Reply #170: The report that the protestors "occupied" the street of the Brooklyn Bridge [View All]

[JDPriestly]

is apparently quite false. This lie must be destroyed for what it is. Ava and other protestors describe how the police led them onto the street portion of the bridge. I have seen video of a white shirt leading the protestors on as if he were a drum major. At the time he did that, protestors were proceeding either down the pedestrian portion of the bridge or following directly behind the white shirt.

There is video of this. When the hearings come in November, this lie will be exposed for what it is.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz172asCf2M

If the police officers had wanted to stop the protestors as they entered the neck where you see the officers leading the crowd, they could have done it. But instead, they ran ahead to set a trap further up the street so that they would be able to corral the protestors and arrest them.

The police could have dispersed the crowd before it entered the bridge. They chose not to do so. The protestors were headed down the pedestrian walkway and jumped down to the street because they interpreted the police officers' conduct as directing them into the street.

The police are either guilty of entrapping the protestors or, on second thought, possibly of simply not communicating to enough of the protestors. The police are supposed to be the responsible authorities. They are responsible when things like that go wrong.

The protestors are anything but anarchists.

Interestingly, what happened on the Brooklyn Bridge is a mirror of what happened in the housing crisis. The people who were supposed be policing the bankers, the people who were supposed to be directing traffic gave the wrong signals. When ordinary people responded in a logical manner, by getting into mortgages that everyone assumed they would pay in the "new economy," the whole fraud fell apart. But who got blamed? Not the authorities who were responsible for deciding and enforcing the rules. Not the bankers and mortgage salesmen who were profiting from the rule violations and carelessness -- but the ordinary people who were fooled into signing the mortgage documents and here, the protestors, who thought the police were directing them INTO THE STREET.

Now, when someone is in charge, they take responsibility. And when things go wrong, the responsible person is to blame.

May I add that if capitalism operates on the principle of voluntary trade, not occupation and threat, why are the banks foreclosing on houses based on failure to pay fees of which the homeowners were not warned when they bought their houses?

Seems to me there was no voluntary trade in a lot of the foreclosures because the mortgage terms were not clearly stated or presented.