If the problem persists or grows, OWS will firmly distance itself from those actions and take organizational measures to ensure basic discipline in its protests and prevent people of this kind to derail them. Because it will become an obligation to itself, to those involved in the movement, and to the bigger promise it represents. It's clear that the widespread support and involvement OWS has elicited from working people in the U.S. and abroad (its most positive and lasting outcome) owes much to its commitment to nonviolence. This approach -- in the context of our society and culture and under current historical conditions -- has gained for the movement the moral high ground in the ongoing political conflict against the powers that be. This is the association people should have in their heads: Violence: them! Peace: us!
IMO, OWS should be matter of fact about it, avoid moral grandstanding and condemnatory language, let alone ask for law enforcement to intervene. Instead, without justifying or denouncing in the abstract the use of violence, it should made clear that these are also manifestations of the alienated nature of social life here and now, and that -- consequently -- they belong entirely with the debit side of the status quo. Contrariwise, OWS should be viewed as an attempt to eradicate the conditions that foster all forms of violence in our society. All OWS needs to do is insist that its approach is nonviolent, re-affirm its absolute commitment to it, and refer that -- to date -- the movement has, if anything, been on the victim side of police violence; that if we are to talk about violence, then top of the agenda should be the wars our state wages abroad, the rates of incarceration, the impoverishment of millions, etc. The message to those who support the movement, to those it seeks to attract, and to its adversaries in the 1% is that OWS will remain a peaceful movement, that this peaceful approach is in the DNA of OWS, and that any attempt to derail its commitment to nonviolence -- by provocation and/or by repression -- will be the sole responsibility of the system itself and its 1% beneficiaries.
Internally, OWS should not give these people much more attention. The movement is much bigger than these absolutely marginal manifestations.
Let the media try and amplify them. But let's not add to their exaggeration. The powers that be are very disturbed by the ability of the movement to focus the attention of people on social inequality and the system ills of our society. Let's keep it there.