#OccupyPhilly, 15th & Samson, 2:10 AM by CHUCK RAMSEY
PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: Occupiers stopped at several points throughout the night—at 16th and Market, between Market and Chestnut on 15th, at 12th and Market, other spots—to mic check and taunt the police. The night wore on and more scuffles between protesters and police erupted in pockets around the general marching area. As they did, all demonstrators around those scuffles raised their hands in the air and began chanting, “This is a nonviolent protest,” which it was. To an extent. Someone poured water on a female officer and a fight broke out around Broad and Vine. A police SUV drove up and four riot-geared police stepped out. One police officer, it was said by one protester, had a penchant for beating up women. When the protest stopped at Suburban station earlier, a member of the crowd claimed he had a knife pulled on him. All night, I kept hearing, “You see that? I just got punched in the face by that cop,” and things of that nature.
There were points on Broad and Vine when I assumed it was going to end. Too many scuffles and fights with police followed by chants of “The whole world is watching” and accusations that the police started the fights. A few arrests occurred there after one protester threw a police officer to the ground then got his ass kicked. The police showed a lot of restraint throughout the night and kept the taunting-back to a minimum. Every time I assumed it was over (here comes the tear gas!), it wasn’t, and the protesters continued marching down a new block. Both sides taunted. When the group was barricaded by bike cops from Dilworth Plaza to the south, an Occupier repeated a common meme throughout the night: “The police are the 99 Percent,” “They should join us,” (and when that doesn’t work) “Our tax dollars pay your salary.”
“You don’t pay taxes,” said one officer to a protester.
“Yeah, I do,” he retorted.
“You have a job?”
“I have two jobs!” the protester yelled back. MORE
RELATED: Cops Get Rough-and-tumble With #OccupyLA
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Los Angeles police are being praised for their planning, outreach and judicious use of force in ousting the Occupy L.A. encampment Wednesday morning, but a few protesters are reporting more physical confrontations with some of the 1,400 officers. In a KCAL 9 video, now posted on YouTube, Tyson Heder, 25, was taking pictures of the eviction, when a police officer shoved him away. The video showed Heder then standing up, yelling at the officer, then being forced to the ground by several policemen. His sister, Christy Collins, said Heder was in custody Wednesday morning. Collins, who lives in Albany, N.Y., said she got an emotional phone message from him some time after his arrest. He posted on Facebook, “They beat me and stole my camera.” Collin said her brother had not been an Occupy participant previously and apparently went to the encampment Tuesday night just to take pictures. MORE
“I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”
? George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London
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RELATED: John Heilemann, national affairs editor for New York Magazine, writes that the Occupy movement is on the cusp of change, moving 
towards leadership and maybe even political action–there’s talk of occupying Congress, the National Mall, perhaps even the Democratic and Republican national conventions next year. But Heilemann says the movement poses a threat for President Obama and his re-election, in the same way the student movement of 1968 hurt Democrat Hubert Humphrey. “You had a student movement largely driven by the Vietnam War… that demonstrated in Chicago to dramatic effect– shattering Hubert Humphrey’s liberal base and repulsing a part of the country that Richard Nixon was able to appeal to,” he said. Nixon was able to associate Humphrey with the worst aspects of the student movement, and win the election, Heilemann says. When it comes to the Occupy movement, Heilmann sees “no love” for the president. “These are mostly people who either think that he’s irrelevant to the kind of change they think is important, or these are people who are embittered. They feel he turned out to be not the kind of transformational progressive president they hoped he would be,” he said. Heilemann says this group has no interest in trying to be channeled to help the president get re-elected, and they could really hurt his re-election bid, especially if, for example, they protest the Democratic National Convention next summer. MORE
RELATED: What Happened In Chicago In 1968?
PHAWKER: FYI Mr. Heilemann, This Is NOT 1968