I saw something on twitter earlier today, though I don't recall who wrote it, that said "If you don't let us dream we won't let you sleep."
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Meet the private security force the banksters have hired to oppress you, they're literally the same guys who used to beat up your great-grandparents when they began the American Labor movement over a century ago.
If you're not familiar with The Pinkertons, they were the Blackwater of the late 19th and early 20th century, an armed and often violent private security force for the Robber-Barons and industrialists of the Gilded Age used to keep striking workers in their place.
I shit you not, history repeats itself . . .
After evictions and arrests from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, a subsidiary of Sweden’s Securitas AB. (SECUB) He works with international financial firms to “identify, map and track” protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he said. The companies gather data “carefully and methodically” to prevent business disruptions.
bloomberg.com
Want some history on the Pinkertons? Here are the basics . . .
Employers don't always accept a workers' strike calmly. They can try to fight back against the union, sometimes through lawsuits and legislation, sometimes with violent thugs. Some employers used companies that offered strikebreaking services, such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Former cooper Allan Pinkerton started the infamous agency in the mid-1800s [ref]. Although it usually engaged in standard crime-stopping detective work, they discovered there were profits to be made as strikebreakers. Many other companies were soon offering similar services, but strikebreakers were usually called Pinkertons.
A strikebreaking crew was essentially an armed mob of mercenaries. They reported to the picket lines to escort scab workers into the business, or to intimidate the strikers. The crew also acted as guards to prevent strikers from damaging company property. In the 1800s and early 1900s, conflicts between striking workers and Pinkertons often grew bloody.
money.howstuffworks.com
Funny how 'crime-stopping private detective work" kind of sounds like
impersonating a police officer when you say it that way . . .
"essentially an armed mob of mercenaries" this statement sums up the banksters, the GOP and the Pinkertons all in one.
More below the fold . . .
Last year’s anti-bank protests were “like a big forest fire that was suppressed and put out,” Chris Swecker, the former head of security at Bank of America, said in an interview. Firms are studying protesters because “there’s also the opportunity for spontaneous fires to spring back up again,” said Swecker, who runs a security-consulting firm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Private-security teams in London have become an “incredible army” and “the eyes and ears of the city” thanks to a coordination program called Project Griffin, according to Rachel Briggs, policy director at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The organization develops responses to security challenges.
bloomberg.com
We could look back to the Battle of Homestead, which is not a bright moment in any sense in our nation's past . . .
The Battle of Homestead is the most famous event in American labor history, and perhaps the most significant. Just after dawn on July 6, 1892, the battle erupted when locked-out steelworkers of the Carnegie Steel works at Homestead, together with citizens of the town, broke into the closed and fortified mill nick-named "Fort Frick" after CEO Henry Frick. On the bank of the Monongahela River, they confronted a private army of Pinkerton agents hired by Frick as they attempted to land and secure the mill. The battle was soon joined, and raged throughout the day with gunfire, burning oil, and cannon.
http://www.battleofhomesteadfoundation.org/
Big business is whining that it can't afford to pay taxes despite their record profits, but they can afford to hire Pinkerton's after they crashed the economy.
An incredible army of privatized police defending Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the rest of the Vampire Squid. This is what a police state looks like, same as the one our great-grandparents had to fight generations ago. There is a great depression going on below the plutonomy. It can not be ignored. A growing cross-generational poverty caused by stagnant wages, slashed social safety nets and mounting debts and soaring costs of living will simply not be tolerated by the public, nor should it. The banksters have destroyed the economy for the majority of Americans and expect us to bail them out and shoulder the entirety of the sacrifice. If you don't let us dream we won't let you sleep.
Occupy is everywhere. Right where it needs to be.
Peace and love to all, and a hat/tip to kossack OllieGarkey who touched on this subject in his diary today. Remember . . .
You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca