Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street: Future Growth Industries

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of 'discipline,' too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.

Norm Stamper
former Seattle police chief and author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing
Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

“militarized adaptations”, “metabolic rifts”, “Green fascism”, “nine meals away from anarchy”: Climate Change & the New Geography of Violence

“The People of Greece Are Fighting for the Whole of Europe”

"Karl Marx was disastrously wrong about a lot of things. But if the job market keeps growing as slowly as it has the past few months — even with April’s 290,000-job boost — the U.S. economy could soon find itself in a place he’d recognize.

"In Das Kapital, Marx described a problem he saw in the way capitalist societies function. As companies became more productive, learning to get more from their workers, they would need fewer and fewer of those workers. This would create an 'industrial reserve army' of unemployed people, whose desperation to work would keep the fire at the heels of those who had jobs and keep wages in check. As a result, all the added value created by workers would accrue to the owners of the companies."

Mark Whitehouse
Wall Street Journal
Number of the Week: 29.4 Million in ‘Industrial Reserve Army’