During the past few days, riot police have cleared out Occupy encampments in several cities, culminating with the pre-dawn Nov. 15 raid on Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, where the 99% movement that’s swept America got its start.
Is this all coincidence or is someone coordinating a broad crackdown?
The latter seems more likely, especially since far-flung authorities have issued identical justifications for their actions.
“Health and safety concerns” are uniformly cited, which is laughable, considering that occupiers everywhere have been especially attentive to such matters. Medical tents with volunteer doctors and nurses are a standard feature even in the smaller communities where Occupy has made its presence felt.
The same goes for clean-up crews looking after sanitation needs.
It’s being said that people other than original activists have congregated at the camps, particularly the homeless.
That may be correct, but why is it a basis for repressive official conduct?
Furthermore, what happens to homeless folks’ health and safety when they’re driven from a protective and nurturing environment back onto mean streets icing up with the onset of winter?
Thursday, Nov. 17, would have been the start of Occupy Wall Street’s third month in what was renamed Liberty Plaza. Significantly, that date was also set for a National Day of Action, which called for united protest across our country, with organized labor promising to play an important, highly visible part.
Was it fear of that consolidation, on such a wide scale, that provoked authorities to behave so heavy-handedly?
If so, that strategy definitely backfired.
What was done at Liberty Plaza has sparked unprecedented outrage, bringing everyone from students and clergy to workers and veterans into collective struggle for the elemental justice that self-serving Wall Street dominance over our lives has kept so painfully absent.
As mayors from coast to coast ponder the use of possible force against those demonstrating in constitutional compliance in their cities’ parks, they ought to think about the powerful correctness of the Occupy cause.
It’s abundantly clear that the USA is in dire straits.
The rich get richer and the poor poorer, big money rules increasingly tawdry politics, proliferating scams bilk many thousands, corruption is rampant, we embarrassingly trail many others in health care and education, and our unattended infrastructure crumbles.
Climate change is being denied even as constantly destructive storms sweep the land, our primary religion has been co-opted by “believers” to whom bigotry and faith are interchangeable, and the American spirit lies gravely wounded from the soul-devouring lethality that all of this abysmal wrong-headedness entails.
Fundamental change is mandatory, for our societal salvation.
People-before-profit priorities, honest government and commerce, elemental decency, untainted popular democracy, and equal opportunity for all are vitally required.
Citizens are coming together across artificially divisive lines—race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, etc.—to gain the combined clout needed to win a better future for everyone.
There aren’t enough cops in the entire nation to quash such a decisive movement.
Certainly not enough who won’t switch sides if increasingly harsh orders come down to the police to brutalize their own friends and families.
Occupy’s ultimate triumph is inevitable!
Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the ’60s.
RSS
Repressing Occupy just builds its strength
Posted on November 18, 2011 by Dennis Rahkonen
During the past few days, riot police have cleared out Occupy encampments in several cities, culminating with the pre-dawn Nov. 15 raid on Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, where the 99% movement that’s swept America got its start.
Is this all coincidence or is someone coordinating a broad crackdown?
The latter seems more likely, especially since far-flung authorities have issued identical justifications for their actions.
“Health and safety concerns” are uniformly cited, which is laughable, considering that occupiers everywhere have been especially attentive to such matters. Medical tents with volunteer doctors and nurses are a standard feature even in the smaller communities where Occupy has made its presence felt.
The same goes for clean-up crews looking after sanitation needs.
It’s being said that people other than original activists have congregated at the camps, particularly the homeless.
That may be correct, but why is it a basis for repressive official conduct?
Furthermore, what happens to homeless folks’ health and safety when they’re driven from a protective and nurturing environment back onto mean streets icing up with the onset of winter?
Thursday, Nov. 17, would have been the start of Occupy Wall Street’s third month in what was renamed Liberty Plaza. Significantly, that date was also set for a National Day of Action, which called for united protest across our country, with organized labor promising to play an important, highly visible part.
Was it fear of that consolidation, on such a wide scale, that provoked authorities to behave so heavy-handedly?
If so, that strategy definitely backfired.
What was done at Liberty Plaza has sparked unprecedented outrage, bringing everyone from students and clergy to workers and veterans into collective struggle for the elemental justice that self-serving Wall Street dominance over our lives has kept so painfully absent.
As mayors from coast to coast ponder the use of possible force against those demonstrating in constitutional compliance in their cities’ parks, they ought to think about the powerful correctness of the Occupy cause.
It’s abundantly clear that the USA is in dire straits.
The rich get richer and the poor poorer, big money rules increasingly tawdry politics, proliferating scams bilk many thousands, corruption is rampant, we embarrassingly trail many others in health care and education, and our unattended infrastructure crumbles.
Climate change is being denied even as constantly destructive storms sweep the land, our primary religion has been co-opted by “believers” to whom bigotry and faith are interchangeable, and the American spirit lies gravely wounded from the soul-devouring lethality that all of this abysmal wrong-headedness entails.
Fundamental change is mandatory, for our societal salvation.
People-before-profit priorities, honest government and commerce, elemental decency, untainted popular democracy, and equal opportunity for all are vitally required.
Citizens are coming together across artificially divisive lines—race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, etc.—to gain the combined clout needed to win a better future for everyone.
There aren’t enough cops in the entire nation to quash such a decisive movement.
Certainly not enough who won’t switch sides if increasingly harsh orders come down to the police to brutalize their own friends and families.
Occupy’s ultimate triumph is inevitable!
Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the ’60s.