Occupy: Do Not Go Gentle Into That New Year

As we bid 2011 good riddance, let’s take a few moments to gird for the battles ahead in 2012:

* It’s an election year: the president, a third of the Senate, and the whole House, plus various state governors and legislators and others. Meantime, a vocal minority is still holding our national government hostage to its revolutionary cant and its pledges to everyone but the American people.

* The assclowns who wrecked our economy are still in their high towers, still looking down on the 99%, still snapping their fingers for their pet government officials.

* The militarization of our municipal police departments proceeds apace.

* The wars on drugs, terror, immigrants, gays, women, workers, and free speech continue unabated.

I hold increasingly little hope for the American experiment our forebears set in motion, but I tend toward pessimism. We are not, in fact, preparing for a civil war, and many of our problems are perennial or even cyclical. And as one of the great book editors of our era, Marco Palmieri, tells us, “Pessimism is a misuse of imagination.”

So let’s be imaginative as we look ahead.

John Lennon said, “As soon as you react with violence, they know exactly what to do with you. Using humor and creativity in protest are the only things the establishment are not prepared to deal with.”

The establishment has gotten pretty good about using pepper spray to deal with peaceful, creative people. But we can still out-think them and bring them to heel.

Norman Lear urges us to use our creativity and our patriotism and our sense of right and wrong to stand up for the Constitution and for human decency. The country we save may be our own.

Occupy: An Arrest in Los Angeles

Take good note of this first-person account of being arrested at an Occupy Movement event in Los Angeles. Note that the brave, dedicated men in blue did what they could to inflict violence and pain and humiliation on unarmed, peaceful people whose crime was sitting down and exercising their First Amendment rights.

Three points:

1) The men and women who nearly collapsed the global economy are still at it, still employed by organizations deemed too big to fail, still receiving enormous paychecks and bonuses.

2) Those who peacefully protest against the oligarchy are brutalized and given the maximum sentences possible for misdemeanors. The protestors are dangerous to the economic elites, and what the elites order the police to do is a direct measure of their fear.

3) That the police commit such acts of barbarity shows us that they are no longer members of the communities they are sworn to serve and protect; they are militarized in mind and body, and all they care about is taking down the enemy. By which they mean us.

Fiction: Some Slight Provision

A uniformed officer backed through the door to the detective division. He turned around and everyone could see he was carrying a box.

“Detectives Okuno and Haycock?” he called. “Here’s that little present for you.”

“Presents are supposed to be wrapped, Pinkus,” Haycock said.

“Actually,” Pinkus said, “it’s a lot of presents. How many wallet snatchings are you working in the financial district?”

“Twenty-seven,” Okuno said.

The officer set the box on Haycock’s desk. “Well, here are twenty-seven wallets, so you’re covered.”

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Occupy: More Violence, Wall Street Scheming

More news from the burgeoning police state. (With thanks to the good people at BoingBoing for their coverage.)

The chancellor of the University of California at Davis called on police to remove peaceful protestors – students, faculty, a former poet laureate of the United States – from the campus. The police gleefully did their work with their batons and all the pepper spray they could muster.

Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the Department of English at UC Davis, has written to the chancellor demanding that she resign. It’s a powerful letter that I’m sure will have no effect on the chancellor’s stunted conscience, but it may well prove to be be a springboard toward her removal. (Update: Here’s the chancellor’s response, to wit: I’m so sorry this terrible thing happened, but it’s their fault for breaking the rules.)

Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, a Washington, DC, lobbying firm sent a memo to one of its clients, the American Banking Association, outlining a plan to discredit the Occupy Movement. The memo clearly demonstrates that the 1% is terrified of Occupy’s political power, which is a pretty impressive admission since the movement is constantly pummeled for “not having a clear agenda.” Story and video here, PDF of the memo here.

And New York’s billionaire mayor, not content with evicting the protestors from the park where they had set up shop, had the OWS library destroyed in the process. I hardly need to add my own outrage here for my fellow word lovers.

The 1% is fighting back with egregious force, and they will continue to do so. Historically, this marks the beginning of the downfall of the dictators. Even those who disagree with the Occupy Movement cannot possibly (I hope) approve of the Nazi-style tactics being used on peaceful citizens. Of course, I could be wrong, and then the Constitution is just words on paper.

“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.”
– Rod Serling, “The Obsolete Man,” The Twilight Zone

Fiction: Neighborhood Picnic

Sergeant Luckenstiehl wandered around the park, smiling at the children at play, nodding to their parents who were grilling hamburgers and brats and hot dogs – and the occasional steak – and setting the picnic tables. He would soon have to politely decline offers of food. “Regulations,” he would say with genuine regret; these people really knew how to barbecue.

He looked up; there were still a couple of hours before the sun would set behind the 25-story housing complex. The park was in the building’s hollow quadrangle, and Luckenstiehl respected how nicely the residents kept it.

A child ran up to her mother. “Mom! We can’t find Prissy and Janet anywhere!”

Luckenstiehl casually made a quarter turn away from the conversation.

Continue reading “Fiction: Neighborhood Picnic”