Occupation? What Occupation?

A couple of months ago, a movement started on the streets of Manhattan.  As with many movements it was brought on by students and aspirants to the Intelligentsia.  The movement, aimed at the greed and disastrous speculation so indigenous to Wall Street and the financial sector, gained significant momentum, even spawning movements across the country and indeed, on other continents.  However in the wee small hours of November 14, 2011 the movement reached its apex with the New York Police Department performing a midnight raid on Zucotti Park in Manhattan, the would be beachhead of the movement.  Police Officers swept through the park sweeping up disoriented folks and protesters who had began to camp out in the park with tents and portable generators.  This occupation of the park created problems concerning health and welfare (because of a lack of hygiene, taste and discernment) as well as causing problems for the inhabitants of the community.

Mayor Bloomberg had been contacted by the private owners of the park and he indicated that he authorized the raid on the park because of concerns voiced by the community, allegations of rape and indiscriminate sex, and uncompromising filth.   The mayor accurately pointed out the the protesters had every right to protest but no rights to occupy the park (even homeless people are told to move it along when caught sleeping in parks).  The park was being co-opted for other than its purposes intended.  Mayor Bloomberg would allow the protesters to return to the park once it had been cleaned out, but they would not be allowed to bring tents and inhabit the part.  But the movement with legal representation fought the order to disband from the park along with their tents.  Their legal application was ultimately struck down and they were permitted to return to the park but not to inhabit it.

This was an important moment for the Occupy Wall Street movement as it would illustrate what direction the energy of the movement was to take next.  However, instead of a declaration, or a fiat the group disbanded and wandered around lower Manhattan like a lost herd of sheep; instead of someone coming forward and being the voice of the movement there were simultaneous murmurings about the direction the group was headed along with concurrent activities, an unmistakeable indication that the movement has lost its steam. It disbanded into a nebulous cloud and spread through the lower part of the city.   Since this time there has been nothing of significance associated with the movement. 

This situation reminded me so much of the incident in Tiananman Square in China in 1989 when (again) students had rose up against the Chinese governement making a stand against the tyranny of the communist government and conditions in China.  The movement also gained momentum.  The erstwhile indignant Chinese government  ultimately held talks with the students, a momentous and auspicious occasion in Chinese history. But here too, there was no little organization concerning the structure of the movement.  It was as if the students never thought about what would happen if their movement succeeded!  Thus when the moment of truth arrived they were disoriented and unprepared.  The Chinese government then took control, with the world watching, and violently dispersed the movement.

Protests, as former Chief of Staff, Colin Powell, recently indicated, are as "American as Apple Pie."  They are the heart and soul of the checks and balances system the American forefathers sought to install after they wrested control of the colonies from the greedy, probing clutches of Great Britain.  In the 1960s the protests surrounding the civil rights of African Americans were highly organized and orchestrated and achieved great success, too often at the cost of lives of those participating, as is often the case.   The students of the Occupy Wall Street movement would have done well to have organized along the lines of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King's group, to have studied their tactics and movements.  Actually, any group protesting should study the civil rights movement with its attendant orchestrations and movements.  The movement, I believe took much from the activities of Mohandas Gandhi.  Dr. King himself had studied Gandhi and his activities in India as he tried to wrest control of his country from the British.  Dr. King modeled a lot of his activities on those of Gandhi.  The essential nature of those protests were modeled after non-violent and peaceful confrontation.  Dr. King's group were actually taught and trained in this model, how to confront their oppressors peacefully and how to react when violence was summoned as a tool against their movement.  A great deal of energy went into this training and folks who endured it were prepared to be assaulted and battered by often vicious policemen.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has lost its steam and its direction.  The occupiers have degenerated into a roving mob, ruderless, leaderless, and a nuissance.  They would do well to re-group and identify the purpose(s) for which they came together in the first place, to take an arrow and shoot it out from their midst to identify the path they wish to take and what they wish to achieve by their activities (something other than simply getting on people's nerves).  The movement has much value for the activities of Wall Street and the Banking industry catapulted this country into the current economic down turn.  To make matters worse, Wall Street and the Banking industry were rewarded with a rather handsome bailout that lead them to record record profits last year.  People are growing tired.  The Occupy Wall Street movement was supposed to be the voice of those tired folk working hard everyday, slipping down the ladder from one class to another because of the inherent inequity of the capitalist system.  Let us hope the movement can re-gain its momentum and occupy the halls of Washington, D.C., where the tentacles of Wall Street and the Banking reach!