Introduction

Introduction

This site was started specifically to allow people to express different points of view about Occupy and Transparency, use of cameras, and live streaming.

All points of view are welcome.  Please submit your essay or video.

This is an important topic; please share your thoughts. 

photo by Aaron Kuehn.  Occupy LA treehouse.

"Livestreaming: Lovely Weapon of Mass Information" by Marshall Getto

Livestreaming: Lovely Weapon of Mass Information

by Marshall Getto

The first live stream that I ever watched was on October 1^st of last year. A friend of mine who lives in NYC, and knows of my political and social justice junkie status, instant messaged me with THE link.

I was already feeling excited that day, as preparations were well under way for our first kickoff event at Occupy Santa Barbara during the upcoming Monday, October 3^rd. I had been tweeting, Facebook page-bombing, and performing some stunted blogging in anticipation, but here was a whole new window of inspiration opening up to me.

Suddenly, I was in the livestream with the march, watching everyone make their way onto the beginning of the Brooklyn Bridge, being guided in by NYPD with no apparent issues. As an automatic response I checked all the main stream news feeds. MSNBC, CNN, NYTimes, HuffPo...there was zero information out there! “I'm sure they'll start covering it as they cross the bridge...” I naively told myself. But there was no coverage, with the exception of an arrested NYT freelance reporter who was in the march. Immediately I thought, “What the f*&k!?”

Well, we all know how that day ended. My temperature went through the roof as I watched people led by the police to the center of the bridge where the NYPD collectively made the mistake of equipping one officer with a bullhorn to communicate to over a thousand chanting marchers. I think I got a total of 6 hours of sleep that entire weekend, fueled into a near-manic online activist state by the images that so offended my sense of justice.

Since then I've had personal experience with assisting livestreaming here in our little neck of the Occupy woods. I was thrilled to show up for the first day to see we had live stream rolling. Admittedly it was intermittent, but then, aren't they all? It captured some of our most endearing and threatening early moments, including our eviction night, when one of our livestreamers was detained for a couple hours for filming from a supporting local business' rooftop.

There were several times that I've witnessed what the real power of streaming video can be when dealing with establishment authority figures. During our piece of the West Coast Port Shutdown at Port Hueneme, one of the more comical moments was our media team livestreaming the police, who had somehow commandeered  a local 2^nd story apartment overseeing our community picket line. The video of our folks asking how the view was while filming them while they filmed us was just one of those priceless ironic moments that only video, or being there in person, can provide.

When  Occupy the Courts occurred, and we dutifully showed up to our local federal courthouse, (which, in Santa Barbara, is a federal bankruptcy court) I began to understand more about how the authorities see livestreaming. As we were demonstrating, (fairly passively, to be honest) our liverstreamer started up his rig. One of the federal agents that had turned out to guard the courthouse, (our threat level apparently only rated to have two federal agents and one DHS agent assigned to us on that day), waved me over. As one of the law liaisons for OSB I'm used to dealing with the police. I had already made contact with this federal agent when we got there, and he actually seemed to be in very good humor about the whole event. That quickly changed when we started livestreaming.

I walked over and he said, in a very hushed voice, “You know we don't mind what you guy's are doing, but can you tell your buddy to cut it out?” I wasn't sure what he meant, so I tried to clarify, “Do you mean because he is in the street?”, which is where Alex, (one of our citizen-media gurus) was standing while streaming. The officer sort of shook his head and said, “No, that is a city police issue.” leaving me more puzzled than prior to asking my question.

I reinforced an earlier mental note-to-self at this point: Law enforcement officials are not always hired for their great communication skill sets.

I leaned in closer and, in my best serious-person voice, asked, “Is it because it's a Federal building?”, thinking that he might try to invoke the Constitution-stomping Patriot Act. I basically gave the guy a softball at this point. He could have just punted and said that this was indeed the reason. Of course, I knew that we were allowed to film here, since I had read this article in 2010, not to mention that our legal team had also advised us to the same conclusion. At any rate, he provided another odd head shake, seeming to indicate that this also wasn't the reason.

“Oh, you just don't want him to be livestreaming you....is that it?” I asked, still trying to keep my voice low enough so that he might actually answer me, and not be embarrassed by other folks' attention. This time the head shake had a faint vertical motion to it, indicating that this was actually the issue for him. I smiled my largest s*&t-eating grin and said, “Well, sorry about that, but it is our right to film.” He uttered something approaching a “hurrumph!” and went back across the property line to join his fellow officer in glaring at us uselessly.

More recently we were at Vandenberg Air Force Base, joining the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, and others as we protested the launching of another incredibly wasteful, stupid, and dangerous Minuteman missile. In this instance, one of our media team was actually chased by base military police while filming those who walked in to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience. They had decided that his press pass was invalid. However, when they chased him back into the crowd gathered at the border of the base I saw one of their coordinators eye the cameras we had on her team, and draw them back to base. Livestreaming and citizen media, (as well as our media team member not accepting illegal arrest and detainment), literally stopped his arrest.

Livestreaming is one of those special human technologies, equatable to so many others that have changed our society over the millennium. Even the companies who invested in this technology’s development and design never foresaw what use people would have for it. Livestreaming has allowed me to witness the illegal use of military grade pepper spray, illegal suppression of peoples' First Amendment rights, and has helped opened my eyes to the very oppression that is happening in my country. The real boon, however, is that livestreams have helped me to understand that, when I am appalled by the direction our country and world is heading, that I am not alone.

Viva la Livestream!

Bio: Marshall Getto lives in Santa Barbara, is an activist, a Database Systems Analyst, a Unitarian Universalist, and writes on The Daily Kos. 

"Transparency Essay" by John Seal

Transparency Essay 

by John Seal

"For the record, I don't hate livestreamers. I just don't trust transparency."
--Comrade Kalamity on Twitter, March 27th 2012.

This could just as easily have been an off the record statement attributed to an anonymous Obama administration flunky, but this is where we are now: some Occupy supporters are now eagerly mimicking the high-security, everything-is-classified government they supposedly hold in such contempt. Remember when the future President promised his would be "the most transparent administration ever"? Well, welcome to Occupy Oakland 2012: the populist movement so terrified of its own shadow that everything must be negotiated in a windowless room with the lights off.

How did we get to the point where someone filming a picnic can be threatened with bodily harm? It's been a slow, but inexorable process set in motion, I believe, when the Occupy Oakland GA failed to endorse non-violence back in November, thus setting the stage for the entire movement to serve as a shield for the tiny sub-set of black bloc practitioners and fuck-shit-uppers now in control. I've written before about how this presented a massive challenge for OO, but I was naive and optimistic at the time and thought that cooler heads would prevail. As the disastrous March 31st FTP walkabout proved, however, the seeds planted on that November night have now come into full bloom.

Quite simply and obviously, it is transparency and livestreaming that gave birth to Occupy in 2011, and it is opacity and embedded journalism that will be its death in 2012. Many livestreamers have already accepted the narrative and will no longer film revolutionary actions that could be misconstrued as vandalism. Others have been neutered to the point of ineffectiveness by filming only those who give consent--an impossible standard that results in endless shots of marching feet and little else. (A blessed few have been anointed as the chosen ones by the OO hierarchy, but quite how such decisions are made is another deep mystery. I’m sure smoke-filled rooms must be involved.)

Before Occupy, I had never supported any political movement or party in my life; it was the livestreaming of October 25th that convinced me, and many others, that this was a movement worthy of support. To discover that this movement has now forsaken two of the attributes that made it so attractive in the first place--transparency and non-violence--has been deeply disappointing.

Let me conclude with a personal statement for the sake of both clarity and transparency. I plead guilty to the following charges: I am a 49-year old white middle-class male with a full-time job, three writing gigs, three cats, a blog, a spouse highly skeptical of Occupy, and a son in high school. I am a pacifist. I am also a socialist who believes that one of government's greatest responsibilities and duties is the redistribution of wealth. I am not opposed to direct actions; I supported the General Strike, the Port shutdowns, and Move-In Day (I marched to the Kaiser Center and beyond). I am not opposed to flag burning, as long as you're burning a flag you bought or made yourself. I still consider myself a community ally of Occupy Oakland and I will be out on the street on May 1st. Keep the faith, baby, and Occupy Everything—but keep the cameras turned on!

Bio: John Seal is an official at a consortium of religious colleges.  

photo by Aaron Kuehn, Occupy LA raid night.

"Live Streaming, Occupy, and Omertá" by Sue Basko

Live Streaming, Occupy, and Omertá

by Sue Basko

Some Occupy camps inculcated omertá, a code of silence vis-à-vis authorities akin to that practiced by groups as far apart on the social spectrum as the Mafia, street gangs, and Ivy League fraternities.  Ironically, at the same time, the Occupy groups were videotaping and posting online or live streaming everything – their meetings, protests, special events, reports, and often simple daily living. 

Live streaming in particular made (and is making) Occupy unlike any protest movement before it.  Viewers nationwide and worldwide watch the streams.  The streaming experience is unlike any other visual medium, in that it is live, conducted by one person  (the streamer) and there is direct interaction between the viewers and the streamer, through several streams of chat emanating through Twitter, facebook or the stream site itself.  The streams have a very now-ness about them, particularly at times when the streamer faces possible danger, injury, or arrest. 

If you have seen these, you cannot forget:  Spencer Mills (@Oakfosho) at the Occupy LA raid night with an officer pointing a gun at his head point blank; Spencer repeatedly telling the man, “That isn’t necessary,” until he finally lowered the gun.  Tim Pool (@TimCast) near Zuccotti Park in New York City, being hassled and threatened by Black Bloc mischief makers letting air out of police car tires.  On another occasion, Tim Pool being followed through the crowd by a man dressed in black, who puts up his hood and attacks Tim. 

Both Tim and Spencer, and dozens of other streamers nationally, have brought countless hours of live Occupy to the internet viewers.  Things I have witnessed in these videos include:  NYPD  arresting people on New Year’s eve, in arrests that amounted to random street kidnappings of people truly doing nothing even slightly illegal.  NYPD arresting a legal observer for the act of observing a rough arrest.  Oakland Police turning “move-in day,” when the protesters planned to take over a building as a social center, into a police riot.  The Oakland move-in day  stream was witness to every conceivable error in crowd management: tear gas canisters shot directly into a crowd, kettling of mass crowds, shocking beatings of defenseless individuals.  

The Occupy LA raid night was heavily photographed, videotaped, and streamed.  Viewing these reveals no violence from the protesters, and hugely disproportionate police activity.  One video reveals what some have told about: protesters trying to leave the area, only to be lied to and tricked by police, who said they would be escorted out, and then found themselves zip-tied and sent to jail. Watching these videos, such terms come to mind: police state, doomsday, apocalypse, fascism, overkill.   

Elsewhere, Occupy streams revealed other things: Occupy Chicago had a stream of a bossy policewoman stealing away their just-donated bottled water and tossing it into a garbage compactor truck, with no reasoning other than she said so.  Then there is the Chicago video of police asking each protester if they want to be arrested, letting each make a choice, and calmly arresting those choosing to be arrested.  This video is possibly even eerier and more disturbing that videos from other cities of police rambunctiously corralling protesters.

Occupy streams from various cities also show a lot of the same: Protesters heckling the police.  Protesters disrespecting basic civility.  Protesters acting like thugs. Protesters with filthy mouths shouting at police.  Protesters trying to incite other protesters to violence.  Protesters who seem irrational, confused, mentally ill, or senseless.

 The omnipresence of cameras at Occupy events is known.  A basic assumption, or at least hypothesis, would be that people would be on their best behavior while being videotaped. Yet, some streams show a few police mercilessly attacking protesters.  And other streams have shown some protesters behaving in very unflattering ways.  There seems to be a certain percentage of people who cannot adapt their behavior, cannot control their behavior well enough to act decently, even while on camera.  "The Whole World is Watching" does not stop some people.
 

The presence of streams seems to have, overall, had a positive effect on the Occupy movement, in making it known, creating a “fan base” for it, finding donors among that fan base, allowing vicarious participation, and allowing inter-Occupy comparisons.  

Has the presence of live streamers had an ameliorating effect on potential violence from police and/or protesters?  This is hard to judge, whether there would have been more violence if live cameras had not been present.  However, this seems inarguable: that the presence of video or streaming cameras has made the most violent or abusive acts known quickly, indisputably, and widespread.  If there had not been video cameras present when John Pike pepper-sprayed the seated students, this incident would have been a rumor, or known only to those who cared to read through lengthy and possibly contradictory descriptions.  Because video cameras were present, we were able to watch the action from multiple angles, to see how blithely callously the students were treated.  The same is true with many other scenes of appalling police violence over the past few months.   

Now we come to the question that has been raised of whether live streamers cause Occupiers to be arrested for crimes.  Each element of this seems to be false. 

First, there would have to be Occupiers committing crimes.  Occupy is a peaceful movement, with no actual membership, but with the criteria that to be an Occupier is to be peaceful.  Therefore, committing any acts of violent criminality means one is not truly an Occupier.

Second, there is talk of protecting one's “comrades.”  This assumes that an Occupier, a protester, or a streamer views those committing crimes as their “comrades.”  That assumes something very insulting – that protesters associated with Occupy are accepting of crime.  Why should they or would they be?  Why would or should Occupiers working toward a better world accept and protect criminal behavior? 

Third, the assumption is made that crimes committed at Occupy events, in locations being live streamed, are common or likely. In fact, there appears to be a very few such incidents nationwide.  There is a great deal of video evidence of what might be considered annoying or discourteous behavior by protesters, but very little of anything that might even remotely be considered criminal.

In fact, I do not know of a single case nationwide where a live streamer’s video has been used to bring criminal charges.  There is rumor of such in one case, known as the  Oakland Ice Cream Trio, but this has not been verified and seems highly unlikely.  In fact, in that case, there was probably plentiful surveillance video from cameras mounted on a bank and other buildings.  In that instance, it is likely that streamers’ video could eventually be used to show the charges are highly trumped-up. In other words, steamers' video is not likely to help put these “comrades” in prison, but to save them from it.  Some protesters are not exactly angels, and it is common practice for very exaggerated criminal charges to be lodged against them.  The existence of the streamers’ videos gives these defendants a solid chance at combating what would otherwise be their word against that of a police officer or victim.   

Fourth, the assumption is being made by those calling for a banning of live streams that the presence of a live stream video is more likely to lead to criminal charges than it is to lead to charges never being brought, or to charges being dropped, or to video possibly being used as a defense.  It appears that the presence of live streamers presenting unedited, live, nearly irrefutable evidence, must have been a factor in the decision of prosecutors to file almost no criminal charges against the hundreds of people who were arrested at Occupy Oakland Move-In Day.  Hundreds of arrests at the Occupy LA raid have netted very few criminal charges, and of those, many were done away with by attending a free class.  Video from Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, and many other cities has served to protect and defend protesters.  Most likely there will be civil lawsuits against Cities and police where the streamers’ videos will be evidence of illegal tactics or brutality.               

Fifth, attempts to control the known live streamers in no way removes cameras. The police always have cameras; protesters should also have cameras.  Also, in any large crowd, there are other streamers, others shooting non-streamed video, and many taking photos.  Today, cameras are prevalent and pervasive, especially in large crowd gatherings. In addition, there are public and private surveillance cameras mounted all over.  A few years ago, the City of Chicago mounted cameras on street poles, so that the entire city is now on camera.  Other cities have cameras, but perhaps not such a comprehensive system of them.  Many businesses and homes have cameras.  Newer surveillance cameras are so small and match décor, they are not noticeable.  Therefore, the argument against live streamers at Occupy protests is a specious argument, for one cannot control the presence of cameras in any public location. 

In conclusion, live streaming cameras have added an excitement and home participation to Occupy, the streams have brought Occupy to national and international prominence, and the video of protests has acted overall to protect protesters from false criminal charges, as well as to provide evidence in future civil lawsuits.

Viva la streama.

Bio: Sue Basko is a lawyer, writer, filmmaker.  She is founder of this site and welcomes your essay. Read more at http://occupypeace.blogspot.com  and http://suebasko.blogspot.com   

Top Photo credit: Photo by Aaron Kuehn, Occupy LA raid.