Update: Bloomberg 'cleanup' will stop OWS from camping in Zuccotti Park.

The City Paper put 'Occupy Baltimore makes up a movement as it goes along' on their cover and like everyone in the media, described the movement as inchoate:

The Occupy movement got rolling in New York on Sept. 17 with an inchoate and broad coalition of people attempting to “Occupy Wall Street” in order to push back against the rampant capitalism that many feel is overwhelming/undermining American politics and American society itself.

As many have noted, Occupy Wall Street didn't get noticed by the press until there was violence against protestors by the police. During an attempted expansion into a neighboring park, Occupy Boston linked arms to try to hold off an overwhelming force of police. There have been scattered other incidents around the US, but Andrew, who I chatted with on Day Three, and was on the Security Committee of Occupy Baltimore (OB), said that the Baltimore police had been cool.

As I walked by in yesterday afternoon's faint drizzle, OB's camp seemed very peaceful. The officers driving the little electric GEM past McKeldin Square were laughing and talking about clubbing (nightclubbing), and the bike cops seemed placid, but I had already read about one less-than-cool incident:

Beth Emmerling says she was drawn to the occupation by personal circumstance. With two master’s degrees, she describes herself as “partially employed” and unable to find a full-time job. She came to McKeldin Square on Tuesday, returning every day except Friday. On Saturday she was helping ladle soup to the occupants when, she says, a drunken man staggered up and nearly knocked the soup over. A nearby protestor called police, and, about 10 minutes later, four bike cops arrived and tried to interview the man, who by then had repaired to a mattress at the edge of the gathering.

“I didn’t perceive them as threatening,” Emmerling says. “But a very large contingent that really hates the cops” went after the officers.

Emmerling says the leader of this group, whom she says she knows as “Michael,” had led a workshop earlier in the day about how to resist the police. “It was how to get away from them, how to hurt them,” Emmerling says.

When the police showed up, about 25 protestors confronted them verbally “and they were violating, I thought, the cops’ space,” Emmerling says. One of the officers told the group that they—the police—had been called, and Emmerling “yelled out. I’m sure the police could have taken care of themselves. But once trouble starts, it stays. . . . I yell, ‘He’s telling the truth.’ Pretty much in a heartbeat they turn on me.”

Emmerling says she felt menaced as the group—mostly men in their teens and 20s—surrounded her soup table, shouting “fuck you” and wagging their fingers in her face. The cops stood by, a move Emmerling says she understands, since wading into the crowd would have needlessly escalated the confrontation.

At the General Assembly that night, Emmerling says, Michael announced to the assembled group of 200 or so that he was a member of security, and that the man who had called police had apologized to him for his transgression and so the matter was closed. Beth cut in front of others waiting their turn at the microphone to correct the record.

“I said it’s not alright to be violent to a member of your own group,” Emmerling says. “So much of the group is so well intentioned. But this is not a safe space.” She says she does not intend to return.

In an e-mail to City Paper, Cullen Nawalkowsky says the group takes the issues Emmerling raised seriously. “Following Beth raising her concerns this weekend, a working-group was formed to address precisely these kinds of issues,” he writes. “I appreciate Beth’s willingness to speak out and to remain engaged, to help us grow and learn, to share her perspective, and hopefully to continue to build this movement and make it better.”

My wife and I almost visited OB last weekend - neither of us felt that great so we stayed inside on a beautiful weekend - but I shudder to think of being there, trying to protect her, in the middle of a tussle with police.