In the occupation mobilizations, there have been three consistent kinds of interpersonal violence between groups. Police on occupier has been the most brutal and prevalent, and the only one of the three to endanger human life. Occupier on police has been minor, both relative to its inverse and at least in part due to the discrepancy between their available firepower. The third is occupier on occupier, and I don’t mean rowdy drunks or addicts deposited by the police. It may not be the fight I’d expect, but whether it’s DC, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, or Oakland, the accounts have been the same. I’m not sure if I should call them moderates, liberals, reformers, or what, but they have attacked other occupiers on the streets.

It’s a pattern, and one that I find a lot more disturbing than graffiti or broken windows — common, predictable, and non-violent ways that crowds in cities express anger. What could cause some people to take the police’s side and attack their fellow protesters? This violence has been deployed as a deescalating tactic, with the peace police pushing others out of the street onto the sidewalk, confronting marchers who chant anti-cop slogans, and fighting to protect property from vandalism. Like deranged mall security guards, they try to shove crowds down an escalator. The marshals generally claim as their mandate the need to maintain peaceful protests, an explanation I find unconvincing for a number of reasons, not the least of which being they pushed me first. Instead, I see an ideology motivating people into violence that may be minor, but certainly exceeds in severity anything that can be done to a window.