The clearing of Occupations in New York and around the country has presented challenges to and new possibilities for the Occupy Wall Street movement. A particularly creative group, which I joined and have described here, The Think Tank, is creatively responding to the challenge. They continue to hold sessions in Zuccotti, as they are also moving to other city locations. The summary here prepared by Aaron Bornstein of a session he facilitated in the Park on November 20, 2011, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, reveals the power of the actions. I received the report from Bornstein as an email to people working in the group. I publish it with his permission. -Jeff

Topic: “Policing and the movement: How to engage, whether to engage,and whether it’s a distraction” facilitator: aaron

This was a really spirited discussion of what police are doing, what they should be doing, and whether we are distracting ourselves by focusing too much on them. Participants seemed to have broad consensus on maintaining nonviolence, but standing our ground in the face of police aggressiveness, even if it meant they would use force on us. Multiple participants pointed to the immense value of widespread cameras and recordings, in both preventing police violence and transmitting images of it to the world. Participants seemed split on the question of whether the attention given to police aggression was distracting from the movement’s goals. Some thought it was an unfortunate focus, some thought it was part of the problem we were fighting.

One exchange in particular sticks out in my mind. Over the course of the discussion, several participants had suggested that police officers were just trying to do a job, and thus couldn’t shoulder the entire blame for their actions. When Richard got on stack, he delivered a rather passionate excoriation of this suggestion, and then took it further by posing the question of who exactly it is that takes that kind of job, which — please correct me if I’m wrong, Richard – I took as a suggestion (which seems to be borne out by experience) . . .

Read more: Policing and OWS: A Think Tank Discussion