Occupy El Paso arrests should prompt pause for a 2012 American Spring

 CITY'S IDEA ON PARK: El Paso police and a cleanup crew remove items Monday which were left after most of Occupy El Paso participants departed San Jacinto Plaza over the weekend. Those who didn't were arrested early Tuesday for sleeping overnight without a permit. (Photo by Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)



By Dan Bodine
Center against Social Minimalism




EL PASO--With police arrests early Tuesday of remaining Occupy El Paso protestors (suspiciously timed with similar arrests in other cities) and the members’ subsequent unsuccessful pleas later in the day before the City Council for an extension of their permit, perhaps it’s time for a timeout skull session before the next pitch.

Three strikes and you’re usually out in this game. But it’s not the ninth inning. And with winter’s biting cold and holiday commercial sales both threatening to crash down on them, it not a bad idea to take one here to clear a conundrum about basic issues involved. Irreparable damage looms in the important 2012 upcoming elections, for one.

Accompanied by (and to their credit possibly allowing themselves to be quietly restrained by) a befriended clergyman, members of the protest group clearly expressed both exasperation and bitterness at their plight Tuesday before the Council.

Since late-summer they’ve had permission to camp downtown at the San Jacinto Plaza park as part of a national protest aimed at excessive Wall Street greed--profiteering that‘s helped exacerbate the nation’s prolonged and increasingly painful economic recession. And last month the council granted a month extension for them. The stars in the heavens were clustered in an obvious show of support.

So if you were favorable to our cause last month, what conditions have changed to suddenly make the sky fall? they essentially wanted to know. Seven of their members had been hauled off in a paddy wagon, of all things!

Mayor John F. Cook didn’t hesitate replying. “They were arrested this morning for sleeping in public places (against the city’s ordinance),” he told them. “…The permit expired the 13th.”

You could almost feel the waves of exasperation roil thru the young protest members. One in particular, a young disabled man in a wheelchair, seemed perplexed as to why he couldn’t sit down one-to-one with “the person” he’d voted for and discuss it.

Councilwoman Susie Byrd was more diplomatic. Hinting that much of the nation was supportive of the demonstrations when they started in the summer, the mood has shifted now, she said, because time has wearied supporters and protests now threaten third party economic interests that are far detached to the activities being protested on Wall Street.

In short, In your war, your’re threatening to take down too many innocent civilian collateral casualties, guys; give us a break! she might just as well have told them. We’ve got the holidays ahead of us!

And the same scene, or variations of it presumably, rifled throughout the country Monday and Tuesday. What made the activities touch on torching were remarks by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to the British Broadcasting Corporation aired Tuesday.

"I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation," Quan had said, "where what had started as political [movements] and political [encampments, were] no longer in control of the people who started them."

The remark even led to blogosphere speculation this week's police raids on Occupy encampments across the country were all part of a larger, concerted government plan to totally shut down the movement. The blog FireDogLake, for example, even suggested crackdowns were set to coincide with President Obama's trip to the Pacific Rim. Way-y-y out! Thus it’s obvious initial good-hearted thinking is fanning wrong-headed logic, no?

The ultimate reason why Occupy protestors need to rethink their strategy is next year’s elections, of course. Right-wing Republicans would thoroughly love to see the Democrats’ traditional pluralist base carved up into generic infighting over Occupy protests. Divide and conquer all over again. It would definitely slam the door on any Democratic hopes of retaking Congress next fall.

Beyond bell-ringing political rhetoric, however, there’s a real world of economic hurt “out there” protestors irrelevantly just aren’t seeing on local levels--which no doubt prompted the “simultaneous“ police raids this week.

The point is underscored in an Open Letter Harvard students published about why they recently walked out of a noted professor’s economic class to join Occupy protestors. After reading it one surmises they’re letting micro/macro economic theorizing cloud the basic fact of immediacy--the holiday season is upon cities and they’re jeopardizing real economic livelihoods with their continued occupying.

Indeed, it’s November; and there’s an almost quid pro quo, return-to-normalcy urgency in the air among cities now, very similar to what Herman Melville wrote of in his great classic, Moby Dick:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet .. then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."

In short, pack up the tents and get out of the park, kids. An American Spring 2012 offers you plenty more opportunities to continue the protests.

And with heated election campaigns involved, it’s guaranteed to win you a lot more respect, too. Hee, hee.



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Drowning Cat with a Dumbbell Is 'Awful'!

Destiny Calling?
Environmentalist and cat lovers have locked horns over a study that shows roaming cats are the second biggest threat to dwindling bird populations. Swelling numbers of stray, abandoned kittens, such as above, don't have much choice in Life but to aggressively become a hunter.
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By Dan Bodine
Center against Social Minimalism




Drowning a cat by throwing it in water with a dumbbell tied to its poor neck has to be one of those creative low-balls only folks in California could come up with. In Texas, where we’re more humane, our creativeness is a bit higher than that. Say rooftop-high at least. Hee, hee. Don’t we all just love cats!??!

In California, no foolin’, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a story last Thursday about a cat having been found in a Redwood Shores lagoon tagged with a 5-pound dumbbell tied to its neck. Investigators were on it right away.

A preliminary examination found no obvious signs of broken bones or trauma, the story’s author wrote, “proving that five pounds [once again] trumps nine lives.” He then quoted a local humane department spokesman as saying “The cat must have drowned” as a cause of death.

Perhaps surprisingly, rewards totaling $2,250 have been put up in the cat’s demise, whether by some in jest or not, who knows. One was by a pub owner though. Sounds like a cat eating a canary type of a situation to me. Get more women into his bar, maybe?

But killing cats by itself ain’t something that’s just in West Coast waters, folks. Nor is it just a bad week for them. (Poisoning case, below) No, cats are mysteriously aloof and independent animals (whichever side of the coin you‘re on, on this); and have always stirred the whole nine yards of emotions, from hate and anger [mostly in men?], to uppity pretentiousness in dainty young girls and women--those I got mine; you ain’t got yours so ha, ha airs.

As a boy, girls squealing delights about their “beautiful, super-intelligent” cats use to drive me batty. I couldn’t figure out what it was about the dumb-looking, impassive animals that struck such a chord. Especially among young girls or women who looked so beautiful and rich you’d thought God had used up all his favorite recipes in making ‘em.

I started conducting researches on the cat mystery once, I remember. It’s when we were living out on the Godley Highway there just a few miles outside of Cleburne, TX. The roof to our one-story frame farmhouse had a very steep gable in the front. Don’t know how high it was but it was high enough for experimenting with cats. Why do they always land on their feet? Nine lives?

Yup, I’d haul ‘em up there and flip ‘em out into the wild blue yonder. Head over heels; sideways. Just to see what would happen. Damn things would ALWAYS land on their feet. No way no how could I get another outcome with my experiments. I was 7 or 8. Finally Mom caught on and busted my bottom good. The cat, a stray, scatted finally for a better mouse pad.

And it’s been that way for cats over the years--you love ‘em, you despise ‘em, or you‘re clearly clueless about ‘em. Now there’s a 3rd voice getting involved--environmentalist. (Hip, hip, hooray, I say!)

You’re hearing complaints about not just feral cats--the stray cats who build colonies and make all these hideous noises at night making more cats!--but also domestic cats, the ones who stay out all night and then show up on your doorstep the next morning with the remains of a dead mouse it’s been playing with, or the smelly remains of a half-eaten bird. The rats it can have, but environmentalists have drawn a line on birds finally.

A March 22 story this year entitled “Roaming Cats Pose Big Threat to Bird Population…” posted on ABC-TV’s website, for instance, cites a lengthy study recently published in the Journal of Ornithology. Electronic tracking of birds was conducted; the statistics are grim.

In many locales it’s domestic cats themselves doing most of the carnage; but overall up to an estimated one billion birds each year are being killed, the American Bird Conservancy says--most notably some of the “finer” species. Ouch! And cats don’t have good tastes, Jethro!?

Habitat loss remains the number one factor in dwindling bird populations, but with the cats the huge number two now is predator. And ill-will is soaring, needless to say. The website Mother Jones Nov. 3 in “Court Finds Biologist Guilty of Poisoning Cat” describes a growing confrontation now between bird people and cat people.

A wildlife biologist, apparently stoked by these crazy cat advocates who hiss! at every criticism that says roaming cats are bad for the environment, went after his neighbor’s cat by repeatedly leaving drops of poison outside his back door. Until…Bingo! Dead cat.

Uh, doesn’t speak well for conservation efforts, dude, but point well taken. Start feeding your damn cat. And find it a playmate at night. In your own confined pad.

Poisoning more cats, or even drowning ‘em with a dumbbell tied to the neck, is an awful way to send a critter off to the happy hunting grounds. But what kind of more creative ways do you want ‘til people get the message? Huh?

Or, in another vein, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right?

Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far, away…dooly-do-do-dodah…

Ya’ll hum along here…


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