A report this morning suggested that the Department of Homeland Security helped coordinate the police crackdown on the Occupiers in 18 cities across the country. Whether or not this is true, it does look like there is some kind of coordinated effort going on, and it is easy enough to imagine that the feds remain nervous about the movement and would like to see it all nipped in the bud as soon as possible. The irony here is that, given the constitutional right of citizens to assemble and to use their right to free speech to protest, the cities all have to use local zoning regulations or public health or safety laws or some other such rationale for justifying their forced removal of the citizens from the public or private spaces which they are occupying in an effort to exert their right to protest. The argument apparently is that the constitution gives people the right to assemble and speak their mind, but not the right to camp out in public places. Obviously the kind of interpretation you'd expect from people trying to hang on to their power.
How is it not obvious that the intent of the founders of this country was to create a system of government that served the people and was responsive to their wishes, with the people having the right and obligation to change it when it failed to do so? From the very beginning, lots of these founders were very skeptical about the dominant role played by the banks - the international financiers based in Europe - in the economy of the colonies and the overall quality of life of the people. The American Revolution was as much about extracting themselves from the control of the bankers, ie an economic issue, as about extracting themselves from the control of the king, ie a political issue. We are facing essentially the same issue today as the colonists did 250 years ago, and once again we have plenty of folks who think that some sort of revolution is needed while many others apparently think that continued loyalty to the old guard is the best or safest strategy.
So while most of the people opposed to the Occupy movement probably think they themselves are patriotic Americans while the Occupiers are just trouble-making rabble rousers, the fact is that those opposed to the movement are basically equivalent to the Tories of the late 1700s who acted in ways that supported the British elite in their efforts to continue to get rich off the hard work of the colonists. The Occupiers today are the rebels, the revolutionaries, the folks who want to pursue the dream of a republic with sovereign citizens using democratic processes to determine how "we the people" should be governed. Opposing the Occupy movement - in thought, word, or deed - is tantamount to supporting the elite. Believing that the powers that be should remove the Occupiers from their camps is equivalent to believing that we should continue to be ruled by royalty. Arguing against the legitimacy and credibility of this populist movement is the same as arguing against the validity of the American revolution. In short, support for the Occupiers is support for democracy, whereas opposition to the movement is support for fascism. The time has come to pick sides, and if popular support for the Occupiers wanes as the 1% do what they can to suppress the uprising, then Americans will deserve whatever economic collapse and political repression follows the squelching of this rebellion.
Unfortunately, I still haven't done anything more to get personally involved at the OccupyLA camp, and while I feel guilty about that, a number of factors have conspired to keep me from being more proactive about doing something. I will confess to being annoyed that my first two efforts to get involved did not receive any response from anyone at the camp, and I have never been very persistent in the face of even implicit rejection. And in fact, it gave me something of a rationalization for giving in to my temperamental tendency to avoid engaging with people and just keep doing what I do on my own instead. All this coincided with the need to focus on a variety of work-related tasks over the last couple weeks, which further justified allocating time to those rather than attending committee meetings at the camp.
However, one thing I was trying to do during this time was create a slide show "photo essay" - the one I mentioned to some folks who were suspicious of me the day I was out taking the pictures - depicting the LA camp and the essence of the movement. I finally figured out yesterday how to add the music that I wanted as background, so I finished it up and have posted it on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/Cq5S6TuntjY
It's not perfect, and had I been willing to spend a little more time I could have made some small changes that would have improved the overall quality, but as my first attempt at doing something like this I'm reasonably pleased with the result. And I didn't anticipate the sense of relief or gratification I felt upon wrapping it up and getting it posted. I've been in a bit of a funk over the last few days, and after I got this up on YouTube I realized that that had pretty much dissipated. I think part of that is that this feels, at least in some small way, like a contribution I am making to the movement, which is something I would really like to do but so far haven't done in any more direct fashion. My intent is to give this to the media folks at OccupyLA to see if they want to post it or link to it on their webpage. I realize they may not want to, which might feel like strike three, but for now it doesn't matter, I am satisfied with what I have created, and the message it sends, and the fact that it is now available for nearly anyone in the world to see. What happens to it from here on out is out of my control!
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