Occupy Wall Street... starting to get scary

If you haven't seen the latest in Occupy Wall Street stories, check out the various items below.

The movement is entering an interesting phase where certain segments are starting to get more aggressive. 

One of the strengths of OWS has been that it represents a diverse uprising of disgust aimed at all the powers that be, from political to corporate. Its been a movement which had no singular message and that was basically all-inclusive to anyone that was sick and tired of the status quo. 

However, the downside to not having a clear message is that your movement can become fractioned and co-opted by more extremist elements. Which is what we are beginning to see happen. 

From a PR perspective, this fracturing will drain public support over time as the 'movement' begins to look more like a 'mob'. If OWS loses public support, then logically the police will gain public support for implementing harsher methods for controlling the 'mob'. 

To date the police have done a pretty poor job on the PR front. From macing protesters, to arresting 700 people, to putting one in the hospital with a fractured skull resulting from being hit with a tear gas cannister - the police have been losing the war over public opinion.

It should be interesting to see how OWS progresses. I suspect the movement will continue to move towards being more aggressive as that is the natural progression that all large-scale protests eventually take when their peaceful actions produce no results. 

It may destroy their brand, yet it may not. If the move towards aggression is sparked by an external event - police brutality, further disclosures of extreme corruption in the banking sector, etc. - then such aggression may be tolerated by the public.

Either way, now is not a good time to be a mayor of a US city, because reality is that the grievances OWS have are with federal/national level issues. As such, mayors are caught between maintaining law and order and appeasing protesters that will only be appeased by federal-level actions. 

From a PR perspective I think the best course of action for mayors to take is to engage with OWS. While rules around peaceful assembly exist, mayors would be well advised to reach out to OWS participants and make sure everyone knows the rules.

Mayors need to be seen less as 'maintaining law and order' and more 'keeping the peace' - and while the two things may be the same thing, they have very different connotations. The later encourages communication, mutual respect and mutual support, which in turn enable an entirely different set of communications strategies and tactics than one would implement under a more traditional and strict 'maintaining law and order' stance. 

It's the mayors who have to step in here, even though the protesters are upset over federal issues. 

And on with a quick OWS update:

Oakland March gets violent (bank windows smashed). Apparently all banks in Oakland were closed and employees sent home.



Wells Fargo gets smashed in Oakland

Oakland Protesters shut down the port



OWS in Seattle

Apparently 500 protesters waited outside Sheraton Hotel where Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, was giving a speech (they were waiting for him to leave so they could protest him face to face). Dimon snuck out the back and did not have to face the protesters.





The video that disappeared

There was a video of two protesters that were hit by a car when the protest blocked the street. The driver got frustrated and hit the gas and ran over the protester.

The video appeared online today, but is now nowhere to be found.  It was on multiple sites (linking back to YouTube) and now it is removed from all those sites.

YouTube Censoring OWS videos?
This is just my observation, and I hate saying this (especially given my praise of YouTube only days ago) but I think YouTube is now heavily censoring any videos relating to the Occupy movement. You use to see 30 videos minimum hit YouTube every single day, now there is maybe fifteen per day and almost all of them are about commentary (versus actual video of the protests). There's also rumors that Twitter may be censoring OWS tweets as well.

I really hope this isn't the case, because it would be a sad commentary that video from elsewhere in the world isn't censored, but US related videos are.

I notice when a story breaks, YouTube has a bunch of videos uploaded with titles that suggest video of the event. But the video never actually loads and within minutes it is taken down.