Make no mistake, the nationwide purge of protesters from public parks is not about the comportment of the protesters, no matter how much the powers in cities like Oakland and New York want to paint it that way.
The sweeps are about capital and protecting the 1 percent in the cities, the people who pay the campaign bills for elected officials and, therefore, demand allegiance.
To understand how this works, one just needs to listen to the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg:
“New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”
New York also is the financial capital of the world and the place where the first police-triggered violence took place. It is a city in which the mayor has shown nothing but hostility toward the protesters from the inception of the occupy movement. In his mind, the bankers had nothing to do with the financial crisis and unrelenting economic meltdown that has left one in six Americans un- or under-employed.
The anger that has triggered these protests is real. Shutting them down will not make it go away. Asking the protesters to turn to the ballot box or petition Congress is, as the protesters know, a waste of time and ignores the history of social movements, which almost always begin with an aggrieved group taking to the streets and creating a moral imperative for change. That’s what the protests are about and it is why protectors of the 1 percent like Mayor Bloomberg have little sympathy.
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Hank Kalet 