activity???!!!  If their client tells them they are about to murder someone, yeah. Wer're not her clients, and people holding banners over freeway overpasses is not illegal.

I think the problem is that Sue is not a movement lawyer. For Occupy's legal advice, we need to go to the National Lawyer's Guild, which has made itself available; the ACLU would probably also help. We could probably even call the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Also, as far as I know, Sue is not officially representing any individual or group at Occupy. So her comments should be taken the same as mine or anybody else; she's a person giving her opinion, that's it. And yes, she's a person who has admitted that she took it upon herself to report Occupy activities to the police. Not good....

I tried to temper my comments under the assumption Sue is trying to help, so sorry if I was mean. It's just that I feel the majority of her advice is unhelpful, and she is using the "authority" and alleged expertise of being a lawyer to get people to accept her opinions on these issues.

But the main thing I want to say is this- based on my own experiences with undercover cops, especially in the 1970s, as well as information disclosed by the ACLU lawsuit against the LAPD for spying and trying to provoke peaceful groups, that I think was in the 80s, as well as stuff a lot of us have read about the FBI and COINTELPRO, here are some of the things police provocateurs do:

--They try to fracture the movement and discredit effective organizers by spreading rumours, lies, and dissension, including and even especially the lie/rumour that certain people are undercover cops (See especially Black Panthers murdered at UCLA)

---They propose very violent acts, and even help carry them out, bringing in weapons such as guns and even bombs to the movement (See especially the Weathermen)

--They bring drugs into the movement

--They pose as people yelling offensive things at us, so that we react emotionally to yell back or even get into a fight, which makes us look bad, will be on the news, and may result in arrests

--Now, whether undercover cops were responsible for promoting violence and destruction of property in some big protests like at the WTO in Seattle, where window breaking, throwing stuff at the cops and setting fires in trashcans discredited the protests and turned locals against the protesters, I don't know. It could be, I haven't seen proof. Some of that was also caused by the bullying and brutality of the uniformed cops who attacked crowds who started retaliating. After all, not all protesters have received nonviolence training

From my list, you can see that many of these things could also be done by protesters that are not cops, who maybe have a political philosophy that most of us disagree with, or who lack self-discipline, got drunk and dumb, think it's fun to throw and break stuff,get excited or angry easily and so on. So I think it should be clear that the best defense of the movement is not to go around worrying about who is an undercover cop provocateur, but instead to keep promoting our consensus and public commitment to nonviolence. I wish there were nonviolence trainings every single day at O.L.A.--that way if either an agent provocateur or just a bunch of people who genuinely believe turning a large peaceful demonstration into a riot,(with result of a lot of people getting arrested who were not prepared for it, maybe brought their kids, and thereful will not be doing these protests again)--tries to "lead" people spontaneously into illegal and/or violent acts, then hundreds of people there will already know what to do to keep the protest peaceful, to deescalate, and to not be misled or derailed but keep the demonstration focused on its real purposes and collective agreeements.

To me it is silly to think that undercover cop agent provocateurs are spending their time trying to get people to hold up a banner over a freeway overpass. Or promoting peaceful, well planned, voluntary civil disobedience. Instead of getting paranoid, just always remember that the person who is listening to you or talking to you may be an undercover cop. So take that into consideration, but if you thoughtfully consider whether a proposal is good for the movement or bad for it, it doesn't matter who is saying it. To me one of the worst mistakes we can make is to think people we disagree with are all cops--there are genuine political differences, and we need to respect that and each other, and have a real exchange of ideas. Paranoia strikes deep!

Finally, in my experience most undercover cops are just spies. They are pretty quiet, act nice and uncontroversial, are in fact not argumentative or very political, and they collect information and may take a lot of pictures of everybody and everything. If they decide you are a threat to the system (and that decision may not have a constitutional basis) now they know who you are and they can come for you later. It turned out there had been 2 undercover cops at my wedding. One of them was uncovered; I still don't know who the other one was! But we all need to think about whether we are going to stand up and be counted to restore democracy, whether it's being counted by the 99% we want to join us, or people passing that info to the 1%.

peace, Lee

That's a deep question. I'm not sure of the WHOLE answer, and I hope other people will comment. As far as the FBI, I do believe it works directly for the 1%. I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, I think that's just how the system actually works. (Although of course it is true that there are "conspiracies"--it's so sad that Ernest Hemingway was diagnosed as paranoid partly because he thought he was being followed and spied on, and no one believed him, and his isolation and fear drove him to suicide. Now with the passage of time,certain government documents have become public, and he WAS being followed and spied on by the FBI!)  Why nowadays do peaceful anti-war activists and peaceful environmentalists etc end up described in gov files as "domestic terrorists?" Why do some of them end up on no-fly lists?  Why was MLK Jr. spied on and considered a dangerous "communist"?  It's the logic of power to feel threatened and to seek more and more power and control, I would say.

It was only a few years ago that the LAPD violently attacked a large peaceful, legal immigrant rights march on May 1, mowing down whole families and also the news media. They used the pretext of illegal behavior by a small group of young people that they already were harassing, but really the mass police brutality and arrests made no sense, but still they did it. The jails were already overcrowded etc. Why were there hundreds of arrests of peaceful occupiers all over the country last weekend? Why have NYPD attacked and mass arrested OWS protesters on a number of occasions? 

Mostly though, I don't think the LAPD has its current policy on its own. It's doing what the political elite as in Mayor and City Council tell it to do. That political elite may continue to encourage us, if they think our message helps the dems, because let's face it, most of them are dems, and hey, they need more taxes to do their jobs, so they're not against a lot of what we're for. But If our movement keeps growing and it really is becoming more effective and stays completely independent of any political establishment, the 1%ers and business elite of Los Angeles will worry and they will start pressuring the political elite that business is being hurt, that the occupation is creating a public nusiance and disturbance, and people have had their chance to express themselves and now it's time for them to go home. One possibility is that making the protesters look bad, encouraging some of them to be violent etc. would turn public opinion against us, so that the thing can be contained or shut down before it's too big to fail.

Just some suggestions!