Peaceful by Someone's Definition: Occupy Movement

The Occupy Wall Street crowd and its disciples set up camps across America within our cities claiming to be peaceful protesters representing the 99 per cent.  Problematically, much of the 99 per cent—intended to be among the represented—are disinterested in the movement and what it has devolved into.  While the Occupy cause started out as an ostensibly non-violent one, it was never peaceful.

A myopic view of peace defines it as the cessation of violence, yet the meaning runs much deeper.  Mutual harmony amongst people and public order both expand the definition.

Reflect: Agitation in the streets, alleged sexual assaults, reports of a rampant illicit drug trade, human waste in open-air buckets.  Peaceful, one asks?

Came the urban terrorism in Oakland.  First, a former Marine wounded in a skirmish.  The Port of Oakland barricaded by chain link and forced to shut down.  Banks vandalized.  Chaos ensued.

What becomes of such peace?  A renunciation by the amorphous Occupy leadership of these rogue “anarchists.”  Eighteen percent of Oakland Unified's teaching force skipped school with substitutes largely unavailable.  Mayor Quan is still encouraging the misplaced rage.

Is this what Occupy is to become?  In Portland, where this writer had the misfortune of observing the Occupy encampment earlier this week, Lownsdale and Chapman Squares no longer appear to be a part of the City of Roses, but a Third World enclave.  Is our destiny to become Ciudad Terra Puerta?

Is living, nay existing, angstroms apart from each other in a squalid tent city a peaceful existence?  What of hectoring the Portland Police—who came out with a formal repudiation of Occupy Portland on Thursday—or the stifling of downtown business and tourism?  This now stands as a peaceful approach in the Portland of Sam Adams.

Clearly, the sentiment of Occupiers is understood by much of that 99 per cent.  Our country is in a bad place.  Yet the camps offer no solutions.  Grousing for months at a time without a message of any cohesion begins to fall on deaf ears.

The banks and Wall Street may be at fault for much of our mess, but are they to blame?  These institutions were simply playing the game that presidential administrations from Clinton through Obama had set up with a complicit Congress.

Economic policy of the united States has paid lip-service to the American worker during this time.  Within this current century, over fifty-thousand manufacturing plants and factories have shuttered and with it, the 6 million jobs, the towns, and the cities dependent upon them.  The Chinese have picked up this slack.

This debasement of the American economy is more devastating than war or financial shenanigans on Wall Street.  It is time the Occupation realize that many of our politicians—democratically elected—are to blame.  Circle the wagons and move toward substantive political solutions, rather than embracing the effects of mob psychology.

The call is to elect candidates who put America and her jobs, her cities, towns, and states first.  Vote candidates encouraging trade and tax policy which repatriates capital into the only Free Trade Zone our founders envisioned:  The one defined by the borders of the United States of America.

The specific hope and particular change this country needs is in how its citizens think and act.  Complaining about the symptoms of our crisis rather than attacking its source will lead to a long stalemate.  Our country cannot afford such a path, for our crisis will turn swiftly from immediate to existential.

If this occurs, peace may become but a relic within this republic.