#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The CIA media newspaper front pages this morning (designed before anything had happened) pre-emptively attempted to counter a strong turnout for May Day/Occupy with photos of barren open spaces and cops making 'righteous arrests' of 'lone perps.'

Pre-emptive and pro-active framing is a psyops norm.

[JackRiddler]

Mayday in New York

My day with Occupy began in Madison Square Park a bit after noon. Here was the Free University, open air, more than 10 classes running at a time, each with its own crowd of dozens. We watched Frances Fox Piven deliver a people's history of the United States, from the Revolution to the Abolitionists to the Populists to the labor movement and the New Deal and on to the Civil Rights marches and the anti-war movement before ending with Occupy, and she managed it as a full story in about half an hour - with mic check! By then there was a brass marching band, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and the park was bursting with people.

Marchers from Bryant Park began arriving on the Broadway side, many bursting into runs and weaves and generally taking the street. We followed them to Union Square, where there were tens of thousands and a stage with sound permit. I forget the name of the City Councilman who spoke with such conviction, and who has been arrested a couple of times with Occupy, but not his message: Agitate, agitate, agitate. Every thirty feet there was another congregation, music, paper-mache sculptures, banners, sidewalk drawings. Immigrant groups, unions, neighborhood general assemblies like our own, students, people from Zuccotti, all your non-profits and political sects and seeming thousands of kids with "No More Stop and Frisk" buttons. Justice for Trayvon, restore Glass Steagal, liquidate the banks, end the wars, Free Bradley Manning, shut down Guantanamo, stop paying student debts, make the Fed give homeowners loans at 0.25% (like they do for Wall Street), "Occupy Wall Street Not Palestine," stop foreclosures, "Stop Bitching and Start a Revolution." I'm only scratching the surface but here's a favorite: "Tonight We're Gonna Party Like Minimum Wage Is 19.99."

The hundred different groups gathered around their banners and arrayed for march. Supposedly the march had already started down Broadway. The cops kettled and blocked the crowds around Union Square, and tried to let us into the street a dozen at a time, but finally had to let the mass we were part of take 15th Street after we demanded it loudly enough. We were thousands. We ended up taking Fifth Avenue and I estimated a count of about 10,000 in this sub-march. The cops got ahead of us at around 12th or 11th Street, or we would have gone on into Washington Square Park. They made us take a left, but there were no barricade arrangements here. They weren't in full control at this point. When we merged with Broadway I was astonished to see we were a small part of the whole, and once all the different wings had merged my estimates rose first to 40,000. We were in the middle of this very long march, with density sidewalk to sidewalk, and when our part reached Canal you could see the end was still behind Houston and the beginning looked to be past the Woolworth Building. This dwarfed the November 17th marches, which had been on the order of 20,000 or more. One hundred thousand people! "Join us, join us." "YOU are the 99 percent." "We are unstoppable - another world is possible." "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out."

Who wasn't there? For the first time I've ever seen at a demonstration of this size, not a hint of any kind of corporate media. Not that they cover such events, but at least a few of them always show up, and of course at Zuccotti in the early weeks they had their own street. But today: no trucks, no big cameras, not at Union Square, not downtown when we got there. Nothing. The blackout has arrived, comrades. Any romance and exploitation they may have enjoyed about this movement is gone. They don't want to talk about it anymore, they don't even want to insult, they want to bury it altogether because any attention will help it grow. We've reached this inevitable point: There ain't no justice, just us. (When I got home, the NPR news at 11 pm started with the item that "hundreds" of Occupy protesters had "spilled out into the streets" but it was "mostly non-violent" except for a point when "protesters blocked traffic" (location unspecified) and "police in riot gear" pushed them back on to the sidewalk. All of this undoubtedly fictional, starting with the only number the corporate media will ever again acknowledge as having been present at a demonstration: "Hundreds." If a thousand hundreds are so!)

Broadway narrows and the march gets longer. Zuccotti Park is walled off by the blues. This is the end of the permitted march. The cops block us there, then let us go on as a dispersal strategy. We reach the Bull at Bowling Green, thousands apparently went into Battery Park. We followed along, my fellow banner-carrier for the march and I absent-mindedly talking history. Anticipating trouble we'd folded up our 12-foot banner. (Along the top it reads, "Greece - The Fight For Independence" and two sections in different colors contrast: "1821: From the Ottoman Empire" and "2012: From the Bankers.")

Thousands of people stream into a park I'd never seen, on Water Street, called Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park, a huge open space twice as big as Zuccotti, long and full-open to a great view of the river. The breeze comes off the water. This would have been chilling in the fall, for the summer it will be fresh and pleasant. It's also a public-private park, owned by Verizon who have the building on the right as you enter (you can see it's a phone electronics building from the narrow windows). It's a beautiful space. Two general assemblies of hundreds were going when we arrived. The second was the real surprise: they have a full amphitheater in this space, a dozen levels deep and in a full circle. The meeting was on.

Here my protest companion and I had to go. It was 9 pm, a long subway ride home and I still have to work tomorrow. As we exited from whence we came, we saw that crossing this street to the park was now forbidden. Hundreds of cops were deploying, running, streaming, rolling in on their scooters, setting up at the intersection where the park entrance is. It looked like they were going to hit the park with a large force. I don't know what happened next, but here's the Twitter feed on OccupyWallSt.org, from the latest going back to about 6pm.

ll times Eastern, all locations in NYC unless otherwise noted)
11:59PM: Reports of live ammunition being used on protesters in Egypt
11:59PM: More police arriving at #LibertySquare
11:47PM: Police are setting up barricades on north side of #LibertySquare , Park closes at midnight
11:40PM: Police are setting up barricades on west side of #LibertySquare
11:30PM: Reports of solidarity rally from Battery Park to #LibertySquare
11:07PM: At least 200 people at #LibertySquare , currently no tension
10:58PM: Reports of possibly 20 or more arrested at Vietnam Veterans Plaza, including medics, veterans, and clergy. Arrests allegedly made because of 10 PM park closing.
10:55PM: More police arrive at #LibertySquare along with what appears to be news vans
10:42PM: March arrived at 24hr park on Wall St & South St, on the waterfront.
10:42PM: First folks released from 1 Police Plaza as more brought in
10:13PM: Police surrounding people in Battery Park, giving a dispersal order. NYPD says they will begin making arrests in 5 minutes. Reports of kettling nets sighted as well.
8:38pm: Popular assembly about to begin at Veteran's Memorial - 55 Water St. #PeoplesAssembly
8:30pm: The permitted march is over. Meet up at Battery Park!
7:30pm: The very front of the march now reaching #LibertySquare. The sidewalks are barricaded, but the park is open. Crowd estimates place size between 10,000 to 25,000. Follow the action via this list of #M1GS street journalists on Twitter or any of the streams throughout this article!
7pm: From Foley Square to Union Square, Broadway is Occupied. March headed to Wall Street now. via @mollyknefel: ¨We are 32 blocks south of Union Sq. People just left there and the streets are full the whole way.¨
6:45pm: Occupy Chicago has shut down five Bank of America branches. Currently blockading Madison & Clark. Occupy Miami reports their livestreamer was targetted and arrested as their march was dispersing. Occupy Detroit tweets: ¨Police tell us to get out, no camping. We say we are here to stay. Camping workgroup meeting now.¨ In Seattle, where police used tear gas earlier in the day, the May Day march just passed the Space Needle. Back in NYC, via @davidgraeber: ¨Random harassment arrests start across Houston [Street]. Saw kid's head smashed repeatedly on concrete, just to show they could.¨
6:35pm: Wash., DC May Day march getting ready to leave Malcom X Park. Reports of police brutality in Montreal, Quebec. Tank/armored personnel carrier seen in Oakland.
6:25pm: Occupy Chicago has successfully shut down a Bank Of America. Watch as they move in. In San Francisco, Occupiers are rolling back the fence as they re-occupy the #SFCommune
6:20pm: via @allisonkilkenny: ¨Apparently, NYPD only letting 10 people out of union sq at a time, which, ya know, is a good way to kill a march.¨
6pm: 1000s still trapped in a labyrinth of police barricades trying to march from Union Square to Wall Street. Broadway is packed, stretching for blocks for the permitted march. Some people report being stuck in the same place for 45+ minutes. Chants: ¨Let us march!¨ Large union presence. Chants at front: ¨Obama, escucha! Estamos en la lucha!" "One struggle, one fight! Workers of the world, unite!" Reports that Occupy Oakland is being kettled. Los Angeles airport (LAX) has been closed for the day. (See info below.) Occupiers in San Francisco tweet: ¨#888Turk reoccupied #sfcommune¨
5:50pm: Many marchers still trapped behind police barricades, some becoming frustrated. Police with metal and plastic cuffs and batons drawn line up around march. Taxi Workers Alliance leading march out of the Square. Meanwhile, Occupy Oakland is being surrounded by three lines of riot police, trapping them in the street and threatening to use more chemical weapons.
5:40pm: In NYC, protesters are being kept behind police barricades and many are stuck in Union Square and unable to move out due to police interference. In Oakland, police have declared an ¨unlawful assembly¨ and issued a dispersal order.
5:30pm: Massive march headed by unions and immigrants rights groups leaving Union Square now, headed to Wall Street! Watch one of many streams live from NYC here. Protesters are reviewing basic march tactics: ¨Keep moving, keep on sidewalk. Don't engage or make contact with cops.¨ @NYCLU reports at least 30 arrests so far today. In Oakland, heavily armed police continue to aggressively attack protesters currently engaged in a stand-off. Oakland police have used tear gas twice already.
5:15pm: As riot police tear gas peaceful protesters in U.S. cities, CNN is covering a surprise 2am (local time) visit to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan by President Obama. We are still having a party in Union Square! Join us and see for yourself!
5pm: Calls made at Union Square to "cancel student debt, stop foreclosures, provide jobs and healthcare." Across the country, after police fire tear gas, protesters in Oakland are marching on City Hall, which is now being surrounded by riot police. Huge marches forming in Chicago, SF, Seattle, Boston, DC, Philly, Miami, LA...
4:50pm: via Occupiers in Chicago on Twitter: ¨We are having another Direct Action vs the Banks at 4PM [Central]! Want to join us? Come to 180 W Lake St!¨ Others in Chicago enjoying music in Federal Plaza. In NYC, Das Racist is taking the stage at Union Square.
4:40pm: Between music acts at Union Square, speakers from labor movement call for union rights, end to stop and frisk. Undocumented immigrants speaking now: "No human being is illegal! All workers have a right to organize, to unionize!" Crowd chants ¨We are one!¨ Immortal Technique up soon.
4:20pm: In Chicago, riot police on horses are on the scene as march reaches Federal Plaza on Dearborn.
4:05pm: Tom Morello and friends taking the stage now at packed Union Square singing "Worldwide Rebel Song." Watch live! Crowds have been estimated over 10,000 and growing.
4pm: Anti-capitalist march in full effect in Seattle. Occupy Detroit is ready to re-occupy. #M1GS is live in Los Angeles.
3:40pm: Confirmed that police in Oakland have used tear-gas and grenades on crowds including children, elderly, and people with disabilities peacefully demonstrating. Watch on livestream. In NYC, we are still gathering peacefully for a permitted march at Union Square and getting ready to march to Wall Street at 5:30! The Square is packed!
3:35pm: Marchers in Chicago taking a knee in the street in moment of silence for those who fought for the 8 hr day. In Oakland, reports emerging that police have used flash bang grenades and tear gas. via @BootsRiley: ¨The police have tried to arrest several people during bank shutdowns. All have been physically freed by the crowd.¨ via @OccupiedOakTrib: ¨Young woman being treated for a head wound, blood dripping down side of her face¨
3:30pm: The #Guitarmy has reached Union Square.
3:27pm: Speeches taking place on livestream around the Maypole at Union Square.
3:15pm: Multiple marches of thousands are continuing to enter Union Square for the permitted Solidarity Rally and March with performances from Immortal Technique, Das Racist, Tom Morello, and many more! Come hang out and see a free concert! Occupy Denver, Occupy San Francisco, and many other May Day events are being livestreamed.

I didn't hear about this sabotage nonsense from Cleveland and Oakland until I got home.

There ain't no justice, just us.

[Laodicean]

[Wombaticus Rex]

[operator kos]

Another Occupy Oakland demo, another militarized police response...

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/opd-takes-more-steps-backward/Content?oid=3191973

cops present with assault rifles


armored personnel carrier with LRAD

[JackRiddler]

Was anyone else here was at a Mayday march? Still waiting for bail? Come on people, let's hear your 101 reports!

[Aurataur]

I took part in the MayDay festivities here in Los Angeles. I arrived in downtown at approximately 12:30 pm. Cops were everywhere. I decided to walk down to City Hall to play one of several pianos stationed throughout the southland as part of the "Play Me, I'm Yours" art installation. I sat at the piano and played for about 30 minutes. When I got up to leave, a police officer approached me and thanked me for my "beautiful playing" and asked if I would be there all day. I decided not to tell him that I was joining the Occupy M1GS convergence.

Convergence? Yes. OccupyLA decided on a "Four Winds" approach to the MayDay marches, where the various Occupy groups representing the North, South, East, and West all started separate marches that would converge on 6th and Main in downtown at roughly 2:30pm. After finding another piano to play at the California Plaza, I decided to head down to 6th and Main. A punk band was set up on the sidewalk, busting some pretty decent tunes. I ambled about for a bit then ran into a photographer friend from the East Wind. Pretty soon, all of the Winds had converged and the block party was on!

Eventually, we made our move and started marching north on Main. Several streets had been closed in anticipation of the many different marches and protests scheduled for the day. I heard from my friend that Occupy had tried to organize with some of these other marches, but were rebuked. Something about the SEIU not being happy with Occupy. Or something.

So, we marched around downtown LA for several hours. It was fun. I have no idea how many people participated in this march. But it was a lot. Eventually, we would our way through the financial district (blocking several streets in the process) and made our way back toward Pershing Square. Again, cops were everywhere! There was even an armored personnel carrier similar to the one pictured in the above post. At one point, a "scuffle" erupted between some of the more militant Occupiers at the front of the march who decided to bust through one of the police barricades. Water bottles were thrown at the officers, punctuated by yells of "Fuck the police!" Luckily, the situation did not escalate. I don't know if there were arrests.

I didn't stick around for the General Assembly at Pershing Square, though now I wish I had. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

[8bitagent]

sorry, just found this funny

[Aldebaran]

Video documentation [shown below] by local activists and independent media shows that police officers and county deputies from across Minnesota have been picking up young people near Peavey Plaza for a training program to recognize drug-impaired drivers. Multiple participants say officers gave them illicit drugs and provided other incentives to take the drugs. The Occupy movement, present at Peavey Plaza since April 7th, appears to be targeted as impaired people are dropped off at the Plaza, and others say they’ve been rewarded for offering to snitch on the movement.

Local independent media activists and members of Communities United Against Police Brutality began investigating police conduct around the Plaza after witnessing police dropping off impaired people at the plaza and hearing rumors that they were offering people drugs. We videotaped police conduct and interviewed participants, learning some very disturbing information about the DRE program.

Officers stated on record the DRE program, run by the Minnesota State Patrol, has no Institutional Review Board or independent oversight. They agreed no ambulances or EMTs were on site at the Richfield MnDOT facility near the airport where most subjects were taken. Multiple times, participants left Peavey Plaza sober, returned intoxicated, and said they’d been given free drugs by law enforcement. We documented on more than one occasion, someone being told they were sober by one officer, and then picked up by a different officer, and returning intoxicated

more:http://roguemedia.org/2012/05/02/mk-occupy-minnesota-drugs-the-dre-program-at-peavey-plaza/

[Wombaticus Rex]

Marxists going in! ($50 says this exact argument happened at Cafe Sperl in Vienna before 1900, though.)

Via: Andrew Kliman

The Make-Believe World of David Graeber

The following is not a commentary on, much less a condemnation of, the Occupy movement––which I support. It is a critique of key facets of the ideology of David Graeber. These facets of his ideology have informed the politics of some of the movement, most notably that of the leadership of New York’s Occupy Wall Street, and they were the theoretical foundation underlying the occupation of Zuccotti Park. In contrast, the greatest strength of the Occupy movement is the fact that tens of thousands of people have brought to parts of it their own hopes and aspirations, and a somewhat greater degree of realism.

The Zuccotti Park occupation was a dismal failure. The functioning of Wall Street was not disrupted. Occupy Wall Street never occupied Wall Street. Even Zuccotti Park was “occupied” only with the consent of the mayor of New York City, and it was cleared out the moment he withdrew that consent. In the end, no autonomous space was reclaimed. The effort to remake society by multiplying and weaving together autonomous spaces is back to Square One. Even worse, precious little progress was made during the occupation in articulating and working out what the movement is for, or how to solve the serious social and economic problems we now confront.

In light of these failures, it would be a grave mistake to try to glide unreflectively into a “Phase II” of Occupy Wall Street. It is time to think seriously about what went wrong and why it went wrong, in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Above all, I am concerned here to make clear the difference between “prefigurative politics” in the proper sense of the term and what Graeber uses the term “direct action” to mean: “acting as if you were already free” (see below). In the proper sense of the term, “prefigurative politics” refers to practices that foreshadow and anticipate a different world, a world that does not exist. “Direct action” in Graeber’s sense refers to practices that make believe that this different world already exists in embryo within the existing one. The latter notion is the one that was tested at Zuccotti Park and that failed the test.

(Far) more at link. I enjoyed the whole thing as a tour of an alternate reality tunnel. Comments were also illuminating.

The world of Gambino-controlled hip hop, we call that doctrine "Fake it Until You Make It" and haters hate on that, too!

[2012 Countdown]

Activists with the Occupy Wall Street movement are claiming that police in Minneapolis gave them illegal drugs and other items for participating in a study on impairment.

In a 35-minute documentary produced by Twin Cities Indimedia, Rogue Media, Communities United Against Police Brutality and Occupy Minneapolis, multiple activists describe being offered illicit drugs.

The report alleges that police gave out drugs, cigarettes and fast food as part of the Minnesota State Patrol’s Drug Recognition Evaluator program, which trains officers in detecting drug impairment. Police reportedly picked up suspects near Peavey Plaza and drove them to a facility in Richfield where they were tested.

An activist named Panda told filmmakers that after getting stoned in front of police, they asked him if he wanted to smoke even more.

“I stopped in my tracks, said ‘yes,’ and then I smoked with a cop,” he recalled, adding it was “some of the best shit I’ve had in a while.” On the way back from the testing facility, Panda said officers bought him a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s.

Later Panda explained that officers had offered him “a quarter more” of marijuana if he would become an “informant” to snitch on other Occupy protesters.

“They checked our eyes, they checked our ears, checked our lungs,” another participant recalled after police got him “high as fuck.”

“They checked our blood pressure, our pulse and all that. There were a lot [of police officers]. There were like 30 or 40.”

The claims first came to light during a controversial City Hall hearing on Wednesday about banning overnight activity in Minneapolis’ public plazas.

“They gave me a full bag of weed,” Forest Olivier told the Council. “And they gave me a pipe to smoke it out of. And they just took us out to – I forgot the name of the airfield – but its somewhere in Richfield, out near the bus line. 66th and Cedar. And they let us smoke it on the sand hills where the dirt pits were.”

In a posting on the E-Democracy forum, Council Member Cam Gordon called the allegations “disturbing.”

“Last night, I was called by a concerned mother who was very upset because her son had been given free drugs by a police officer when he went out to participate in what he thought would be social action in a public plaza to help improve his community and country,” Gordon wrote. “She was shocked to learn from her son later that police gave her son illegal drugs and asked him to use them, indicating that it was okay and that it was part of a police program.”

“Her trust in the police was broken and she was baffled at how such a thing could ever be condoned by her government. She felt that it was the police’s responsibility to help keep her son safe and protect him from harm and consider that by their action the police had put him in harms way and as a violation of a public trust,” he added.

“One of the things that is most concerning about this to me is how the young and vulnerable appear to be being targeted,” Gordon said. “Beyond that, I cannot see how this program, practiced how it apparently is being practiced, can be considered ethical or in the public interest.”



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... TgN17FZGKE

Published on May 2, 2012 by HongPong

Video documentation by local activists and independent media shows that police officers and county deputies from across Minnesota have been picking up young people near Peavey Plaza for a training program to recognize drug-impaired drivers. Multiple participants say officers gave them illicit drugs and provided other incentives to take the drugs. The Occupy movement, present at Peavey Plaza since April 7th, appears to be targeted as impaired people are dropped off at the Plaza, and others say they've been rewarded for offering to snitch on the movement.
~ Got a couple coins? Support our media expenses at http://roguemedia.org

Local independent media activists and members of Communities United Against Police Brutality began investigating police conduct around the Plaza after witnessing police dropping off impaired people at the plaza and hearing rumors that they were offering people drugs. We videotaped police conduct and interviewed participants, learning some very disturbing information about the DRE program.

Officers stated on record the DRE program, run by the Minnesota State Patrol, has no Institutional Review Board or independent oversight. They agreed no ambulances or EMTs were on site at the Richfield MnDOT facility near the airport where most subjects were taken. Multiple times, participants left Peavey Plaza sober, returned intoxicated, and said they'd been given free drugs by law enforcement. We documented on more than one occasion, someone being told they were sober by one officer, and then picked up by a different officer, and returning intoxicated.

Given the dangers of impaired driving, there is value in training law enforcement officers to distinguish between the effects of various drugs and several common medical conditions. However, we have captured video footage of instances in which DRE trainees recruited subjects who are not already impaired, and those participants say they were given drugs by the officers.

Although program documents indicate that participants must sign a waiver, https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/msp/forms- ... esponsib... there was no indication from any of the participants interviewed that a waiver was offered or obtained. Further, video footage seems to validate the recollections of participants that no medical personnel or ambulance were on site during the observation and testing in Richfield. A DRE officer told one of our investigators that no Institutional Review Board assessment of the program has been made, a requirement of all experiments involving human subjects. Since it's unethical to encourage people to take drugs--whether by giving them drugs directly or enticing them with food, cigarettes, or other rewards (which participants say they were given)--it is unlikely such a program would pass IRB review as it endangers the test subjects.

According to the WCCO article from May 2011, officer trainees in the past have worked with various non-profit organizations to recruit drug users. It would appear now that they are no longer relying solely on this tactic, instead recruiting users directly and, participants say, providing them with drugs. After the sessions, these individuals are then dropped off in public areas without supportive care, creating a public safety hazard. In an example at Peavey Plaza caught on film, an individual who said he's been smoking courtesy of the police for an hour, crossed a line of Minneapolis police barricades, climbed to the top of a large sign and sat 15 feet above the sidewalk swinging his arms and legs in front of a police camera.

Our investigation points to particular efforts to target and recruit youth. Further, law enforcement officers have been taped recruiting people from the Peavey Plaza area of Nicollet Mall and have dropped off a number of impaired individuals at Peavey Plaza. In some instances, Minneapolis police squad cars were present while DRE trainees recruited people at Peavey Plaza. After receiving drugs, some subjects were asked to snitch on the Occupy movement or asked about various people and activities of Occupy, they said. Given efforts by the Minneapolis city council to pass an ordinance designed to restrict access to Peavey Plaza by the Occupy movement, the conduct of DRE trainees points to the possibility that they are working hand-in-glove with Minneapolis police to discredit and disrupt the Occupy movement.

"I think most people would be very surprised to have our tax dollars used to get people high," states Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality. "These activities call into question the methods and motives of this DRE training."

[JackRiddler]

.

Bad. Another made up terror plot. Plus now molotov cocktail = terrorism?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ma ... bail/print

Three Nato protesters planned Obama campaign HQ attack, prosecutors say

Defence attorneys maintain men fell victim to police entrapment scheme involving purchase of Molotov cocktail equipment

Gary Younge in Chicago and Matt Williams in New York
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19 May 2012 14.21 EDT


Protesters walk past Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel's house, where prosecutors said the three men were planning an attack. Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Three Nato protesters arrested in a late night raid on Wednesday have each been held on a $1.5m bond over alleged terrorism-related offences.

Police claim the charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device, are the result of a month-long investigation into a group they believe was making Molotov cocktails.

In court on Saturday, prosecutors said the trio had planned to attack targets including President Barack Obama's campaign HQ and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel's home in a plot coinciding with the Nato summit being staged in the city.

But defence attorneys countered that the petrol bombs had been brought by undercover officers, and that their clients were victims of a police entrapment.

It is believed that the three defendants came to Chicago late last month to take part in May Day protests.

They had already been pulled over by police last week and asked about their protest plans in a stop they posted on YouTube.

Attorneys representing the men say the charges are fabricated and aimed at intimidating activists. "We cannot say enough that we believe that these charges are absolutely … very trumped up charges," said Sarah Gelsomino of the Peoples Law Office. "Clearly in an attempt to continue this intimidation campaign on activists. Charging these people who are here to peacefully protest against Nato for terrorism, when in reality the police have been terrorising activists in Chicago, is absolutely outrageous.

"All three of these guys, interestingly, were in the car about a week ago that was stopped and harassed by the Chicago police department," Gelsomino said. "They then posted that video online in an attempt to expose that police misconduct. Each of those three are now being charged with these crimes. That's as much as we know."

Police named the three men as Brian Church, 20, of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Jared Chase, 24, of Keene, New Hampshire, and Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Oakland Park, Massachusetts.

They were arrested in the Bridgeport area of the City after 11pm on Wednesday. Chicago police dressed in black and armed with battering rams broke down doors in an apartment building, searched the units and then arrested nine protesters for allegedly making or possessing Molotov cocktails. Lawyers say it was just beer-making equipment.

"The city has so far failed to produce any evidence or the search warrant affidavit used in the raid," said Kris Hermes of the National Lawyers Guild.

When police detained the people, they also seized parts of a beer-making kit, including bottles and caps, and a cellphone, Gelsomino said.

"This is the playbook," said Gelsomino. "Shoddy police work. It's a fear campaign."

Six were released on Friday. One said he had been handcuffed for 18 hours in an "interrogation room". Others say they were never told why they were held. Police did not inform the lawyers of their whereabouts for 17 hours.

One of the released, who blogs under the name "TarheelDem", called on activists to flood Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel's official voicemail. "The whole charge is transparently bogus and meant for the media to reduce turnout to the march on Sunday."

William Vassilakis, who leases the apartment, said he was appalled by the raids.

"I could not be more disgusted, enraged, terrified, by and generally totally disappointed with the city of Chicago," he told the local ABC TV channel.



© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

[8bitagent]

Fuck it, I wish it was a real plot. Even though I know its another fake FBI sting entrapment case. A time has to come where people resist these baby murderers.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Fuck it, I wish it was a real plot. Even though I know its another fake FBI sting entrapment case. A time has to come where people resist these baby murderers.

Let's focus on making actual contributions with posts, daug. That was not your finest moment and this particular thread is not the venue for it.

[brainpanhandler]

Fuck it, I wish it was a real plot. Even though I know its another fake FBI sting entrapment case. A time has to come where people resist these baby murderers.

Let's focus on making actual contributions with posts, daug. That was not your finest moment and this particular thread is not the venue for it.

Not to pile on man, but plus 1. Not cool.