JP Morgan Chase Pays off NYPD to pummel Occupy Wall Street Protesters.

From Democracy Now:

The bailed-out Wall Street megabank JP Morgan Chase gave a tax-deductible $4.6m donation to the New York City Police Foundation, which has protesters asking: who is the NYPD paid to protect, the public or the corporations? The 99% or the 1%?

Marina Sitrin, part of Occupy Wall Street's legal working group, told methat the protest was going to be based at Chase Plaza, but the NYPD pre-emptively closed it. The protesters moved to Zuccotti Park, which they renamed Liberty Square.

According to an undated press release on JP Morgan Chase's website, in response to the $4.6m donation:

"New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing 'profound gratitude' for the company's donation." Given the size of the donation, and the police harassment and violence against the protesters, we must question how Kelly shows his gratitude.

Here's Salon.com's Joan Walsh:

I’ve been struck by the good sense the protesters have used in dealing with the police (in contrast with the poor sense of some of the cops): They are not making them the enemy. In fact, as 700 people were being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, they were chanting at the cops: “We’re fighting for your pensions!” It didn’t keep the protesters from getting arrested, but it kept them the moral and political high ground.

But what happens when the liberal establishment begins to reach out to this amorphous collection of anarchists, libertarians, Ron Paul fans, sectarian lefties – plus many, many ordinary people turned activists, drawn by the call to protest the power of Wall Street? How will they relate to “a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system with roots in anarchist thought,” as the Occupy Wall Street folks describe their decision-making process? Can a leaderless movement get along with liberals and Democratic Party poobahs, who are essentially leaders without a movement? It looks like we’re going to find out.

It’s hard to watch Occupy Wall Street grow and not think of all the “lessons” of the 60s, mainly the bad ones. When I heard some demonstrators chanting “The whole world is watching,” like they did in Chicago’s Grant Park during the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention, I hoped they knew what really happened back then: Instead of the whole world watching and being horrified by the cops’ brutality, a lot of people watched and cheered the police, standing up against what they saw as spoiled, dangerous kids, who were tearing down the pillars of the stable, affluent society that made their protest possible.

From the Washington Post, this observation about the success of this movement:

Whether they will grow larger and sustain themselves beyond these initial street actions will depend upon four things: the work of skilled organizers; the success of those organizers in getting people, once these events end, to meet over and over and over again; whether or not the movement can promote public policy solutions that are organically linked to the quotidian lives of its supporters; and the ability of liberalism’s infrastructure of intellectuals, writers, artists and professionals to expend an enormous amount of their cultural capital in support of the movement.