[yetanotherphd]

How is that relevant?

My point is that the police turning a blind eye to the occupy protests using public space in an illegal way, and effectively claiming that land for themselves, is evidence of the privilege of these protestors. If the poster had pitched his tent in other circumstances, the police would have made him take it down.

[1457389]

They didn't turn a blind eye, that is disingenuous in the extreme. The police in the US and the UK detained and incarcerated thousands of people over the course of the Occupy movement, often with disproportionately violent methods. In addition, thousands of dollars worth of communal property were confiscated or destroyed in the course of their raids against camps.

[yetanotherphd]

You are the one being disingenuous. An ordinary person would be kicked out of the park before a single night had elapsed. The fact that the police eventually to some action doesn't mean they didn't also turn a blind eye for a long time.

[1457389]

They literally did the opposite of turning a blind eye. They placed Occupy activists under surveillance in multiple cities. They sent undercover cops. They used every tool at their disposal to get information on and contain the movement. If you followed the entire affair with any semblance of good faith you would have seen the numerous articles that detailed this police activity. A squatter is not the same thing as a protest, that little equivocation is probably at the root of your disingenuous approach to this issue,

[yetanotherphd]

Your are exhibiting precisely the privileged attitude I referred to earlier. You believe that merely being a protestor entitles you to more rights than a mere squatter. In fact, both have equal rights under the law. Both a squatter and a protestor have a right to carry a sign or chant slogans. Neither have a right to camp in a park.

[1457389]

As someone who was actually at some of these protests, I don't think putting my freedom on the line for said squatters is a sign of "privileged" thinking. Both have good reason to squat in the park, though your simplistic legalistic reasoning would deny that. It just turns out that protesters en masse have more power to resist outright police action, and so they can remain longer in contravention of the laws set down by the elite. Call it the privilege of the mob if you will. At the end of the day though, both groups were forcibly evicted with great violence.

Also, I don't think you comprehend how privilege even factors into this discussion. You can't just use the word "privilege" as some sort of trump card that defeats any argument.