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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: EDITORIAL: A lucky break for occupiers Police actions allow protesters to plan next moves Mayors in Portland, New York City and Oakland have done the Occupy Wall Street movement a big favor by clearing protesters’ encampments from public property. The tent cities’ effectiveness in building support for the occupiers’ anti-corporate message was on the wane. A winter of hypothermia and squalor lay ahead. By sending police to shut down the encampments this week, the mayors have forced the movement to do what needed to be done: Take stock and devise new strategies for calling public attention to such problems as widening economic inequality. People involved in Occupy Eugene should do the same. In Portland, Mayor Sam Adams set a deadline of 12:01 a.m. Sunday for the eviction of occupiers from Chapman and Lonsdale squares. Police moved in at 9 a.m. Sunday and made 51 arrests. There were some tense moments, one policeman and one protester were injured, and Portland is stuck with a hefty bill for police overtime — but there was no large-scale confrontation. Oakland Mayor Jean Kwan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued similar orders, with similar results. Occupiers in all three cities promptly claimed success, saying they would be staging other activities soon. In Portland, these include a walkout at Portland State University today and a “Occupy the Banks” event on Thursday. This is an intelligent response. The encampments were not an end in themselves, but a means of highlighting the inequities of bailouts and bonuses. Once the tent cities and their surroundings became pockets of violence and public health problems, new means needed to be found. But the movement probably couldn’t have shifted gears without a push from the police. Adbusters, the incongruously slick anti-consumerist Canadian magazine credited with having sparked the Occupy Wall Street idea, recognizes the possibilities of such a shift. One choice was to “grit our teeth and hang in there through winter ... and when the cops come, we put our bodies on the line and resist them nonviolently with everything we’ve got.” The second choice is much more appealing: “We declare ‘victory’ and ... rejoice in how far we’ve come, the comrades we’ve made, the glorious days ahead. Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement’s three-month anniversary on Dec. 17, in every Occupy in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry.” That’s a better plan than spending the next month under a blue tarp. But the movement’s leaderlessness and its method of decision-making by consensus made it difficult for participants to adopt a fundamental change in tactics, even when the need for a change became clear. The mayors have helped the movement, and its message. Occupy Eugene should grasp the opportunity offered by the moment, and move on. Comment on Occupy Eugene; We are still at the Washington-Jefferson Park and doing well. The encampmnt is clean and we note many of the undesirables in terms of drugs and theft seem to be steered here, and suspect the police and powers that be to be trying to poison our mix. I mean, when we get someone more into Meth, burglary, or doing jail time for petty crime arrive in a cab someone else paid the $20s or so for, we are naturally suspicious. We got through our phase of the activists V. the 'pirates,' and the activists won. We are set up for the long term, and ironically enough, the park we are in became the footprint for the Hwy 105 off ramp in Eugene because it condemned the part of the Whiteaker neighborhood in 1969 that had the highest concentration of anti Vietnam War activists in it. The swath of neighborhood expected to be condemn west of the current park/highway off ramp was spared by political realities. It's amazing how that works, and ironic that this is where Occupy Eugene now resides. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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