The following is a blog by freelance journalist Jim Miller. The photos are by Andrea Mudge, a freelance photo-journalist in Portland. It is an eerie depiction of the situation that is happening on the ground at Occupy movements around the country.
This video shows the latter part of the cops pushing the final group of people out of the edge ofChapman Square and into the middle of 4th and Main. It starts after a lot of the violent shoving and batoning of people had already happened – when cops were pushing the crowd backwards out of deeper within the square – and after they destroyed the food tables and other things, though this video gives a good sense of the force and intimidation. Andrea is at 2:06 for several seconds at the very far left.
The blue structure was the camp headquarters or rallying point I mentioned yesterday, and many protesters manned it as a focal point. 15 minutes earlier, occupiers had been holding a GA by megaphone there, with a big sense of community and magnanimity even, sharing food and hot
drinks with people. There were hundreds of people trying to communicate and regroup. Over the next couple hours, while the protesters were all forced back into Main St. and held there by multiple lines of cops with shields, batons, cans of chemicals, zip ties, and guns of all types, other cops could be seen invading that structure and ripping it down piece by piece.
Eventually, a dump truck pulled up while a back hoe finished knocking over the structure and dumped the pieces in. It was bizarrely, ruthlessly efficient – more messaging to the crowd about the utter illegitimacy of their movement in the eyes of the powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6ZPlYmz4dIU#!
