Occupy Protesters Bravely Face Another Night Of Tent Brutality

It was another night of Occupy evictions; another night of armed conflict and war.

LA police officer in the middle of the squalid tent city
photo by Reuters

Or at least, that’s the way Occupy LA, OWS, Occupy Philly and their rag tag band of online supporters tried to portray it. In both Los Angeles and Philadelphia, police gathered in strength but quietly to prepare to evict Occupy squatters from public property. In both cities, Occupy was given notice that they were to leave but refused to comply.

Instead, a frantic barrage of tweets and live streams started erupting across the online universe describing every hysterical detail of the armed incursion. In LA, a police helicopter became a helicopter gun ship. In Philadelphia, the police had military tactical weapons. The Feds had arrived and the Department Of Homeland Security was orchestrating the “attack on peaceful American citizens.”

Philadelphia Police brutalizing a wooden palette
while Occupy protester looks on

Danger was everywhere and there were injuries.

Fortunately nobody was killed but while there were no apparent injuries in Los Angeles, there were four reported in Philadelphia; three to police officers and one to an Occupy protester who was injured when a police horse she was standing behind stepped on her foot. Two police officers were injured in scuffles unrelated to the Occupy eviction and one received a cut taking down a tent. Fortunately, further bloodshed was avoided when LAPD opted to provide a female protester with a ladder to climb down out of a tree rather than simply shooting her or blowing up the tree.

The hysterical hyperbole is an insult to the people of Syria where 30 more were shot and killed by authorities yesterday. Contrast that to LA and Philly where a combined total of 250 were arrested for misdemeanors, put on a bus and driven to police stations to have formal charges laid. No tear gas or pepper spray was used, no rubber bullets, and no weapons of mass destruction were brought in to overcome tarpaulin cities. Unlike Syria and Libya, the police simply went about their job which was primarily an assault on tents.

In Syria, the people are attacked and killed, in LA and Philly, the police attacked camping gear.

It didn’t prevent Occupy from doing everything it could to elevate what was happening from a big ho hum to an unbelievable assault on democratic freedom and the people by a brutal regime.

Syrian tanks and military occupy Haman square

For me, Occupy’s continuous over –the-top response to every little event is precisely what is undermining their attempt at meaningful protest. They have trivialized themselves and their movement with ridiculous exaggerations of what are little more than innocuous events.

It’s like kids playing war. There is no real danger and so they exaggerate everything to a level where it becomes laughable and laugh we did last night as a group of us shared each Occupy tweet as it came across the cloud.

Syrian police and military moving
against protesters

My heart goes out to the people of Syria who are fighting and dying for the very freedoms Occupy sycophants take for granted. I mourned the brutal deaths of so many in places like Libya and Rwanda torn apart by civil war and tyranny.

It is not only more than just a little challenging to have any sympathy for Occupy’s self-indulgent  rhetoric, it is impossible. They, along with many of their supporters, have attempted to elevate Occupy into something grander than it is but they continue to fail because in the end, Occupy is not an instrument for change. It’s not even a real protest movement, it is merely a cliché of tired ideas and self-absorption and the good news for them is that they got to have their hissy fit in countries that indulged them to a certain extent rather than kill them.

But, play time is over and as Los Angeles and Philadelphia announced last night, it is long past time to end this revolution of the clueless. There is real work to be done to fix some of the things that need fixing in this society. We don’t have any more time or money to waste on those who simply want to play at being important instead of working with the broader 99% to help bring about real and effective change for the better.

All those who agree please “Up Twinkles”*.

*For those unfamiliar with the term Twinkles, it is the name given by Occupy for a hand signal. One finger in the air means agreement and is called an Up Twinkles. A finger pointing down is disagreement and is called a Down Twinkles. It is impossible to take seriously any group that turns democracy into something more appropriate for Sesame Street. (Occupy is brought to you today by the letters LA, P and the number 4). When doing Up Twinkles,  it is considered rude to use your middle finger.

 © 2011 Maggie's Bear

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