Some meandering thoughts as I prepare for the West Coast Port Shutdown tomorrow . .

In the freezing cold rain and under threat of an immediate crackdown by the Oakland Police Department to remove them if they tried to re-establish their occupation, Occupy Oakland setup a new camp site at 19th & Telegraph.

Occupy Oakland organizers reported regaining “momentum” as a number of actions with “visible union support” took place as many took to the streets again. They added ”as of 6 pm [Occupy Oakland was] celebrating in a liberated vacant lot at 19th and Telegraph to the sounds of hip hop, drumming, dance music and marching bands. Some neighbors in the Uptown development welcomed the arrival with signs of support and danced in their balconies. Police quickly withdrew to the perimeter when the thousands of protestors arrived.”

Thursda,y in two separate actions, several hundred people participated in a march organized by Good Jobs LA, with folks from Occupy LA, SEIU and citizens joining in as part of a general day of action to protest police actions in New York and elsewhere; planned arrests went off without a hitch. Later in the afternoon, a large group from Occupy LA marched back to the Bank of America branch and some folks were arrested. There was no violence in either action.

One of the themes of people like Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo as well as many other mayors and governors around the country is how things are so bad economically that the states must cut back in so many services, laying off teachers, first responders, cutting Medicaid eligibility, rolling back unemployment benefits, and generally destroying both the social safety net and wages and benefits for state workers. Yet here it is, New York City can incur millions of dollars in overtime costs going after unarmed, mostly peaceful protestors (according to this from WNYC it was over $5M by late October), yet city agencies are scrambling for funds:

These massive late night raids on occupations can’t be cheap. They involve dozens, perhaps hundreds of police officers, often brought in from other nearby jurisdictions. There just aren’t that many police on the graveyard shift, so the bulk of them must be getting paid costly overtime to work evictions in the middle of the night. Who is paying for this?

A nation wide pattern, possibly coordinated, has emerged for how political officials are trying to deal with the occupy protest. In the Northern locations the pattern has been to wait until the cold winter freezes them out. In the warmer climates, overwhelming military style police action is being used to forcefully crack down on the encampments.

There were a few incidents of violence at or nearby occupations yesterday, but, unlike previous incidents, the police did not provoke the violence. Yesterday, a 35-year old veteran shot himself at Occupy Burlington.

Visiting an Occupation, even a relatively small one like ours, is a little surreal. The energy is so heated. There’s so much passion, energy, even anger. Then you step away and realize the world continues as normal. Despite the global nature of this movement, people everywhere are living life; Re-entry is jarring when one steps from any temporary encampment to the bright lights of a grocery store.

Depending on what you read, the Occupy Oakland protests last night were either a resounding success or a chaotic mess. Let’s piece together what happened.

TV news loves conflict. It’s exciting! What they don’t love is doing actual research and real reporting about the conflict. “We’ll leave that for the suckers at Frontline six months from now. Look! Behind you! A fire and people in hoodies running away! Are you getting all this?”

Information like who is causing the conflict, their motives and objectives are not really their forte. They do love the shots of rocks and tear gas being thrown, they don’t really care who is throwing them.