Most of the people I talked to were sure that every important committee in the camp had someone working to sabotage it from the inside. They’re probably right. In fact, if history is any guide, the OLA members I spoke to were probably underestimating the true number of infiltrators.
For instance: During the 1968 protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which drew about 10,000 protesters and was brutally crushed by the police, 1 out of 6 protesters was a federal undercover agent. That’s right, 1/6th of the total protesting population was made up of spooks drawn from various federal agencies. That’s roughly 1,600 people! The stat came from an Army document obtained by CBS News in 1978, a full decade after the protest took place. According to CBS, the infiltrators were not passive observers, monitoring and relaying information to central command, but were involved in violent confrontations with the police.
It wasn’t just the Feds who were infiltrating the protesters. Although it’s not clear exactly how many local cops were sent to infiltrate the protests, you can bet the Chicago’s own boys in blue didn’t miss out on the costume party. The city’s infamous Subversive Activities Unit, known as the Red Squad, has a long history of monitoring, infiltrating and squashing any whiff of any left-wing/anti-business activity. Just ask any union guy. So it was only natural to expect that this unit would ramp up its operations in preparation for the 1968 convention protest.
In the end, cop-on-cop violence was used to justify the brutal “police riot,” in which Chicago cops indiscriminately clubbed women, hippies, retirees, reporters and anyone else in their way–and they pumped in so much tear gas that the vapor seeped into the Hilton hotel, giving presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey a lung-full of gas as took his shower.
Which brings me back to the Occupy LA. The eviction deadline set by the city was 12:05 a.m. By that time, at least 2,000 protesters had amassed in and around the camp, spilling out onto the street and blocking traffic. How many of them were working against us? How many were legitimately whackos? Is there a difference, really?
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