Protest Outside Convention Leads to Standoff With Police
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/protest-outside-convention-leads-to-standoff-with-police/?hp
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021267129

"arrested for no reason" vs " climber over police barricade" are 2 far different things.

and police have been proven to lie, so I'll wait until I have further information on this. I've even posted about cops proven to be lying about peaceful Occupiers here on DU. It's not democracy when this happens. I want my democracy back.

However, the big problem is here:

"allowed to continue walking through Charlotte while surrounded by police officers."

It's not Democracy if someone disallows your freedom of choice for a peaceful protest, and if democratic representatives do not listen, or provide an opportunity to hear 1st Amendment issues. PFC Manning is one of importance. Have any DNC speakers mentioned him at all? I will guess they have not and will not. The military-industrial complex and its continuous war budget is the elephant in the room but I'll mention it because they will not.

And they have definitely been surrounding the marchers. It is patronizing beyond measure to have cops constantly shifting to surround them, dominating, intimidating; it's as patronizing as those "child on a leash" products, and the child most certainly knows it is being robbed of its dignity. This is not democracy. This is a police state.

The experience of those within the convention center is entirely different from the experience of my people. There is something terribly wrong in this country, and it is present at both "conventions".

They blocked me and a bunch of other people people trying to get to a Planned Parenthood rally and a bunch of low wage hourly workers who were not able to get to work to get paid. So I hope they enjoyed their free speech because they ruined a lot of other people's day.

OWS is not making any friends here. They march around screaming obscenities which will not endear you to people in the South, even the liberals.

center, if that's where the PP rally was (I strongly support PP). In one of the photos above you can see there are several protest groups present, including the undocumented, Code Pink, and more. Sorry if you had difficulty but "things are fucked up and bullshit" and MUST change. Government doesn't care; it's part of the problem (citizens united, glass-steagall, deportations, PFC Manning, etc.) Protesting and resistance to the unacceptable is how this country was founded.

And none of the marches have been in one place long enough to block anyone from getting to a day job, the entire day. Occupy is =about= supporting those who struggle; do you have more information on when and where this occurred?

Just five blocks from Time Warner Cable Arena, where delegates are meeting this week, protesters took over an intersection for about two hours, attracting hundreds of police officers who swooped in to surround them and try to funnel them to more secure areas.

Officers took two protesters away in handcuffs. Other demonstrators got into shouting matches with delegates and cut off the primary route used by buses bringing convention attendees to the area. Still, no violence or significant damage occurred even after the protesters were eventually allowed to march into the heart of Charlotte's central business district ...

http://www.newser.com/article/da13bhm81/dnc-protesters-stop-blocking-intersection-and-are-allowed-to-continue-walking-on-sidewalk.html

Blocking a downtown intersection for two hours may piss folk off

And yes, it did piss people off.

12:45ish yesterday. All OWS. No Code Pink, no Undocubus that I could see. The only pic you have posted from the Stonewall march is the last one. The Undocubus group did their thing in front of a delegate entrance on 5th where they could get the attention of people who are actually part of the DNC. The OWS decided to do a random march for Bradley Manning. But they just ended up milling around in front of one of the few perimeter entrances where people without credentials can enter. They had no real signs or organization and no one there watching would have any control over what happened to Manning anyway. Probably very few who even know who he is. They were rude to the waiting crowd. There was no attempt to flyer about Manning or explain what the march was about. Just telling us what assholes we were for supporting the Dems. We figure up to 100 PP supporters could not get in. There was a guy trying to get to the bus station and several low wage hourly people who could not get to their jobs. Which means that they lose that money.

The protestors need to stop screaming FUCK and FUCKING and FUCKER all the time. Seriously. They crashed our Labor Day parade on Monday. This is a regular local event in these parts. All the local Dem politicians come and the union people. Parents bring their kids. People wave little American flags and have ice cream. And suddenly there are a bunch of people screaming FUCK in your children's faces. Not cool. Not cool at all.

I understand that it was their 1st Amendment right to be there. I actually came out on purpose on Sunday to see their scheduled march and show support. But I can now use my freedom of speech to say that what they are doing here is not only unproductive, but actually detrimental to their cause. And it interfered with MY freedom of speech since I was not able to show my support for reproductive freedoms and I missed seeing Sandra Fluke speak

Thank you for going and supporting PP, or attempting to

Please understand that when we go out to attempt to spread the message so completely obfuscated by the mainstream media, we meet walls of cops as seen above. It become tedious to say the least, as is obviously intended. If anyone ever pushed a cop, MSM =would= give it endless airtime, but of course not the income inequality message, etc.

The convention is a touchy situation. We want to present the message to the largest group possible who might be willing to listen and do something about it, and to contest them when they do not or worse, are actually part of the problem. The powers have obviously chosen to keep Occupy and other groups well away from speaking to those actually in power; walls of cops constantly hovering and obstructing and intimidating make that amply clear. This is not democracy. The intimidation is designed to test people to the point where they may indeed show up as angry so that this is how they'll then always be seen by those encountering them. Cops and the powers that be are to a great extent directly responsible for frustration on the marchers' part. Remember causes and conditions.

And you said something important. "...no one there watching would have any control over what happened to Manning anyway. Probably very few who even know who he is".

-The point was to get to those who do have control and to demand he be released and treated like a human being. It was, and is, denied us and him.
-Very few know who he is. That is the point of the protest, and it is sad and sickening that not enough people yet know who he is or what is being done to him, that change be created.

PFC Manning revealed the lies of Bush's war. He has been in solitary confinement and effectively tortured for over two years. He is a hero and must be released. Everyone should know about him, and what he revealed.

"Manning was held from July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, under Prevention of Injury status, which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused international concern. In April 2011, 295 academics – many of them prominent American legal scholars – signed a letter arguing that the detention conditions violated the United States Constitution. Later that month the Pentagon transferred him to Fort Leavenworth, allowing him to interact with other detainees. He was arraigned in February 2012 at Fort Meade, Maryland, where he declined to enter a plea. The trial is expected to begin in February 2013.[3]

Reaction to his arrest was mixed. Denver Nicks writes that the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, and that Manning was viewed as both a 21st-century Tiananmen Square Tank Man and as an embittered traitor. Several commentators focused on why an apparently very unhappy Army private had access to classified material, and why no security measures were in place to prevent unauthorized downloads.[4]"

He revealed a video of helicopter gunship pilots asking permission to fire upon a group of people, depicting them as enemies or threats; they were civilians and I believe a journalist was among those killed when they opened fire. Atrocity. And if you've seen the pics of soldiers doing thumbs-up over the dead bodies of their victims, this is part of the same thing..

I myself would shut down an intersection to demand people know about him, about this, when few do, and many must. I'm sorry about the problems but the protesters should have been allowed into the center like any other citizen and been allowed to make their case to those who can change such things. Of course, the military industrial complex living off of 50+ percent of every tax dollar on an infinite war standing is unlikely to respond to anyone, which is another point of the protest. Things are out of control and voting does not address these issues.

I'm hoping that this is useful information to you and that it might be worth the disruption you unfortunately experienced. I hope you will share in our outrage and demand for immediate change for PFC Manning and the issues involved.

BTW, when Obama HQ opened in Santa Monica CA earlier this year, myself and one other Occupier attended and stood politely outside the line outside, speaking with a bullhorn every few minutes as the crowd changed, to search NDAA and to know what it's about. We didn't get into anyone's faces, explained what we could when asked, and were grateful to the Obama staff who shared the same refreshments with us as they shared with everyone in line. We did make sure everyone heard the message, however.

My point is that the protestors were doing a poor job of educating the crowd. They seemed mostly interesting in telling us how much political parties suck and how stupid we were for supporting them. And none of us were even delegates.

I know it is a complicated situation, but they are alienating a bunch of people here who have been sympathetic in the past or might be in the future by using coarse tactics. I have done activist training with one of the original Occupy Charlotte guys and my group in general had good relations with them. I am shaking my head at what happened.

Good luck.

Our rally for DC autonomy, which ended up being very pro-DC statehood thanks to our efforts to pressure our delegation, ended up having almost no audience because of the protests. Our Mayor (Vincent Gray) and our delegate to congress (Eleanor Homes-Norton) ended up missing the event completely, along with a large number of supporters.

I also saw no presence of any Occupy group inside the convention. The police were keeping out large marches, but any individuals could go into the convention center, talk with the delegates and pass out fliers. We did (and got a lot of positive responses), but the only other groups I saw there were J-Street and Move to Amend. Keep in mind that the convention is probably one of the best times to network with people politically, since important individuals in the Democratic party, many of whom (in my experience) are much further to the left than the leadership, are coming from all over the country to meet and network.

There were even the pro-life people outside with big posters and bullhorns. They ended up having more of a presence than Occupy. Like you said, the protests were out of the site of delegates, lacked information, and were much more likely to annoy people than to persuade them.

Yeah, pretty much the entire city is glad to see them go. Sorry that your rally was disrupted too

being used to block the demonstration ...
http://www.texasinsider.org/?p=66468

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/09/05/dnc-dispatch-occupy-movement-marches-in-support-of-bradley-manning/

News reports universally suggest it was the protesters that shut down the intersection. This treats the protesters as pests intent to shut down the convention by blocking traffic. It removes the politics from the action. The reality is, had the police and other security personnel had a plan to move the protesters through the city, as they should be able to do during the convention, there would have been no standoff.

Additionally, let’s be clear: there is nothing about the First Amendment in the 2012 Democratic Party platform. There is nothing about policing of protests or police violations of press freedom and people’s right to record, as has been widely documented by those following the Occupy movement for almost a year. What it does mention, however, is an American universal value of being able to “assemble without fear,” which should be promoted in countries abroad.

The message is two-fold: the Democratic Party considers a heavy police state to be part of protecting the right of people to “assemble without fear,” even though it opens up hundreds to stop-and-searches without probable cause in violation of one’s privacy. It intimidates families who would come out and exercise their right to assemble if they did not have small children. It makes Muslims or immigrants afraid because they do not want to be targeted by law enforcement. And it ensures only a small group of people, the most radical of the radical or the most passionate of the passionate, show up to protest.

Finally, the Democrats find it perfectly acceptable to proselytize on the virtue of countries other than America being free while individuals are put on terror watch lists here so they do not protest during major political events. They obscure instances where US citizens are having their freedom of expression violated like, for example, when a Manhattan district attorney in New York remains committed to unconstitutionally subpoenaing the Twitter data of Occupy Wall Street protesters (even though Twitter has appealed twice). They wholly ignore ordinances passed to control free speech and assembly in ways that target protesters and may be unconstitutional.