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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