UnOccupy LA
Los Angeles is no longer occupied. After two months of Tent City across from City Hall, the LAPD finally moved in after midnight on Wednesday to disperse those who remained after multiple warnings. All told, some 300 Occupiers were arrested by the 1,200 police officers who conducted the final eviction. Later that morning, sanitation workers arrived in protective gear to clean up the 30 tons of debris left behind. Once that's done, the farmers market can move back in, and people in search of some fresh air or respite can once again enjoy the 1.6-acre park in the heart of downtown.
The Los Angeles police have been widely praised for the restraint they showed in dealing with the demonstrators (as compared to the NYPD, for instance), while the mayor has issued statements supporting their concerns and defending their First Amendment freedoms. The First Amendment can be "messy," he said. And this was before the jugs of urine were discovered.
Of course the First Amendment protects unpopular voices against official silencing. But there are limits to the time, place and manner of public protest, and if you ask me, the Occupy movement has tested those limits and lost much of the public support it might have earned. I can't help but wonder how many of the farmers who lost their markets or families who couldn't take their children to the park felt about a movement that was supposed to represent them. By the end, it wasn't clear what the tent dwellers actually stood for, but it was clear who was paying the price.
Heaven help you if you needed police protection last night. The 99 percent will pay the lion's share of the costs of the cleanup, just as they bore the lion's share of the burden of the protest. Even those who don't use the park paid the price. I was coming back from lunch the other day when the protesters blocked the street in front of my office, forcing the rest of us to cool our heels on the corner. It was a nice day, and I don't have to sign in and out for lunch, so I was OK. But looking around, there appeared to be very few 1 percenters in the Friday lunch crowd. The men and women I saw were office workers, folks with exactly one hour to eat lunch and do their errands, and many of them were complaining loudly about being docked for pay in jobs they desperately need. Hardly a way to win friends and influence people.
Meanwhile, just east of Los Angeles in the college town of Claremont, students from the "Occupy" movement were sending out leaflets for a protest aimed at Condoleezza Rice's appearance at Claremont McKenna College. Condi Rice a war criminal? Not in my book. And what does that have to do with a movement that is supposed to be committed to economic justice and depends on respect for First Amendment freedoms?
Indeed, by the time they were evicted last night, I'm not sure anyone who has paid attention to the signs at Tent City or to those wielded by protesters harassing office workers could tell you exactly what this movement stands for. So you're the 99 percent. (And I'm not sure this is even true of all the "Occupy" students at fancy colleges, whose parents pretty much have to be in the 1 percent to pay those tuitions.) And then what? Does that mean you're for higher taxes on the wealthy? Fine. Then register to vote, and support Obama, who is, too.
The early hopes of some liberals that "Occupy" would do for progressives what the Tea Party did for conservatives has long since been dashed. If anything, the fragmentation of the effort, and the lack of concern displayed by Occupiers for the rights and livelihoods of other members of the 99 percent club, probably cost progressives more support than it gained for them. The 1 percent most people were denouncing by the end were not the rich but the Occupiers themselves.
There are a good many people — if not 99 percent — who are angry and insecure and desperate in this country right now. Many of them feel, rightly or wrongly, that no one is speaking for them. They deserve a voice. The First Amendment certainly can be messy. But those who care about political change might be better off adopting tactics that win the support of those who are hurting, rather than imposing costs that make them hurt even more.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM
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24 Comments | Post Comment
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And the point of this piece is what? Estrich says “That many of them [the OWS scum] feel, rightly or wrongly, that no one is speaking for them.” B.S. They have as much voice as anyone in this land. The OWS scum do not want a voice they want the property of others and handouts and they want it for free by forced redistribution. They want from me what is mine and from you that what is yours. When asked to use voice and to articulate a grievance or a rational point they cannot. When not driven by drugs and alcohol and before being satiated by sodomy, by rape, by public masturbation, by public defecation, public urination, and other acts of public lewdness and indeed murder they are driven solely by envy, shame and an inflated sense of entitlement to the property or others. Adam Carolla got them absolutely correct, to wit, “F*ucking self entitled monsters who think the world owes them a living” “the first wave of participation trophies everyone's a winner, there are no losers” losers. “The kind that think their own fecal matter doesn't stink” In other words the scum seen at the OWS occupations and their ilk are the mostly illiterate, uneducated [in the sense that what passed for education was indoctrination in liberalism, political correctness, fell goodery and redistribution of wealth dogma] product of our worthless public schoolteachers and for those that went to college of ageing hippies and radical professors in Academia.
Comment: #1
Posted by: joseph wright
Thu Dec 1, 2011 2:46 PM
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"WHAT DO WE WANT?"
"What THEY have!"
"WHEN DO WE WANT IT?"
"Now!"
Comment: #2
Posted by: Dave Wickard
Thu Dec 1, 2011 10:14 PM
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Nicely written! While I don't always agree with you, this time you hit the nail on the head. I too agreed with the initial concept of the Occupy Movement; but after several weeks they lost me. They lost me when they blocked the streets that regular working class people needed to traverse to get to work. They lost me when they began bullying people who refused to listen to them; they lost me when, after being evicted it took sanitation workers in hazmat suits to clean up their mess. Finally, they lost me when reports of sexual assault and other crimes started occurring in the tent cities. Also, I think you're right regarding the college students...Working in higher education I know that tuition costs are very high and so these young people who are protesting are doing so on their parents dime; parents who are close to if not in the 1% category. And, who will go right back to their campus and parents provided home and spending money when this is all over.
Comment: #3
Posted by: sixtus
Fri Dec 2, 2011 4:06 AM
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Re: sixtus
Allright, you've got me guessing.What was the singular "initial concept of the Occupy Movement?"
Comment: #4
Posted by: Early
Fri Dec 2, 2011 5:02 AM
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Re: Early
Call attention to all the corruption that is going on.
Comment: #5
Posted by: Clucri
Fri Dec 2, 2011 8:39 AM
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Re: Early
Sixtus has no idea what the "initial concept of the Occupy Movement" was.
The initial concept was that of Acorn, Soros, SEIU, the surrogates of the Affirmative Action President "the AAP" and their fellow haters of America. The initial concep/goal was to simply exacerbate the class warfare started by the AAP and to do so based upon the entrencehed envy the underacheivers of OWS have of success and indeed the shame of being a loser that the losers of OWS inherently feel.
Because these losers have been cosseted and told all their lives that they are really winners, when faced with the realities of actually having to compete for success in lieu of being handed a participation trophy and rather than actually competing the losers, as the surrogates of the AAP knew they would, reverted to form, and whinged, whined, and cried for equality, not of opportunity but of outcome.
As Dave Wickard corectly puts it the OWS mantra was "What do we want? What they have. When do we want it? Now."
What was on display in the OWS movement is the legacy of decades of the liberal destruction of competitivness, of morality, of work ehtic, freedom and taking responsibility for one's own future and prosperity.
Comment: #6
Posted by: joseph wright
Fri Dec 2, 2011 8:41 AM
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Re: Early
Sixtus has no idea what the "initial concept of the Occupy Movement" was.
The initial concept was that of Acorn, Soros, SEIU, the surrogates of the Affirmative Action President "the AAP" and their fellow haters of America. The initial concept/goal of Occupy was to simply exacerbate the class warfare started by the AAP and to do so based upon the entrenched envy the underacheivers of OWS have of success and indeed the shame of being a loser that the losers of OWS inherently feel.
Because these losers have been cosseted and told all their lives that they are really winners, when faced with the realities of actually having to compete for success in lieu of being handed a participation trophy and rather than actually competing the losers, as the surrogates of the AAP knew they would, reverted to form, and whinged, whined, and cried for equality, not of opportunity but of outcome.
As Dave Wickard corectly puts it the OWS mantra was "What do we want? What they have. When do we want it? Now."
What was on display in the OWS movement was the legacy of decades of liberal destruction of competitivness, of morality, of work ethic, of freedom and of taking responsibility for one's own future and one's own prosperity.
Comment: #7
Posted by: joseph wright
Fri Dec 2, 2011 8:46 AM
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I want them off the streets now..
Comment: #8
Posted by: Paul
Fri Dec 2, 2011 9:07 AM
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Re: joseph wright
Getting a participation ribbon just made me feel like a loser. They might as well have put "you are worthless" on it. Now the government training program I went through, that made me feel like a winner... plus I got a job a month after I finished it. If you want to think everyone who wants government intervention is a worthless leech who doesn't want to do anything, you are simply being close minded. Then again I didn't succeed "on my own" so I guess it would have been better to remain unemployed all my life, at least from your perspective.
Comment: #9
Posted by: Clucri
Fri Dec 2, 2011 10:48 AM
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Re: Clucri
You conflate two entirely separate matters. Govenment re training for employment is a worthwhile enterprise and is to be encouraged, nay made mandatory in my opinion if unemployment checks are being accepted. The Occupy movement was never about the government providing opportunity but about envy and forced redistribution of the property of others. Property that those others had earned by their endeavour, which those who had never endeavoured coveted.
It seems that you took your participation medal nevertheless. Why? I suspect because it was free. No one forced you to accept the loser's badge. That it made you feel like a loser is not so much to your credit as the fact that you did somethiong about it, to wit, retrain.
What you have illustrated, whether intentionally or othewise, is the purpose and effects of liberalism, which is, to demoralise, to keep people from advancing themselves, to perpetuate a loser underclass to have people resign themselves to being handout dependant losers so that the corporatists and liberal plutocrats like little president zero can retain power and play king and benefactor.
My sons play soccer for two separate teams in two separate arenas of competition. The township arena and another. Each entity runs tournaments. The Township plays round robins without defined winners and losers and awards the same participation medals to everyone irrespective of where their teams place or how they perform. The other plays a regular season and play offs and gives trophies and medals only to the winners and first runners up. Losers get no medals. My sons are not permitted to accept the worthless Township participation medals.
The OWS and the scum attracted to it do not seek training, nor equal oportunity and neither do they seek to improve themselves or their fortunes by work and effort. They seek only the partipation medals and the indolence of terminal losers
Comment: #10
Posted by: joseph wright
Fri Dec 2, 2011 11:34 AM
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Well, admittedly, I don't think any of us really cared about winning, we just wanted to jump around in potato sacks. I wouldn't even have thought of it as a competition if they didn't have those awards. Grade school students don't about being recognized, it's the parents that want to know their kid is successful. I'm not sure whatever happened to that ribbon. I probably gave it to my parents.
Anyway with OWS, if they wanted handouts, wouldn't they be in a welfare office instead of trying to promote social change? It is clear with the existence of both them and the Tea Party, there are number of people who think Washington has become corrupt to a point that working within the system is no longer possible. I think OWS is mostly a backlash against Obama from the people who actually believed his campaign speeches.
Comment: #11
Posted by: Clucri
Fri Dec 2, 2011 12:48 PM
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The Occupy movement does have an image problem of wild youth expressing their frustrations in a passionate and colorful display.
But Susan, You obviously feel more comfortable in the halls of Harvard, On govt. commissions or a player in corporate america; where it is all clean and tidy. I have not seen a lot of progressive change coming from those corridors, neither do I expect them to either.
Comment: #12
Posted by: Michael Scanlon
Fri Dec 2, 2011 1:10 PM
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Re: Clucri
You mean a backlash because they did'nt get enough free s*it, or their mortgage paid or relieved of all debt, or a free car from GM or that unicorns didn't appear at the bottom of their beds every morning with a pile of cash from Obama's staaash for which no work was expected or did not get a bigger tax credit on taxes they did not pay ?
As to the college students and their loans, seems it did not occur to those half wits that what was putting them in debt was a loan they took out, not capitalism, the monopoly of big Education and the outrageous tuition fees charged by colleges in order to sustain the leeches of the faculty, their outrageous benefits, the legions of retired leeches and all at the expense of students. No to those fools capitalism and a free market, in which if it truly existed, the monopoly of big Education could not survive, was to blame and therefore the fools who work and pay taxes should simply foot the bill. There used to be an adage "only fools and horses work". That is the core belief of OWS. Seems it also the core belief of the Administration as it abandons working and middle class families to court the under priviliged at one end and the academics at the other end in the presidential elections race.
Or maybe they just wanted to protest the guy who last year paid a million in federal income taxes but yet not enough, even though the vast proportion of the OWS scum paid nothing?
Comment: #13
Posted by: joseph wright
Fri Dec 2, 2011 1:23 PM
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Re: joseph wright And how do you know the Occupy movement? Through the press? You have visited them? You engaged in political discourse w/ them? I have my own critique based on multiple visits... and I still go back for more. What are you doing about the corporate crimes committed against the citizens of this great country? How do you earn your living Mr Right?
Comment: #14
Posted by: Michael Scanlon
Fri Dec 2, 2011 7:07 PM
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Re Michael Scanlon who says "The Occupy movement does have an image problem of wild youth expressing their frustrations in a passionate and colorful display"
Well I suppose that is one delusional way of describing the filth of Occupy.
The accurate description is that the Occupiers have, as recorded fact engaged variously in public drug taking and dealing, in public masturbation, rape, sodomy, public defecation, public urination, murder, assault, sexual assault, intimidation, rampant anti Semitism, theft, vandalism, obstruction, coercion of small businesses, threats of terrorism and arson and violence against law officers, which actions have rightly tarnished the Dems that encouraged and enabled such scum. The actual extent of the mayhem in Occupy will probably not be known because the so called movement [as in bowel movement?] has its very own PR machine (otherwise known as the media) that has grossly inflated the size and importance of the 'movement" and has utterly failed to report the debauchery and crime within it or upon the radical America haters that organize and control it.
Political discourse? Give me a break. What you mean is that you go down and hang out with like minded imbeciles. The goons at occupy can barely articulate their own names or identify what day it is much less articulate a coherent argument on any matter. Not one of them could articulate just what true free market capitalism actually is or means. "What do we want? What they have. When do we want it? Now" is the best they can muster.
Corporate crimes against citizens? I suppose you mean tax-paying citizens and not the parasites of Occupy? I further suppose you mean the economic collapse brought about directly by “progressive” intervention, regulation and legislation in the housing market by Democrats which regulation and legislation insisted that those incapable of servicing a housing loan should have one, all aided and abetted by the Democratic Party slush fund providers and money launderers Fannie and Freddie? Or perhaps you mean the theft of billions of taxpayer dollars by Obama for worthless bailouts for his corporatist cronies or the billions of taxpayer dollars wasted in phony crony green jobs and bankrupt businesses ?
As to you going back all one can properly say is Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!
Comment: #15
Posted by: joseph wright
Sat Dec 3, 2011 6:28 AM
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This particular conservative, yours truly, appreciates Susan's willingness to criticize her party when they deserve to be so criticized and the OWS movement is a great example of a cause which had some plausible good but went horribly astray. Ironically, some of these people had common cause with the Tea Party in that both criticize the excesses of the privileged class, whether they be politicians or capitalists. The attempt by the left and their lapdogs in the main media to compare the two groups, in the hope that OWS would be as influential as was the Tea Party, was ridiculous from the start and has backfired badly.
Comment: #16
Posted by: John de Carville
Sat Dec 3, 2011 9:22 AM
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Re: "a movement that is supposed to be committed to economic justice" What is "economic justice"?
Comment: #17
Posted by: David Henricks
Sun Dec 4, 2011 1:48 AM
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See there was another "occupier found dead in a tent in Texas". Too bad soo sad ! Who cares ? Good riddance! Keep it going.
Comment: #18
Posted by: joseph wright
Sun Dec 4, 2011 1:48 PM
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Great article, but your article was a bit too late. These people should be protesting Washington, DC and their idiotic policies which are to be blamed for the 99% plight. How about the 1% like actors, singers, athletes, and other ilk that they give a free pass to. Overall, I applaud Susan for seeing this movement for what it is. No urine jugs were ever found at Tea Party rallies.
Comment: #19
Posted by: Eric Jensen
Sun Dec 4, 2011 3:45 PM
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"Being Occupied grew tiresome"
Thank you Susan Estrich, Syndicated Writer, the opinion piece is kind of late though, don't you think?
President Barack H. Obama laid low on the radar screen concerning the OWS protester's, it is my hope this hurts his re-election in 2012.
Glad you guy's finally owned up to this mess.. OWS going nowhere. Don't compare OWS to the TEA PARTY, Susan.
The TEA PARTY made a change in 2010. President Obama had the Democratic field and went extreme left. TEA PARTY evened out the playing field, I hope in 2012 we the people have wised up to these radical political ploy's, (OWS) as these OWS protester's were paid for by ACORN. At least this is the feedback right now. As ACORN is under FBI investigation for VOTER FRAUD. Do the TEA PARTY a favor, Susan, research and give them more credit ... TEA PARTY didn't leave the taxpaying citizen's indebted to the Sanitation Dept like OWS protester's> (unless this was a public servant's Union scam for more work, which I doubt)
Comment: #20
Posted by: Linda
Mon Dec 5, 2011 11:29 AM
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OWS is the DaDa version of social movements. The participants are channeling classic popular demonstrations of the past such as the Bonus Marchers of the 1930's; lunch counter Sit-Ins of the 1960; Chicago 1968; and the People's Park in Berkeley.
But while these earlier rallies had specific goals--bonuses for WWI veterans, Civil Rights, stopping the war in Viet Nam, Free Speech--the current OWS movements seems to be a protest for the sake of protesting. No specific achievement will satisfy them. They don't even acknowlege their absurd inconsistencies. They broke the windows of a major US bank, then a day later deposited their own funds in the same institution. They complain that corporations are not held accountable, but over a half million dollars of donations is controlled by their own "board of directors," a body which is never subject to oversight, review, or even a written policy. They complain of the sickness of society while fostering environments of filth, crime, drug-abuse, and disease. Fundamentally OWS seems to be a movement of people who have so little self-regard that they believe even an irrational protest gives them self-worth. If I complain I become important.
Comment: #21
Posted by: Cowboy Jay
Mon Dec 5, 2011 4:57 PM
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Re: Cowboy Jay
Agreed. Right on!
Comment: #22
Posted by: Early
Tue Dec 6, 2011 4:52 AM
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Re: Cowboy Jay You have a point, and so did Carolla when he said that the OWS is comprised of “F**king self entitled monsters who think the world owes them a living” “the first wave of participation trophies everyone's a winner, there are no losers” losers.
The OWS is based on the entrencehed envy that the underacheivers of OWS have of success and upon the subconscious shame of being a loser (because of their own life choices) that the losers of OWS feel . It is their loser status that craves self worth through irrational protest and blaming all around but themselves for their lack of achievment. Does this remind you of anyone?
Although Obama has reached the office of President, he knows inside that everyhing he has is through affirmative action and not any personal achievement. Indeed in his case the Presidential seal is the ultimate participation medal.
Comment: #23
Posted by: joseph wright
Tue Dec 6, 2011 5:50 AM
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Most, if not all, of the OWS crowd are great examples of the Peter Principle. The other example is BHO.
Comment: #24
Posted by: Early
Tue Dec 6, 2011 6:36 AM
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