Quote of the day: #OWS edition

From Guy Horton’s blog on Huffington Post today, in the aftermath of the New York crackdown on Occupy Wall Street:

So is this the death of Occupy? My suspicion is that this is, in fact, just the beginning. What form will it take next? It may not have Zuccotti Park anymore, but it increasingly has the intellectual and emotional landscape of the American psyche.

They can shut down the protests and end the physical occupation, but the fight to reclaim American democracy from the elite is just beginning.

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Capital makes a clean sweep

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.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Phillies and Papelbon: Big money, big mistake

Jonathan Papelbon is the game’s second-best closer. But he’s not worth $50 million over four years.

Why? Two reasons: The Phillies have other, more pressing needs, and spending big money on closers just doesn’t wash historically. The Mets learned this with Francisco Rodriguez and Billy Wagner, both of whom pitched well, but not well enough to earn $40-$45 million over four years and not well enough for the Mets to succeed. The Reds have Francisco Cordero, whom they paid $46 million over four, and they’ve lost more games than they won since he joined the team; the one winning season, 2010, saw the Reds get swept in the first round by the Phillies without Cordero even getting into a game.

And then there is the lesson of this year’s Cardinals, who cobbled together a bullpen during a miraculous end of the season and then rode the unheralded arms to a title, something they did in 2006, as well.

The lesson, to me, is not to overestimate your need for a closer and then overpay. It just doesn’t seem worth the risk.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

A conversaion with the OWS movement

I met some of the protesters marching from New York to D.C. today.

Read it here.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Rioting in defense of a football coach? You’ve got to be kidding me

The scenes were awful and the anger was not just misplaced, but completely incomprehensible. And while it’s quiet in Happy Valley today, what happened on Wednesday cannot be wiped away.

Joe Paterno, in his 46th year coaching the Penn State Nittany Lions, was ousted yesterday as the school attempted to disentangle itself from a scandal so ugly it has tarnished both the coach’s legacy and damaged the school’s reputation.

Former  assistant coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexual assault of eight boys over a 15-year period. Paterno was alerted to the alleged abuse at least nine years ago. He then alerted the athletic director and school vice president, but no one contacted police and the abuse apparently continued.

Paterno promised to resign at season’s end but the school’s board of trustees, rightly, opted to make an immediate break and fired Paterno.

The response on campus — a riot.

As word of the firings spread, thousands of students flocked to the administration building, shouting, “We want Joe back!” and “One more game!” They then headed downtown to Beaver Avenue, where about 100 police wearing helmets and carrying pepper spray were on standby. Witnesses said some rocks and bottles were thrown, a lamppost was toppled and a news van was knocked over, its windows kicked out. ablaze

This needs to be put in perspective: The ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests have been peaceful, aside from attacks by overzealous police, though the issues they are focused on — economic inequality, a bought political system, unending war — are far more important than saving a coach tarnished by his own silence.

I spent two years at Penn State as a student and understand the absolute mania for Penn State football. But loyalty should only extend to the gridiron and should not be used to excuse Paterno’s good-soldier routine or trigger a riot.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.