Having observed the OWS movement and the response to it by police departments and local government authorities, my impulse is to step back and attempt to look at the overarching dynamic that is unfolding. This dynamic seems to be playing out through both parties in the conflict. (I write these down in no particular order of significance.)
Appeals that direct the public away from detailed analysis of developments and toward the Grand Picture.
The Grand Picture is a type of appeal that directs the observer to consider the present unfolding scene in terms of glittering generalities such as - "being on the right side vs. the wrong side of History," "Law and Order," "keeping the city safe and clean," "taking part in History," "doing what God commands us to do," or "the 99%." It's really hard to mount effective analysis of what is before us, in the face of these bludgeoningly large concepts.
Displacement of conflict onto local populations, local officials and local police forces.
Much like No Child Left Behind left onerous educational burdens on local school boards as George Bush refused to address the underlying structural problems in U.S. education, the income inequality problem and all the stress it produces has been forced onto local stages as the Obama administration and Congress fail to act. The hyper-local reaction cycle both energizes and drains the local communities at the same time - local communities which have fewer resources to begin with, due to the poor economy. Much as No Child Left Behind failed to produce a new national culture of high educational standards (quite the opposite - plus several widespread cheating scandals), the current Occupy/Police paradigm could possibly fail in much the same manner, with business as usual continuing in Washington.
Densensitization to violence.
Cops are smacking mostly passive protesters around. For the cops, that's "the end," but then these incidents are videotaped from 500 different angles and plastered all over the Internet. The intention behind this plastering is to stoke moral outrage in the viewer. There's also a subtle side effect: the increasing densensitization of the public to violence - executing violence, displaying violent videos - as a means of (alleged) problem- solving. Of course, with today's Youtube and Twitter pipeline, the violent images get out much faster and more widely.
(Today, OWS held a Student Loan event in NYC and I noticed it barely even got any mention through Twitter or the usual social media outlets when it was going on. But today at Baruch College when students are protesting tuition, the minute violence erupts, everyone's on it.)
Minimization of "collateral damage."
During the Zuccotti park occupation, incidents of violence and sexual assault, particularly against women, were reported in the media, including allegations that women were pressured not to tell police. Likewise, groups of women arrestees also reported demeaning treatment by NYPD. The minimization of violence against "the bottom 1%," both organized and disorganized, often takes the form of "But those miscreants aren't with our movement" or, in the case of the police, a simple refusal to even address it.
"Peaceful" and "Orderly" as buzzwords, not realities.
Anyone who has had to live with an extended family knows that "peaceful" existence doesn't mean "non-hostile." The interactions between cops and protesters have crackled with hostility and a sense of mutually confrontational belligerence since day one (in certain settings more than others), rendering "peaceful" increasingly a meaningless defensive-shield term that can't really be taken seriously -- either from straightfaced police departmental press releases about "orderly" officer behavior, or sweeping assessments made by protesters who turn a blind eye toward hostile activities by their fringe participants. Hostilities are becoming contagious.
Moral outrage as an igniting cause in itself.
A sort of "moral outrage perpetual motion machine" seems to be gaining momentum. "Those filthy protesters are crapping in the park!" vs. "Those awful cops won't let us do what we want!" or "Can you believe that they hit us????" (when by this point people know darn well the cops are going to) accompanying every bit of news, with little analysis or insight attached. Increasingly, the daily protests (and their associated heavy handed police crackdowns) are becoming expressions of outrage over stuff that happened yesterday. (It's unclear where exactly this dynamic began -- since it would seem that the first surge of violence, in Oakland, was prompted by police who seemed to be reacting to memories of past unrelated protest violence that unfolded in Oakland some time ago.)
I'm guessing this post is going to get ripped apart and that's entirely why I posted it. I'm just writing down my observations of the overarching dynamic I see gaining momentum, a dynamic that both sides are participating in.