During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who was present at the meeting.
The protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel, according to the source, who requested anonymity.
“Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted,” the source told Scribe in an email. Two Occupiers, who the source also identified as members of the New Black Panther Party, “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count.’”
The source quoted another protester as saying, “Mitt [Romney] has Secret Service now, but [Newt] Gingrich and [Andrew] Breitbart don’t,” seemingly suggesting that the latter two would not be as heavily guarded.
Plans for infiltration allegedly include staying at the hotel as guests with help from the AFL-CIO (the union denies it) and wearing Ron Paul gear on the theory that no one will be able to tell them apart from typical Paul fans. Lest you doubt that they’re capable of “direct action,” watch the two clips below of Occupy D.C. giving Americans for Prosperity the full Walking Dead treatment back in November. There’s already an “Occupy CPAC” message posted on their website, replete with unparodyable denunciations of a “gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians and their one percent elite puppet masters” and its “racist, sexist, patriarchal and exploitative agenda.” They have nothing to lose by going on a rampage, really. The image of the “peaceful Occupier” is long gone, thanks to the Oakland chapter and the sporadic stories of rapes and assaults coming out of the camps last year, and even their friends in entertainment are bored with their crap. If they start a brawl at CPAC, that’s a new round of media coverage for them plus endless atta-boys from leftist trolls online. I only wish this had happened a few weeks ago, just so we’d have the perfect ironic juxtaposition between Occupy thugging out and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz once again using the Tucson shootings that the right had nothing to do with as an excuse to demagogue the right over incivility. Ah well.
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