Occupy! At CPAC

by Jo Freeman

Occupy! was a pervasive presence at the 39th annual Conservative Political Action Conference, held in Washington, D.C. on February 9-11.

In his kick-off speech on Thursday, Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union which sponsors CPAC, gave the movement five paragraphs. [see sidebar] Seven minutes into Sarah Palin’s closing speech on Saturday she was interrupted by a dozen Occupiers yelling “mic check.” They were escorted from the ballroom while the audience yelled “USA, USA, USA” — a standard response at Republican rallies to drown out verbal disruptions. Once off the hotel grounds they read the statement they had not been able to read inside.

In between there were three demonstrations outside the conference hotel, zap actions inside, repeated referrals to Occupy by conference speakers, and a couple of panels inspired by five months of occupations all over the country.

Thursday morning, Vinnie Vernuccio of the Competitive Enterprise Institute told a hundred people who had come to hear about “The Return of Big Labor” that “Occupy is targeting this panel because they are afraid of you.” He made a reference to what was going on outside, as he attacked unions for spending dues on politics rather than representation. That day, nothing was going on outside. The unions were marching on Friday and OccupyDC was marching on Saturday.

Two hours later Citizens United Productions hosted a “Blogger Briefing” on its upcoming films. The only one promoted in the two-hour “briefing” was Occupy Unmasked, which is still in production.

CUP is the documentary film production and marketing arm of Citizens United, which promotes conservative causes. CU sued the Federal Election Commission after the FEC deemed a 2007 film critical of Hillary Clinton to be an election communication which could not be publicly distributed within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic primaries.

When CU v. FEC was decided by Supreme Court a year ago, five Justices said there could be no limits on election expenditures by corporations and unions as long as they were made independently of candidates’ campaigns. This led to the formation of “superPACs” which have poured millions of dollars into the 2012 election. A different CPAC panel celebrated this decision.

The audience gawked as three men wearing Guy Fawkes masks and black capes marched up the aisle to the front of the room. They weren’t Occupiers but the producer, director, and one narrator of the film. The Guy Fawkes mask is worn in demonstrations by some Occupiers and has become symbolic of the movement.

Between two showings of the movie trailer, panelists described Occupy as “dangerous” and the movie as “scary.” “This is a war movie” they said repeatedly. Occupy is portrayed as “Obama’s shock troops,” whose job is to promote the idea that “income inequality” is bad. In order to tell “the true story of the radicals behind the Occupy movement” two of the panelists went undercover to get footage and quotes. CUP is looking for more, providing an e-mail address for it on the film’s webpage.

ACU Chairman Al Cardenas opening speech at CPAC 2012; February 9, 2012

“The left wants to change America into something unrecognizable.

“President Obama and former Speaker Pelosi’s support for Occupy Wall Street extremism says all we need to know about who they believe we are as a country.

“They want an America where a degraded brigade of self-named “Occupiers” is given special recognition, above those whose taxes support most of these work-averse complainers.

“The words on the signs of the occupiers are not of faith, family, patriotism or honor. They are about resentment and forced wealth redistribution from one “class” to … another class – themselves.

“They seek to replace achievement, hard work and freedom with spreading the wealth, rewarding the unaccomplished and creating a dependent class. They want a world where there is no 1 percent or 2 percent or 50 percent or 99 percent. But an indistinguishable class of people who are 100 percent dependent on the federal government.

“Is this our new social fabric? Are we witnessing the America of tomorrow under President Obama’s leadership for the next four years if we fail to unite in opposition?

“Make no mistake. The only key to putting our nation back on a path to prosperity is making Barack Obama a one-term President.

What they didn’t say but was obvious from the trailer, is that Occupy Unmasked is a campaign film, as was the 2007 Hillary: The Movie. The movie makers juxtapose scenes of violent property destruction next to footage of President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi seeming to make positive statements about Occupiers. The trailer also manages a dig at Michael Moore and the “liberal media.”

While the movie is still a work in progress, the trailer does expose one serious problem with Occupy. It proclaims itself a non-violent movement, but has no control over those who choose to ignore this mandate. There were plenty of demonstrators during the 1960s civil rights movement who were not personally committed to non-violence, but they were kept in check by staff who worked the crowd to deter violent acts and verbal provocations. Occupy doesn’t have any staff, or the equivalent.

Some of the scenes in the movie trailer were quite a contrast to the discipline shown by the over 600 union members and their supporters who protested at the front entrance to the Mariott Hotel on Friday. They marched up the street carrying tents, signs and posters saying “Stop the War on Workers” and “We Are the 99%” to be greeted by a 20 foot inflated “fat cat” choking a worker.

As the unionists marched, a dozen college students wearing t-shirts that said “Money is Speech — Poverty is Silence” walked into an overflow room for CPACers listening to Mitt Romney’s speech and stood in front of the screen with tape over their mouths. The crowd yelled at them for a couple minutes before they were removed by hotel security.

It was CPAC’s invitation to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to be its keynote speaker that prompted the protest. Walker has been a union target since last year when he and the Republican state legislature passed a bill undermining collective bargaining rights of most public sector unions. So wide is the anger at the Republican Governor that busses came from New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia to augment the ranks of local union members. Some were dressed in baseball costumes with “1% Tax Dodgers” on the front.

Organized by the DC Labor Council, the action was originally timed for Walker’s 7:30 p.m.  speech at the “Ronald Reagan Banquet” on Friday (at $275 a ticket). The need to accommodate union members’ schedules resulted in a major protest at noon, and a smaller one of about one hundred at 5:00 p.m.  Most of the unionists at the noon protest had gone home, to be replaced by those who couldn’t get off work earlier. There were two to three dozen people from Occupy at both, though they had the bigger signs.

Ironically, the police presence at the larger protest was lighter than at the smaller one. Police confined protestors to the sidewalk in front of the hotel, not allowing even media to step on the hotel lawn. Eventually the DC police permitted protestors to take over the street for an hour, where they picketed with signs saying “Greed is Good — Romney-Gekko 2012” and extolled the virtues of “Walmart for President.” (If corporations are people, surely one can run for President).

CPAC attendees came out from the hotel to shout and argue. Carrying signs saying Stand With Walker, printed for his appearance that evening, some faced off against unionists who hoisted signs demanding Recall Walker! While sometimes loud, it was a civil confrontation.

As the crowd dissipated about 6:00, a group of two dozen young people, mostly Occupiers, marched around the block and up a driveway to the rear entrance of the hotel, where some entered one of its restaurants. They were removed by hotel security, as DC police, who had been prowling the hotel all day, ran to blockade everyone else.

While the police were herding the young people back down the driveway, an extremely agitated Andrew Breitbart came out of the hotel and began shouting at them. Breitbart, a former lefty turned righty, is featured in CUP’s film on Occupy. While he had used some strong language during the “blogger briefing,” when facing actual Occupiers, he lost it. Calling them “freaks and animals,” he yelled “stop raping people.” As hotel security gently pushed him back inside, he ranted  ”you, filthy, dirty, murdering freaks.”

Back on the street, Occupiers once again exchanged words with some CPACers who had followed them. While police blocked the road to the rear hotel entrance, but otherwise only watched, a few CPACers and Occupiers traded words in a manner a bit more cordial than a shouting match.

The shouting resumed the next day, when Occupy returned for a rematch, though much of it seemed like an anti-climax to Friday. While a few dozen Occupiers congregated on the street in front of the Marriott, hotel security removed six grungy looking young men lurking outside Sarah Palin’s noontime speech to the Clare Boothe Luce luncheon for female undergraduates, only to discover that they were a patriotic band hoping to give her a CD.

In the meantime a dozen or so Occupiers were casing the joint, having successfully blended in with the thousands of CPACers filling the lobby and the halls. Some of them got into the ballroom where Palin gave the closing speech at 4:30. Others pasted stickers on candidate literature which would later be handed out. They also dropped a banner from a balcony into the lobby, and distributed balloons with Occupy written on them. Every time an Occupier did something provocative, CPACers responded by shouting “USA, USA, USA.” It was a very patriotic day.

Jo Freeman is a political scientist and attorney. She is currently writing a book on her experiences in the Southern civil rights movement. Her experiences in the Bay Area civil rights movement are recounted in the book At Berkeley in the Sixties.  This piece  originally appeared on the SeniorWomen Web and appears here with the authors permission.  Jo Freeman’s website  includes many interesting photo and political buttons from the civil rights and women movement.