facebook page:

[May 9, in the wake of a Metro Council meeting that prompted a big community turnout] Don't get too comfortable y'all. There is another Metro Council meeting this month. We need to be ready to go to the Council meeting May 15 at 6pm. Since much wasn't done at the last meeting, I expect the next one to be longer. Get your black or dark blue shirts ready. I have some made up if anyone is interested.

[May 12] Ok as far as I know we are safe from a vote on the Asphalt plant til at least June or July. In the meantime, it would be great if you could talk to your neighbors about this issue. People need to realize that we very easily wind up with 3 asphalt plants within a mile of our homes. If they move to this new location, no one can stop another asphalt plant from going into their old location.

This community-based effort looks well-organized and red-hot. Part of the challenge of following up in the summer is that people go on vacation and get distracted by seasonal activities. Council meetings often fall off the radar. They should not let proponents of the rezoning legislation capitalize on the diversions that summer may bring.

CM Duane Dominy invites a hail of popular opposition with proposal to rezone for new asphalt plant

Around two dozen people showed up at Tueday night's Metro Council public hearing to fight a bill sponsored by their conservative council member Duane Dominy--and recommended unanimously by the Metro Planning Commission--to allow a third asphalt plant built adjacent to their neighborhoods on Franklin Limestone Road. Here are some of their comments:

We're just a working class neighborhood .... We have two asphalt plants, a dump, an airport, and rock quarry. That's enough. Let's put this one somewhere else.

-- A worker living next door to current rock quarry

When I bought my house my Realtor® took me around by Murfreesboro Road so that I wouldn't see the industry .... Now I'm a single parent. I am in foreclosure. I've had difficulty working with the challenges of this economy and the banking crisis. There aren't many interior design demands today. With the existing quarry I'm in trouble. If we have more industry, I really need to move but I can't afford to.

-- Interior designer living nearby

In the beginning [at the first community meeting] we started with 35 dump trucks coming in to Franklin Limestone. The second meeting we went from 35 to 75. I heard him say tonight that there was probably 90 movements.

-- Business owner adjacent near asphalt plant

I wasn't notified. My Treasurer went to the last meeting and he asked Duane Dominy if he notified me. He didn't. Or our association. He notified a couple within the 200' or whatever the minimum is, and he asked him to do it, and he said he would: he would notify all of the residents in the Piccadilly Square Homeowners Association. He never did that.

-- President of the Piccadilly Square HOA

I've taken care of children who deal with asthma, and it really boggled my mind .... I called the councilman and said, "This is a bad idea. How could you put an asphalt plant in a residential neighborhood?" When we talk to parents of kids with asthma we tell them, "Avoid smoking. Avoid irritants." Some of you have children ... grandchildren and elderly neighbors. Would you put your child near an asphalt plant? It doesn't make sense. These kids would continue to have wheezing.

-- Pediatrician who lives in near the quarry

I voted for Duane Dominy to stand up for this community in times like this and to represent us for our best good .... I think he's a great guy ... but we feel like we've been abandoned on this project .... You can bring the big boys in and they can represent the different aspects of it but none of that has been proven .... We haven't received any factual evidence of any of these things that have been said for it.

-- Treasurer of the Piccadilly Square HOA

I like to go outside and play, and I use Franklin Limestone Road every day when I go to school ... and I like to have my window down because I like to the feel the air and I don't want to have to breath all those toxic fumes and get risk of cancer or any type of disease.

-- A little girl who lives and attends elementary school near the plants

If we lived in a world where everything was equal, CM Dominy's rezoning request would be on life support after that beating. Association officers, business owners, the working class, victims of the housing crisis, a mobilized kid; even a pediatrician took on Dominy for possibly exposing kids to high toxicity levels. Unfortunately, the council is not a world where everything is equal, and this bill now passes into the Vice Mayor's committee chamber of horrors to give it the air of legitimacy sans developers before it heads for third reading and likely final passage. But it seems to me that Duane Dominy is now willing to squander any working class cred he built during the fracas over the Fairgrounds on the fat cats of asphalt production.

Oh, and there should be a special place in hell for anyone who promotes projects that expose children to toxic chemicals to which they would not expose their own children.


UPDATE: CM Dominy won't move his rezoning request to third reading until he has visited an operational facility to see "what those pollutions are"; except that he has already visited an operational facility in Shelbyville.





So, he can move his bill to third reading while promising he won't based on a technicality. Savvy?

Metro Police shut down single Occupy Nashville tent protest on the Courthouse Square

According to Occupy Nashville protester, Mark Hamill, when he tried to occupy the Metro Courthouse Square, Metro Police sent 7 cops to remove him from his outpost on municipal public property. This is how he related his story to Tennessean reporters:

An attempt to move the Occupy Nashville protest from the state Capitol to the city’s Public Square ended after several hours early Tuesday morning.

One tent was set up on the lawn of the city government headquarters Monday night. Early Tuesday, a Metro Nashville police officer told tent dweller Matt Hamill a local ordinance barred camping there. Hamill packed up his tent and left ....

Protestor Jason Steen said Metro Police arrived at the Public Square shortly after 5 a.m. and asked Hamill, the lone protestor there, to leave. Steen said the encounter was amicable and Hamill left without incident.

Occupy Nashville's legal team is looking into the required permits to move the protest to the Public Square

Right idea, too little and too late for execution.

The Metro police response was overkill: it looked more like a drug bust when all they needed to clear a guy in a tent out was a couple of constables in one cruiser. The response indicates to me that Metro government had set itself, had Occupy Nashville targeted city hall, to act heavy-handed, to be overbearing just as other cities forces have been.

Now ON does not have the bodies both to occupy the Courthouse and to maintain a beachhead at the General Assembly. It is unfortunate that Occupy Nashville (that is, Nashville proper) will probably only amount to one tent hauled off willingly by a guy who didn't want to be subdued and arrested by a half-a-dozen-or-so police officers.

Occupy Nashville should lead on public education

New York City occupiers look behind the wizard's curtain.

I found it curious during the past few days that Occupy Nashville welcomed students from Lead Academy, a local charter school, without so much as a protest against what the corporate influence behind charter schools is doing to public education. Maybe local occupiers do not see like occupiers in other cities how privatization, under the influence of the Bill Gates Foundation and campaign-financed politicians, is not positive for the general welfare of public school kids. It seems to me that the Nashville protesters could have provided a civics lesson for the students simply by dissenting on the tokenism and selectivity that drives the charter school model.

I do not know if Occupy Nashville is simply avoiding the question of charter schools because they're catering to Tennessee Democrats or if they just do not grasp the income gap disparities driving the charter schools movement, but if the latter is the case, education blogger Jim Horn lists the top 10 reasons that those who claim to represent the 99% ought to think more critically about public education:

TOP 10 REASONS FOR 1%ers TO SUPPORT URBAN CHARTER SCHOOLS

1. Urban charter schools require minimal public investment in physical plants, library programs, the arts, science labs, athletics, personnel, and transportation infrastructure.

2. Urban charter schools are cheaper because they depend upon an endless stream of young beginning teachers with few benefits, no retirement payouts, and no collective bargaining.

3. Urban charter schools make it easy to segregate based on race, economics, gender, and disability.

4. Urban charter schools allow for the exclusion or dumping of problem students whose abilities, behaviors, or test performance that could damage to the charter brand.

5. Urban charter schools make it easier to hide the problems of the poor by pointing to testing success by those who survive the charter gauntlet.

6. Urban charter schools allow for the imposition of cultural and psychological control techniques in urban areas that are not subject to public scrutiny.

7. Urban charter schools put decision-making and control into the hands of unelected executives with no oversight beyond hand-picked board members.

8. Urban charter schools (not for profit CMOs) allow corporations and wealthy donors to reap huge tax benefits for their generosity to corporate charter schools.

9. Urban charter schools (for profit EMOs) expand business opportunities for the education industry & testing-industrial complex.

10. Urban charter schools make it possible to take the state tax dollars saved from the forced choice of urban charters and use that money to enrich suburban public schools without raising taxes.

I am still waiting for Occupy Nashville to address local issues. Metro's wholesale sellout to charter schools is a good place to dive in locally. But embracing a charter school is a big belly flop of a failure.

As things stand, there is no "occupy the voting booth" in the lexicon of Occupy dissenters

The blogger at Occupy Online's tumblr page maintains that the people who want us to participate in the rigged voting process are the very people that Occupy Wall Street is protesting:

I don’t want to vote…

and that doesn’t mean I should shut up. It means I refuse to participate in a rigged game. That means that I refuse to fall for the illusion of choice and stay silent and hopeful that some fallible, corruptible human will step into a position of power and remain faithful to his promises. I refuse to muddle my brain with campaign rhetoric and disappointing lies.

I know I am not alone. Try as they might to shame us into voting in their rigged game to feel like we are accomplishing anything, Obama proved to me once and for all that anyone who gets into power under our current regime is a puppet. Otherwise…why would they have ever been allowed to be in power?

Elections create the illusion of free choice. You and I are not the ones who select a president because the choices we have between 2 parties amount to the political equivalent of selecting paper or plastic (to paraphrase George Carlin). What I find remarkable about the Occupy movement is that it is focused on self-determination and reclaiming the democratic process. It is independent in the strongest sense of the word.

That reclamation project is why these folks hold their own General Assemblies, why they interrupt scripted government events with "mic checks," and why they take electoral politics with a grain of salt.

Flip the script

Despite the hype and drama with which the media builds up the primary election season, the gravity of electoral politics is countered by broader-based social movement politics. Matt Taibbi's analysis is on target:

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

Word is that Barack Obama is trying to redeploy the community organizers around the country whom he relied on to win his first term. However, if they joined in the 2011 occupy uprisings are they going to settle for another GOTV effort that primarily benefits the 1%?

Occupy SouthComm: Nashvillian of the Year has overlooked skeleton in his closet

A month ago, I expressed my concern that SouthComm writers had a bit of a double standard when it came to populism: arms-length with Fairgrounds preservation minions; full embrace of Occupy Nashville. The one-sided love climaxed last week with the Nashville Scene's declaration of Night Court Magistrate Thomas Nelson, "Nashvillian of the Year, 2011".

Now, I applaud Judge Magistrate Nelson for turning back overzealous Tennessee highway patrol officers in their overzealous attempt to punish and violate protesters. In my upcoming Best and Worst Metro Services post I mention Night Court as one of the higher points of service delivery precisely because of Nelson's actions.

But SouthComm's relatively untempered allegiance to Occupy Nashville and those who have served it in government has tunneled them into a narrow passage on such an ambitious award as "Nashvillian of the Year". 

Today SouthComm writers appear to be walking back their supreme vote of confidence in Judge Magistrate Nelson, given a letter to the editor that disclosed a less-than-flattering picture of Judge Magistrate Nelson's handling of arbitrary and capricious bail he set for some demonstrators who were doing nothing more than holding an overnight vigil. Were they holding it on state property? No. They were holding it at the Metro Courthouse, which begs the question: if Occupy Nashville had occupied the Courthouse rather than Legislative Plaza, would the Nashvillian of the Year have granted a request to jail them?

President Obama made history today for all the wrong reasons

Barack Obama went today where no one to the left of Joe McCarthy has ever gone before in refusing to veto the controversial National Defense Authorization Act, which destroys our constitutional protections against being detained indefinitely (even for life) by military forces, and it guarantees that any of us can be apprehended without just cause or guarantee of due process. Once this becomes law none of us is free:

“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”

The far-reaching detainee provisions would codify indefinite detention without trial into US law for the first time since the McCarthy era when Congress in 1950 overrode the veto of then-President Harry Truman and passed the Internal Security Act. The bill would also bar the transfer of detainees currently held at Guantanamo into the US for any reason, including for trial. In addition, it would extend restrictions, imposed last year, on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to home or third countries – even those cleared for release by the administration.

Truman never caved to McCarthyism. Obama is poised to do so. My sense is that people most likely to be violated by US military forces are not conservative critics of government, whom Obama has courted and appeased, but progressive dissenters of current federal policy. I fear for social movements the likes of Occupy Wall Street.

2011: the year Occupy joined the American mass protest tradition

A year ago this month civil disobedience began in Tunisia and then suffused other Middle East cities. By autumn Occupy Wall Street dissenters marched across most major American cities. What a year 2011 has been.

Nashville occupiers suspect faux-NES van of stalking & surveilling them

UPDATE: The Scene reports that the undercover van belongs to Metro Police, who decided for some odd reason that they needed to provide Donald Rumsfeld extra special coverage when he was speaking in Nashville.

Today, Metro Police spokeswoman Kristin Mumford told the Scene that it was actually undercover Nashville cops:

The van was a Metro Police Department undercover vehicle that was part of the dignitary protection plan for Donald Rumsfeld. Given his obviously controversial status, and the police department hearing talk of possible disruptions to his visit, officers were assigned to proactively work to ensure everyone's safety.

Because everyone knows Mr. Rumsfeld cannot afford to pay for private security himself or avail upon his buddies whom he hired to go to Iraq as private security contractors.

Can anything good come from public housing? Verily.

If you followed yesterday's national "Day of Action" by Occupy Wall Street, you are aware that there were lots of dramatic moments: occupiers bottlenecking all points of entry to the New York Stock Exchange, California sit-ins at Bank of America, arrests in Atlanta and Portland, and marches and/or bridge occupations in several cities. Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the entire day occurred when giant projected images appeared on New York City's Verizon building towering over a scheduled concluding march across the Brooklyn Bridge (by a crowd that was estimated to be between 32,000 and 45,000 protesters).

Protest messages and themes were projected on to the large building from a hidden location that kept both police and news crews guessing. The light show provided an uplifting contrast to the mood of the protest, and the surprise of this ballsy tactic capped off the effectiveness of the day perfectly.

But more impressive than the tactic itself was the story of how the projectionists gained access to a place seemingly outside the suppressing clutches of NYPD. That access was granted by an unlikely hero who generally does not have the power to grant access for others to much of anything else:

Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully there. But then I got one call from a sane person Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

In my opinion there is a common human tendency to root for the underdog, and Ms. Vega's story is that she was the underdog who made possible Occupy Wall Street's highest moment in an already high-flying day of action. Yesterday was historic and a working-class mom helped add a bold exclamation point.

Defective detectives up to the devil's business

When I read that detectives from police intelligence enter a church where dissenters have sanctuary and shelter, take inventory of the protesters, and pump a women's shelter volunteer for information on her clients, I have a hard time not seeing the KGB's Homeland Security's finger prints. And when I learn that the pastor has to spirit protesters out the church's back door because an unknown person is snapping photos of people who come out the front, call me conspiratorial if you like, but I believe authorities are instigating some sort of treachery. A couple of days ago I maintained that DHS and FBI should focus on real threats to homeland security instead of targeting occupiers in Nashville. The atrocious actions of NYPD sustain the widely held perception that orchestrated suppression is spreading:

“It is disconcerting that they would actually enter the sanctuary,” said the Rev. James Karpen, known as Reverend K, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, on West 86th Street. “Here we had offered hospitality and safety, which is our business as a church; it just felt invasive”....

About 46 protesters had spent Wednesday night in the church. Just before 6 a.m. on Thursday, as the demonstrators began to stir before a major downtown protest, the two men in plainclothes came to the church door and asked the doorkeepers if they could use the bathroom, according to Mr. Karpen.

Instead, both men entered the sanctuary, one remaining near the door while the other advanced down the aisle, apparently counting the demonstrators in the pews, according to a witness who reported the episode and who asked his name not be published because he feared harassment by the police.

One of the men then went downstairs to a homeless women’s shelter, run in cooperation with B’nai Jeshurun, a local synagogue, and asked for information about who was sleeping there, said Elissa Weiss, the volunteer on duty ....

A demonstrator then confronted the men and asked them to write down their names and badge numbers. One identified himself as Detective Kevin G. Clancy, who according to 2006 police records is assigned to the intelligence division of the New York Police Department. The men then left.

“They are welcome to come in if they just say who they are,” Mr. Karpen said. “We have never had that kind of issue with the police before.

I appreciate that the pastor is "disconcerted," but implications of this level of surveillance are frightening and enraging. The direction local police seem to be taking goes down the road to perdition. If this country so goes, there is no return.


UPDATE:  DemocracyNow hosted a discussion on "New Military Urbanism," during which a legal observer of Occupy Wall Street noted the absolute brutality that increasingly characterizes policing protesters in cities:

"I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested... As I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, 'I need to get in. My daughter's there. I want to know if she’s OK.’ And he said, 'Move on, lady.' And they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head," says Smith. "I walk over, and I say, 'Look, cuff her if she's done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, 'Lady, do you want to get arrested?' And I said, 'Do you see my hat? I'm here as a legal observer.’ He said, 'You want to get arrested?' And he pushed me up against the wall."

If police administration naively assumes that they will not reap bitter fruit one day from the seeds they are sewing today, they are sorely mistaken.

Beating up protesters is much easier than plugging potential security breaches in local utilities

Last week I had an interesting chat with a former security guard employed by Metro Nashville contractor Wackenhut to guard the Downtown water treatment plant near Salemtown. He told me that he believed the potential for catastrophic, lethal chlorine spill was real because the system does not have tight oversight.

Reportedly, the FBI is supposed to be regularly testing the security of the chlorine railroad tanker cars that deliver the concentrated toxic chemical during the water treatment process, but he never saw any conducted. He said that chlorine leak alarms went off several times in the small control building next to the tankers while he was on duty and that the building is supposed to be airtight, but on a number of occasions security personnel had to don gas masks while responding to the alarms.

Whenever there was a leak on-call "specialists," some of whom did not act like they knew how to resolve the problem, responded, according to the former guard. He also confirmed what has been reported in the past by others: the complex is remarkably vulnerable to sabotage given its proximity to Downtown Nashville.

Sandbagging tankers against the 2010 flood. 

It has been frustrating enough watching what looks a tragic accident (or act of terrorism) waiting to happen get attention from outside sources while Metro, state, and federal government officials seem to ignore the threat. A major chlorine spill would be a catastrophe for Downtown and both sides of the river. However, what I find even more galling is to watch how government misdirects its security forces away from real threats and toward innocuous inconveniences like the modest protests of dissenting citizens. Take the Department of Homeland Security, which assisted the Tennessee Highway Patrol's misguided crackdown on the relatively small Occupy Nashville protest. Give the protesters credit. They've fought the battle of Legislative Plaza against the state, gone to jail and won in the courts, and been acknowledged across media (along with overwhelming public support) for their perseverance.

Nevertheless, the committed followers who continue with the group beyond Governor Bill Haslam's bumbling heavy-handedness do not seem to expand. Moreover, ON has really not done much to occupy Nashville or otherwise live up to their name. They have not shown the slightest interest in occupying Nashville's Courthouse or the Chamber of Commerce or Gail Kerr's writing cubicle or the windmills of Jerry Maynard's mind or any other place of local political influence in Nashville. They've picketed NES and staged a street play at CCA. Today they're going to occupy the Tennessee Tower. They've basically given Mayor Karl Dean  (a Democrat with political aspirations) a pass. None of this is to slight the alternative democracy they're trying to run in the form of General Assemblies.

But really, was their nonviolent unwillingness to leave state-owned public property worth the attention of Homeland Security or the FBI or any other federal agency sworn to protect Americans against enemies, foreign and domestic? DHS overstepped its boundaries in assisting Bill Haslam's act of stepping on his own feet in the ON crackdown. Why are they not more focused on finding terrorists who might strike in Nashville or on securing vulnerable targets like the chlorine tankers at the Downtown water treatment facility?

Now we see reports that agencies like Homeland Security and the FBI may be coordinating responses with city halls across the country to suppress popular backlash against Wall Street and the financial industry. I have to wonder, given that President Obama broke his campaign promise to close George Bush's oppressive GITMO detention camps, whether the White House might actually be encouraging municipal and state-sponsored gagging of dissent as well as the compromise of universal human rights at home.

I notice this morning that Juan Cole is worrying about it, too:

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement. That is, municipal authorities appear to have been conspiring to deprive Americans of their first amendment rights to freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Likewise, A Homeland Security official let it slip in a phone interview that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had been strategizing with cities on how to shut down OWS protests. The FBI is said to have advised using zoning ordinances and curfew regulations, and to stage the crackdown with massive police force at a time when the press was not around to cover the crackdown ....

What these two reports show is a high-level conspiracy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to protest peacefully.

When will we see Occupy Wall Street protesters hooded, dressed in orange jump suits, and sent to Guantanamo for military trials? When you let the government act without regard for the rule of law toward foreigners suspected of terrorism, you open yourself to be treated the same way if the rich decide to sic their police on you (it is mostly their police).

Chapel Hill, NC cops suppress OWS protesters who occupied
an abandoned building to perhaps start a free clinic
-- KATELYN FERRAL AND MARK SCHULTZ

Sounds like the FBI is too distracted with aiding local police--who in turn act like paramilitary thugs toward nonviolent protesters--to spend much time testing for security holes at strategically significant utilities like Metro Water Services. I would agree with those who argue that if Homeland Security is coordinating these crackdown efforts against Occupy Wall Street, then we are not very far away from the day when we will see protesters rounded up and detained GITMO-style. The federal security apparatus, whose overseer is the President of the United States, needs to keep its eye on the ball and focus on potential local threats that are real. It should avoid micromanaging protest response as if it were quelling hostile coup d'etat. It ought to fix holes in the system rather than rolling back the civil rights of Americans.

Tennessee Highway Patrol emails on "well organized" Occupy Nashville: "This one is a little different"

NewsChannel5's Phil Williams posted THP emails he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request that show they conducted a "covert operation" on Occupy Nashville. There is no real surprise in police and security forces infiltrating social protest movements. It always happens. It is no conspiracy theory to expect cops to engage in surveillance and subterfuge; hopefully most movements are not naive, but they learn how to track and counter-surveil police and government operations on their protests.

But the emails do spur several questions:

• Why was both Homeland Security and THP obsessed with conducting a "covert operation" on a nonviolent protest group to the point that it took troopers off the highways, away from protecting travelers and it diverted attention from tracking actual terrorism threats?
• Why is it Occupy Nashville's job to "control the homeless" population who have been around Legislative Plaza for a long time?
• Did protest-suppressing THP officers in uniform hide badge numbers and identities because they might also have been used as plain-clothes, "blend-in" infiltrators at other times?
• Why did an Occupy Nashville leader compliment and thank THP for its illegal crackdown on protesters on October 28?

UPDATE: SouthComm reporter Steven Hale tweets that Bill Haslam is dropping all charges against Occupy Nashville protesters. That begs another question: how can the Governor justify the labor expenses and other operational expenses that went into what looks like a wasteful crackdown on nonviolent protesters?


UPDATE: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Honorable Embarrassment, Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey.

The decline of the progressive city, demanded by Republicans, enabled by Democrats

In his article called "The Myth of the Progressive City," Denver resident David Sirota enumerates the ways that leaders of Democratic cities have sold out the once proud faith in progressive tenets that lie beyond the pale of  strictly social issues (wherein common ground is often found with Republicans):

Sure, two or three decades ago, there may have been some truth to the notion that the American city is a union-driven bastion of populist progressive economics. But today, while cities may still largely vote Democratic, they are increasingly embracing the economics of corporatism. The result is that urban areas are a driving force behind the widening intra-party rift between the corporatist, pro-privatization Wall Street Democrats and the traditional labor-progressive “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party ....

On spending issues, Democratic-voting cities across the country have simultaneously slashed social services while offering up huge taxpayer subsidies for stadiums, corporate office buildings and other private, for-profit projects.”

As true as this may be for other cities it is especially true in Nashville, Tennessee, where Democrats in charge here refuse to see any of the regressive practices in privatization and subsidizing corporate influence. We have a Mayor, a Democrat, who generally ignores democratic process, unless he is threatened with a tidal wave of popular backlash. He appoints corporate donors and friends to influential committees and task forces with agenda often predetermined due to influence from interest groups like the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and the Nashville Business Coalition.

In a recent slow-pitch interview with an ingratiating "All Things Considered" (NPR) reporter, Karl Dean donned the corporatist stripes of so many Democratic city officials:

RAZ: Now these aren't boomtowns .... But they're clearly doing something right or many things right .... Mayor Karl Dean ... says his city has historically been more resilient .... What can somebody like you, in your position as the mayor of a city, actually do to begin to turn things around given how deep this economic crisis is? Is there a whole lot somebody like you or any mayor can really do?

DEAN:  ...We've been very active in economic development. And I think, fundamentally, you have to continue to invest in yourself, and the two ways we've done it, I think, are the most important. Number one is, unlike other major cities, we have not cut our schools' budget .... That's the one thing Nashville has to get right. We've also invested in ourselves, most particularly in this new convention center ....

RAZ: So does it mean that you have to just think more creatively? You have to go to the private sector and maybe look for a sponsorship, look for private companies that are willing to pay for public projects or public spaces like parks or community centers ....

DEAN: ....we've put more funding into education, but I have and others have reached out to the private sector to help us bring Teach For American here, the New Teachers Project, Charter School Incubators. If we did not have the private sector, we would not have been able to do that. Because if you're going to be doing anything innovative in government right now, you've got to build partnerships. You just can't do it on your own.

Dean tag-teaming education reform with
Chamber of Commerce CEO Champions

Terms like "innovation" and "education reform" have been used as code words here to privatize school service workers (removing their union from the public school equation), to spend millions on charter schools (privatized public schools which sap government revenues from traditional public schools), to link teacher evaluations to student test results (causing low teacher morale) and to force business-models via "CEO Champions," backed by venture philanthropy, on Nashville's secondary schools (which gives the Chamber of Commerce even more influence with little accountability to parents or taxpayers).

I am seeing more frustrations expressed here at neighborhood gatherings, parent-teacher organization meetings, and even in the streets (with Occupy Nashville) about how little control people have over municipal policies that are supposed to be informed by the community. As more people question and dissent, corporatists trot out the backlash argument that the wealthy people like those the Mayor enlists are the ones who provide us our jobs (as if that justifies their greater influence in politics above and beyond letting the people decide). They may create the jobs, but the workers create the wealth. Democrats like Karl Dean seem to have forgotten that.

Cities should be places where progressive democracy materializes rather than standing as empty window dressing that hides the hard machinery of top-down power. Neither prominent Davidson County Democrats nor their champion, Mayor Karl Dean, have done much to make Nashville such a place. We live the myth of progressive cities, too.

Literal occupation is free expression

With the number of arrests of Occupy Wall Street protesters--most of whom are demonstrating nonviolently--approaching 3,500 nationally, it is worth pointing out how quickly and easily local, state, and federal government officials are ordering violent suppression of free speech. It is also worth considering the inalienable quality of our rights to assemble and express ourselves:

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told AlterNet, “The tenting, the camping, the tarps, the patio polls, the cooking — all of that is part of the political expression of Occupy Wall Street. That’s what it embodies. This is not a one-day demonstration. This is saying, 'We will occupy, we will stay here as part of our political expression until things change.' I think it’s embodied in the protections afforded by the First Amendment.” He added: “How can you occupy unless you have tents and sleeping bags to protect people from the elements?”