1. I’m so embarrassed for our city and state right now. What if there were a small child or family walking down to the waterfront when this happened? Regardless of protesters were right or not, you broke the law and didn’t listen to reasonable requests. Then you taunted those that protect our city and screamed obscenities. I’m so embarrassed. Please grow up and learn how to voice your opinion in a meaningful way next time.

2. Are you more concerned about profanity being used by enraged protesters than systemic and immoral violence being used against them?

   I’m embarrassed for our city and state because our collective resources were used to protect the interests of an elite few – that is, the attendees of the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Premiers – at the expense of the safety and well-being of everyone else, let alone their voice at the bargaining table. Quite a lot is at stake for the decisions being made inside this conference, and the people affected have a right to make their voices heard.

   Clearly those in charged didn’t care to respect that right. And people participating in the blockade understood that – it’s why the action occurred. Police would not let a written message be delivered to the delegates inside, and even lied to people saying no-one was there, despite the conference schedule clearly stating that there was a meeting.

   Read the press releases, Mike, and try to get a sense of the message, the goals, the meaning for the Convergence.

3. This is police state USA now in Burlington. THey can’t arrest the thieves who ripped off homeowners or the “free marketeers” who fixed all the markets (LIBOR) or the corporations who destroyed the Gulf and are destroying the atmosphere endangering the entire planet or the nuclear industry which gave us Fukishima which will result in 2 out of 3 of us getting cancer. But boy do we have overkill for anyone sane enough to protest the corporate/government death cult. Way to go boys shoot shoot shoot for peace. No one in authority has anything useful for life on earth. All they have is guns and death.

4. You say – “Clearly those in charged didn’t care to respect that right. ” so the citizens felt a feeling of entitlement to be added to the agenda of a regional conference? Come on… Seriously? Can I just walk up to a conference being held in any other state and expect to voice my opinion without taking the proper steps to do so? The protesters are being represented by ELECTED officials. This is the United States is it not? Write a letter or go see your local elected official. Heck, even start a petition. I really can’t stand this “elite 1%” crap being brought into this conversation. They are elected officials!!! All this “demonstration” did was caused a scene and for that I’m embarrassed for the way the protesters went about the protest. Believe me, I know that protest is a right for everyone in the United States and it has its place – but to block buses, disobey orders from police and scream vulgar language at them is by no way a peaceful protest. (start slow a clap) great job protesters – you really did you job here. And for that I’m embarrassed.

5. Try telling that to the Innu delegates who traveled all the way down to share their stories of how Hydro Quebec and the Charest government has been buying out tribal councils to sell indigenous land for clear-cutting and development of massive hydro dams in the name of “green energy” (that’s not actually green). Vermont hosting this and making business deals in such manner does affect more than just people here.

   I respect your concern about profanity in public, though I disagree. I am more embarrassed by our elected officials who felt the need to surround themselves with armed guards instead of simply taking a pause to see what people have to say. Or be more transparent about their mandates, what decisions they’re going to make, what lobbyists are there influencing the decision-making process, and what corporations are promising campaign contributions in an election year in exchange for sweetheart deals and tax breaks through subsidies?

   You may disagree with the, as you put it, “elite 1% crap,” (I have my issues with this metaphor as well), but we don’t all have equal access to our representatives or the systems of governance that manage our lives. Sorry if people ruined your afternoon, but it’s better than a slow and steady ruining of our collective resources, and the democratic process, that goes on subtlely, unnoticed, and slowly over time when we let these sorts of events proceed undisturbed.

   And to answer your other objection – I do write letters and talk to my representatives. But I also take direct action when it’s clear they don’t care act in the best interest of everyone. I also believe that true democracy is direct democracy, and what we have is a sham republic (“democracy” isn’t mentioned in most of this country’s founding documents, while “republic”). Vermont is better than most states with its long history of town meetings, but that level of participatory, decentralized, open decision-making has been eroded over time.

6. Any police officer who removed his/her name tag before moving in on protesters should be fired. If they were truly appropriately enforcing the law and maintaining order, there is no excuse for attempting to hide their identity. What were they thinking? That is the kind of tactic that is seen when corrupt big city cops want to rough up folks without culpability, not what we expect from Burlington police.

7. This is the United States …..elected officials…yadayada. Yeah but the corporations own them. You probably believe we have a free market system too, even after the bail outs and the LIBOR rate fixing scandal. Wake up and smell the coffee, this is not the United States as advertised it is the USA empire for the rich and tax sheltered.

8. Protesters from the “International Socialist Organization”? Really?

   What right or reason do professional protesters from outside Vermont and New England have for coming here and causing trouble?

   Fire paintballs at them until they all go back to where they came from and get a job.

9. Mayor Weinberger:

   I had initially thanked the police for their behavior yesterday prior to this altercation, having left only minutes before. I’m afraid I must rescind that thank you.

   I think it all comes down to how police are willing to deal with nonviolent civil disobedience. Blocking a road is likely worth a citation, a misdemeanor of disorderly conduct. There are ways to deal with this situation, but it may take a certain amount of time and discussion for this to happen.

   Instead, it seems that police feel their role is to immediately and swiftly deal with any form of civil disobedience no matter the consequences. I cannot speak for what happened after the police started marching in full riot gear towards people committing nonviolent civil disobedience, since I had just left. But I know there could’ve been alternatives employed by police at that time. We are merely talking about several minutes of inconvenience for people on a bus. What is the frenzy to immediately and forcibly remove people committing nonviolent acts? Just a symbolic display of force to chill any further dissent? Isn’t it apparent that responding to people sitting and standing with physical force is NOT the best way to de-escalate a situation?

   Police have a duty to protect people in buses going to dinner, yes. But they also have a duty to protect people standing up for what they believe, who are not physically harming anyone. It speaks volumes that police will act so quickly and with such force in response to people sitting or standing in a road, inconveniencing a bus for a few minutes.

   Protest is going to happen. As the economic system and ecological systems continue to unravel, people will become more and more upset. Are police going to respond to every sit-in with brute force? If so, the results will be predictable.

   I worked as a special educator for years. There are many tools in the toolbox for dealing with “disorderly” people that don’t include physical violence. Why aren’t police trained as well as special education paraprofessionals?

   Thanks for listening,

   Josh Schlossberg
   Vermont

10. I don’t believe there were any members of the International Socialist Organization present at the action where police got violent. The ISO tends to avoid direct action.

    More to your point: people have plenty of reason to come to Vermont. Governors, premiers, delegates, and lobbyists from elsewhere have come to buy and sell the collective resources and futures of their home territory. It only makes sense that their constituents who might feel differently about the decision being considered come along to make their voices heard, since they are ostensibly being represented. It’s called democracy.

    Also – why do you presume that people who participate on a protest, on a Sunday afternoon, are unemployed? And why does that matter – are people only supposed to participate in a democracy when they’re gainfully employed? Do you think that the poor and the unemployed should not be allowed to voice their concerns too when it comes to the governance of a society that is just as much theirs as the wealthy who are inside with police protection?

11. Whether or not the “delegates” from the ISO were involved in the violence or not — who cares? Why are they here? Why did they come from wherever they are from to cause trouble?

    GET A JOB.

12. I would like to make a correction to the caption of the first video. The police officer visible, Lt. Art Cyr, was not “smiling and joking with the crowd;” rather he was taunting and intimidating an individual within the crowd. He can be seen pulling out a black device with an opening on the side facing the protestors, pointing it at one individual in particular. Unsure whether the device was tear gas, pepper spray, or a smartphone, the protestor ducked behind the banner between them and the police. At this point, the officer lunged forward, putting the object in his hand below the level of the banner and into the protestor’s face. All the while, the officer was taunting the protestor, saying “I know you, I know you, *name*.” The individuals had previously been connected because Lt. Cyr investigated a complaint of excessive force filed against another member of the Burlington police force this past winter.

13. There is a chapter of the ISO in Vermont. They are not from out of state. If you do not believe me, feel free to check out the link below. Regardless, when we host events such as these, we have a responsibility to accept people from all over. The decisions made at this meeting will have consequences far outside of Vermont’s boarder. Political elites from all over New England and Canada were present. We need to expect that the people whom they represent will come to have their voices herd. Is public participation and dissent not the American way? Lastly, I work over 40 hours a week, am a Vermont resident, and identify as a socialist. A majority of the protesters at the event were also Vermonters and had jobs. Your whole “get a job” paradigm is just inaccurate. Vermont is supposed to value public participation. Maybe I misunderstand Vermont and Vermonters, but it seems like what happened yesterday was an affront to our shared values.

    http://www.vtiso.blogspot.com/…

14. If this allegation is even true, which I don’t believe. Agitators make sh** up.
    And what about the protesters who showed up with their faces covered? As you say,”there is no excuse for attempting to hide their identity.” Any protester who covered his or her face should be arrested.

15. There is a way to be “herd.” It’s called voting. It’s called participating in campaigns. It’s called going to meetings. All of that is hard work and takes time.
    Skipping the hard work and just showing up to break the law and get attention is the lazy-ass way to be “herd.”

16. Perhaps “agitators make shit up”, but photographs above provide visible evidence of police in duty with name tags removed.

    Private citizens have every right to conceal their identities… law enforcement officers working on the public payroll performing a government function have no such right.

17. Do you think that the people who participated in the protest went home afterwards and turned themselves off to the political process? I am sorry, but these are some of the most informed and engaged people I know of. We also understand that, significant change does not happen without a social movement pushing things. Civil rights legislation did not happen because people held meetings to talk about racial injustice, it happened because people were in the streets getting arrested and exposing racial injustice to the world. The tea party got its start in the U.S. as a protest movement. Should they have all just continued to participate in Republican organizations? I vote and participate in the local, state, and federal political process, but to truly make change, I also understand that more visible action is essential. Is Thoreau anti american because he did not pay his taxes, or does he represent the American tradition? We have labor laws because of an often times extremely confrontational labor movement. If this had not been the case, then child labor might very well still be the norm. There is a long and vibrant history in the United States of civil disobedience as part of the political process, to write that off as “the easy way” runs against our national heritage. While public participation is important, we need to understand that real and lasting change can not come solely from participating in the established political processes. the political system is designed to be adverse to change. It then becomes necessarily to confront that system with whatever tools available.

18. Nice how Mayor Miro was in his office typing press releases during all this. The last mayor was in the middle of it, stopping violence while the new mayor and his team were hunkered down wording a response.

19. “Civil rights legislation did not happen because people held meetings to talk about racial injustice . . .”

    First, yest it did.

    Second, are you punks seriously comparing yourselves to civil rights protesters? You blocked a bus taking New England governors and Canadian provincial premiers to dinner at Shelburne Farms. Get over yourself.

20. The last mayor was an embarassment. He allowed a park owned by the public to be illegally taken over by a group of dirty, lawless pigs, and it ended in a shooting.

21. Why is this article entitled “Police Clash With Protesters” instead of “Protesters Clash With Police”? Or, more accurately, “Hooligans Attempt To Block Bus, Clash With Police”?

22. I’m sorry, but if you believe that significant civil rights legislation would have happened without the jails first being filled with tens of thousands of protesters, then you do not understand American history. Obviously there was a great deal of behind the scenes organizing needed to make it all happen. The same can be said for the labor movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ, the anti war, and many others in which civil disobedience played a significant role.
    I do not believe I ever compared this movement to the civil rights or any other social movement in American history. Every movement is different. I am saying that throughout American history civil disobedience has been used by most movements, and is as American as apple pie. Feel free to disagree with the goals or motives, but to disagree with the tactics of non violent civil disobedience runs counter to our shared history. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” is required reading in high schools across the country. I again ask if this is anti American, or as much a part of the American tradition as women s suffrage?
    Finally, perhaps folks would not have felt the need to engage in this type of action if this had been an open meeting. No member of the coalition was allowed to witness or participate in the decision making process at this event. Only business and political elite were invited. The meeting is not being broadcast live, transcripts will not be made available to the public, only the decisions will be made public. How can you participate in that type of closed door meeting which affects us all? When you are shut out of the political process, you engage in whatever way possible.

23. @Sutton_Hoo:disqus – This might be a more productive exchange if you stopped insulting people you don’t know and seem unwililng to try and meet even close to halfway, and started pay attention to the issues. Particularly what the significance of resisting this conference was, and what’s at stake in the decisions made by the governors, premiers, and delegates. A little human decency can go a long way.

    Here are some reading materials to help inform you:

    http://www.towardfreedom.com/h…

    http://www.workerscenter.org/n…

    http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012…

24. Thank you, Ian, for your level headed, intelligent, decent writing that included no insults or bad manners. I cannot say the same for those that are opposing you and your cohorts. Stay at it. I am with you all the way.

25. Every single one of these leaders was democrtaically elected. They have no responsibility to cowtow to a mob like you.

26. They have badges….with badge numbers….correlated with their names…. no ones identity is concealed.

27. Not only do they have badge numbers . . . but Chief Schirling actually NAMED the two officers who fired pepper spray and sting balls, and their names are reported in the lead story in today’s Free Mess. No one’s hiding anything. http://www.burlingtonfreepress…¦topnews¦text¦FRONTPAGE
    But, hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good paranoid conspiracy theory involving “the man,” right? And in the picture accompanying the above story, the only two people seen hiding their identities are . . . agitators, er, hooligans, er, protestors.

28. @Sutton_Hoo:disqus

    You clearly refuse to even acknowledge any of our grievances as legitimate. I understand if you disagree with tactical approaches towards airing them, but you are taking things too far.

    Did you read the articles I posted? Or are you just going to call us a “mob”? (the real mob, by the way, is deeply, deeply tied in with Quebec Premier Jean Charest as well as his party; this has heavily influence the implementation of Plan Nord, which if you read the articles, you might be familiar with by now)

    Sitting politicians already cowtow – by and large to campaign contributors, the wealthy, the powerful, and the influential. That is not democracy. Even Miro, when running for mayor, went to DC to fundraise with some of the DNC bigwigs, all of whom are beholden to interests other than those of “the people.”

29. For various reasons the least of which is the fact that this protest occurred on a Sunday, I find the “GET A JOB” plea especially comical considering its source is someone who has the time to post 163 comments in an online forum. I think those blatantly-generalized three words would have had more of a sting to them if they weren’t found in a comment posted during the work week.

30. I was working on Sunday while the hooligans were breaking the law and intentionally provoking a confrontation with the police. In fact, lots of people worked on Sunday while the hoolligans were acting out and desperately trying to draw attention to themselves. I worked Monday – Friday that week, almost all day Saturday, and part of Sunday. That is a fairly typical work week for me. I haven’t had any time off this summer. I worked from 9 this morning til 8 tonight. I do this so I can pay my mortgage, pay for gas, and send my kids to college. So I spend a few minutes a day online. Any other comments you’d care to make?

31. Yeah, I’ll share my point, which you missed: you can’t assume they have no job simply because they attended a protest on the weekend and were civilly disobedient, just like I can’t assume you have no job or are terrible at your job when you have the time to post online so much.

    I don’t care about your opinion on the protest itself, and, against my better judgment, I’ll take your word for it that you weren’t breaking the law somehow on Sunday. I’m only talking about your assumption. It’s naive to assume protestors don’t have a job just like the rest of us. Maybe they don’t have a job, sure. Or maybe attending protests is what they do in their free time, like how I play summer sports, and others go for hikes, and you post online. Maybe they took earned time off from work to attend the protest, whereas I would have used it to travel, and you would have saved it for something else. To each his own. My point is that you can’t generalize these folks simply because they attended a protest and were civilly disobedient in the process. It’s closed-minded and being closed-minded hurts the rest of your argument. And my point, again, in layman’s terms so there’s no confusion here, is that one should stick to the facts if one wants his/her argument to have the most impact. Otherwise, you just sound like a bitter old man with a chip on his shoulder. Get a job! Get off my lawn!

32. Sorry, but it wasn’t civil disobedience. It was vaguely organized hooliganism.

    If it was civil disobedience, then for what? They weren’t laying their lives on the line because black Americans weren’t allowed to vote in the South, or ride the same buses as whites, or go to the same schools, or sit at the same lunch counters, or because American kids were getting slaughtered in Southeast Asia. Nobody even knows what this band of punks was blocking traffic for, other than just a juvenile exercise in giving the finger to society for its own sake. All they wanted to do was to provoke the police for media attention.

    “Hey, guys, everyone’s going home. We don’t want this protest to be over, do we? What should we do now?”

    “Dude, the protest is over. Nobody is paying any attention. Let’s go.”

    “Wait, I’ve got an idea. Let’s go over to College Street and block the buses taking The Man to dinner. Maybe we can provoke the police. Maybe that will get a media reaction. Maybe we’ll be on Youtube.”

    “Cool. By the way, what are we protesting for anyway?”

    “Lots of stuff. You know, like, the environment. Like, you know, we’re the 99 percent. Like, you know, people’s rights. And stuff.”

    “Cool. I’m for that. But, like, who’s in the buses?”

    “You know, like, governors and stuff. And corporations. People who are against the environment. People who are against the people.”

    “Cool. But . . . weren’t they, you know, like, elected by the people?”

    “Dude, not by me. I didn’t vote.”

    “Me neither.”

33. Unfortunately, the Innu delegates’ message got overshadowed in the media by these antics from just a small fraction of the many protesters that weekend.

34. I question your use of the term “delegates.” My understanding is that the leadership of the Innu is not opposed to HQ’s plans and did not send anyone to this “protest.” Self appointed protesters who have no credentials to represent the Innu are not an “Innu delegates.”

    But, yes, the hooligans who decided they wanted to have a confrontation with police did indeed overshadow any message that any of the disparate groups of protesters wanted to deliver at the Governors’ Conference. The only thing the average Vermonter now remembers about the entire protest is that some masked hooligans went to the conference, blocked buses, and picked a fight with the police. Now the entire episode has nothing to do with whatever the message originally was.

35. You missed my point again. Oh well.

36. And you keep missing, or avoiding, mine. Oh well.

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