Now as promised, Ryan Devereaux, reporter for the radio and TV program Democracy Now, who covered last night's demonstrations joins me again. Good to see you, sir.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Good to see you.
OLBERMANN: Let's clear up one reality here about that video, and that was disturbing to watch and there's much to discuss in there -- and I am not saying I am agreeing either with this fact or the police response -- but the police had set up some parameters here, and those from the protest who ignored those parameters were doing so deliberately. That was civil disobedience as opposed to, say -- clear the cops of at least this implication -- the cops didn't just charge into a crowd and start beating people for no reason at all. Right?
DEVEREAUX: That's correct. It was a conscious decision. As thousands of protesters gathered along the streets of Broadway -- both sides -- they called for a general consensus, meaning basically polling the crowd as to what they wanted to do, if they wanted to attempt to take Wall Street, itself. That was the decision that they came to.
Second announcement was made in which a young man told everybody that if they did not want to be arrested, they should move from the front of the crowd. And if they wanted to risk it, they should move forward. That's what they did. Shortly thereafter, the crowd pushed forward.
OLBERMANN: The expectation in terms of taking Wall Street would have been to go on to Wall Street and be arrested and carted off? Was that the expectation? I mean, nobody was anticipating occupying buildings for 23 days, right?
DEVEREAUX: No, they were attempting to walk down a street that was entirely empty and has been empty since September 17th when the police erected barricades all over the financial district.
OLBERMANN: Mm-hmm. The response that had been anticipated in terms of -- after we're seeing the police with the pepper spray two weeks ago, and some of the limited police interactions with particularly the white-shirted supervisors -- obviously, the capability was there for something unpleasant to happen. Was anybody anticipating the degree of physicality of the police response last night, do you think?
DEVEREAUX: Well, I think after three weeks of covering this story, the one thing I've learned is you don't know what to expect. I didn't expect -- less than a week after 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge -- that we would be finding ourselves in another situation like this. The degree of violence was certainly stunning, though, and I don't think people who were gathered there peaceably, legally, on a public sidewalk -- who weren't the ones instigating the push -- expected to be pepper sprayed or hit with batons.
OLBERMANN: And the level of indiscriminate use, particularly of the pepper spray as we saw, in an irony -- and we should distinguish between a Fox News Channel reporter and a local Fox station reporter -- there was a local Fox station reporter, whose clip we played before, who got batoned, while his cameraman got apparently pepper sprayed. He said "maced" in the thing.
There -- was -- it didn't matter who you were or whether you were in the front of the charge, or you crossed the line or what. Was there any rhyme or reason as to who got manhandled and who just simply got pushed out of the way?
DEVEREAUX: It was an admittedly chaotic situation, but I saw no attempt by the NYPD to distinguish between the people who had pushed against the barricade and those who were just gathered in the area. The pepper spray, I noticed moments after the push began.
OLBERMANN: Right.
DEVEREAUX: It was a cloud of pepper spray above the front of the protesters, and it seemed to have been directed at just about anyone who was in the area.
OLBERMANN: So, if you were to assess this, what the police did -- was that an attempt to hold that line, as it were, to restrain people from crossing into Wall Street -- or was it punishment the moment that they crossed into Wall Street?
DEVEREAUX: Well, the barricades were knocked down almost immediately, and the police surged into the area where the protesters were. So, it wasn't as if they held the line so much as they moved into the crowd and began swinging the clubs, pepper spraying, throwing people around, whether they were journalists, bystanders or part of the group that actually was attempting to push forward.
OLBERMANN: I asked you this on Monday, after the Battle of Brooklyn Bridge and the 700 arrests -- does Occupy Wall Street -- since the credibility of the NYPD is imparting to them each time something like that happens -- and, conversely, is there any sense the NYPD has any idea that each time somebody swings a club, it's going to make this thing bigger?
DEVEREAUX: You know, you would think that at this point the NYPD would realize that every time that they do this, the protesters seem to gain more attention, they seem to solidify, and admittedly, they get sympathy from around the country. What's very interesting about the protesters' approach to the NYPD is that it's -- when you speak to these people -- when you speak to the protesters, that is -- they don't express harsh feelings towards the officers themselves. Most of their chants when they encounter each other are, "Wall Street is trying to take your pensions, too." "You're on the wrong side." They don't see the NYPD as the enemy.
OLBERMANN: Right. If -- as I will mention in a moment, I was there for about an hour this afternoon just to see what was going on and talk to people and be talked to and all that. If you had not known about this last night, there was no sense that it happened at Zuccotti Park, correct? I mean, it was just -- there was no bitterness. There was no recrimination. There were no plans or no "We'll get them back." There was none of that which would seem almost against human instinct, let alone sort of the rules of protest, correct?
DEVEREAUX: I'll be honest. The protesters at Zuccotti Park -- renamed Liberty Plaza -- the Occupy Wall Street protesters are a remarkably forgiving set of people. They don't dwell on these issues with the police, and since day one, they have made it clear that they don't want the narrative of this movement to be about police versus protesters. They see the police officers as part of the 99 percent that they're trying to advocate for.
OLBERMANN: Ryan Devereaux of Democracy Now. Thanks again for helping us out tonight, and last night with the tweet coverage while we were trying to figure out here what was going on there.
DEVEREAUX: Thank you very much.
OLBERMANN: Thank you, sir. Now, a quick comment on what I did see this afternoon at Zuccotti Park.
First of all, that Zuccotti Park -- I used to eat my Burger King lunch there when I first started in television at CNN. It's across the street from where the World Trade Center stood. It's in the middle of Manhattan's always-frenetic financial district. The tour buses now roll by, and it is the subject of their picture taking, and it may be the most unassuming, least threatening place in New York City.
Its occupants are impeding no one, wreaking no havoc, starting no chaos, inflicting no sanitation catastrophe. They were polite, well-spoken, informed, diverse, funny, respectful. They weren't whiners, freaks, stoners, pedants, what's-in-it-for-me'ers, Astroturfers or funded minions.
And most importantly -- whether you agree with their message or not, almost unique in this nation in this time -- here at the start, they begin with the questions, not the answers, and what they ask will make millions say, "I didn't know anybody else was asking that. I'm not alone." And with that, will come the answers. Back with the co-authors of the Occupy Wall Street declaration next.
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