Occupy Stands In Solidarity With No One

“Looks like march happening. Scooter patrol moving too. Someone says: We should march right into Trinity Church, squid and all” -OWS protester

'In a country where all people can vote and Trinity’s door to dialogue is open, it is not necessary to forcibly break into property.”  -Archbishop Desmond Tutu

OWS wasn't as critical of Christians when
it was getting what it wanted from them

Almost from its beginning, OWS received the support of the parish of Trinity Wall Street, an Episcopal church about a block form Zuccoti Park in New York. The church has and continues to extend support to OWS but today, it moved against the church in the ultimate hissy fit, a blatant example of mob bullying not in aid of social justice but simply because it didn’t get its own way.

OWS had demanded that Trinity give it authorization to set up another tent city on property owned by the church. When the church refused, OWS declared the church, which had and continues to support it, as an enemy of the people and marched against it.

A couple of weeks back one Occupy group were calling on sanctuary from a church. Now Occupy violates the very sanctuary it sought for itself. What hypocrisy!

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“OWS protestors call out for social and economic justice; Trinity has been supporting these goals for more than 300 years. The protestors say they want to improve housing and economic development; Trinity is actively engaged in such efforts in the poorest neighborhoods in New York City and indeed around the world. We do not, however, believe that erecting a tent city at Duarte Square enhances their mission or ours. The vacant lot has no facilities to sustain a winter encampment. In good conscience and faith, we strongly believe to do so would be wrong, unsafe, unhealthy, and potentially injurious. We will continue to provide places of refuge and the responsible use of our facilities in the Wall Street area. “

                                          - Reverend Dr. James H. Cooper, Rector of Trinity Church

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This has become typical of the Occupy movement and exemplifies the simple reality that this is not a protest for social or economic justice. Nobody, not even supporters of the clueless movement, is permitted to disagree or deny it what it demands or thinks. They call that democracy. The rest of the world sees it for what it is - hypocrisy masquerading as a progressive cause.

Occupy is nothing more than a gang of self-impressed and mis-informed bullies that uses strong-arm and intimidation tactics to try and get what it wants and only what it wants. The opinions of other are irrelevant to them. Occupy chants ‘solidarity’ but has no clue what the word means. It stands in solidarity with no one but itself and has no loyalty to anything or anyone other than its own self-aggrandizement.

The attention Occupy received from the media and the support it started to receive from groups and individuals went to its head and instead of using that support to work in ‘solidarity’ with the broader 99% community, Occupy has become arrogant and contemptuous of everything that gets in its way.

In its arrogance, Occupy has turned its back on those who supported it, who provided money and supplies and who defended it when its actions were excessive. It has no respect for anyone who has marched with it, no respect for our communities, our laws or the safety and well-being of its own supporters.

Occupy Oakland protester
vandalizing small business

It claimed to represent the 99% but it was, and continues to be, the 99% that Occupy harasses and victimizes.

In Oakland during the General Strike, Occupy did more than a million dollars in damage by vandalism, much of it to small businesses that are part of the 99%.

In New York, the peaceful movement flash mobbed private meetings to shout down speakers with whom they disagreed denying them both their right to freedom of speech and to freedom of assembly. It was OWS who harassed small children on their way school during its Day of Action and allowed its supporters to threaten and damage some of the small businesses that border Zuccoti Park.

Occupy has treated our cities
with less respect than children do their toys

In October, Occupy flooded social media sites with photos and articles about all of the attention and support it was receiving from celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon. This past week, it shut down the film crew shooting an episode of Law and Order because celebrities are on the enemies list now too.

Occupy has consistently turned its back on low wage earners in retail stores and banks with gang intimidation tactics it claimed were legitimate protest against the corporations.

Occupy ignored a request from
unions not to proceed with
this action

It turned its back on the Unions and workers who had marched with it, ignoring requests by unions in the United States and Canada not to proceed with their attempt to shut down west-coast ports for a day. Instead Occupy organizers published trite rationalizations for the action which went ahead and ultimately accomplished nothing except to pump up some Occupy egos and cost too many in the 99% a day’s wages.

Having been evicted from its illegal camps, Occupy was at a loss as to what to do and having no relevant ideas to contribute to society, it fell back on the only thing it does know – disruption of the lives of people in the 99% in a vain attempt to call attention to itself that losing their camp sites had caused to dwindle. As one protester put it, “ We need to show people that we are still relevant.” 

This mirrors a similar comment from an Occupy Vancouver protester who said, “we need more time to educate the public and educate each other on what these issues are and to really find actions and issues that do galvanize the public.”

That’s what it’s come down to for Occupy, an attempt to find some ‘hook’ that will help it regain the support from the public it has lost through its actions and its arrogance. Occupy is not concerned with the issues it claims to embrace but only with its own existence. Indeed, so focused is it on its own survival that it hops from issue to issue hoping to find the magic bullet that will galvanize the public support it is losing daily. Being a part of Occupy is how too many in this rabble find relevance in their own lives at the expense of everyone else. The issues are irrelevant and like the support that Occupy has received in the past, too easily discarded.

This pathetic excuse for a political movement barely understands the basics of most issues about which it lectures the rest of the world and spends more time in its GA's quibbling over expenses for herbal medicines and other trivia than it does in serious discussion about working with the 99% to effect real change for the better. It targets any who disagree with it and justifies it's vandalism and the crime it draws by pointing fingers at the crimes it claims were made by banks.

Now it's the turn of the church.

St. Paul's vandalized with graffiti
by Occupy protesters

In England, venerable St. Paul’s Cathedral which provided space for Occupy to camp when none was available elsewhere was vandalized with graffiti by the same protesters it supported. And today, in New York this arrogant gang of vagrant misfits marched on Trinity, a church with a 300 year history of fighting for social and economic justice without the need for self-impressed grandstanding.

The reason it targeted the church? As one OWS protester put it so eloquently, “We need more…you have more.” And that is all the justification Occupy requires.

This is not a legitimate movement  it’s not even true protest nor is it the "great revolution". It’s nothing more than a loose affiliation of street gangs across North America who alternately swagger about bragging about their own importance and engaging in street actions designed to reinforce their own self-image to themselves; all the while begging for handouts in order to keep this carnival of the absurd going.

Occupy hides behind slogans and political rhetoric in an attempt to justify its actions but it has become clear it has no defined objectives, no direction and even less understanding of the issues about which they chant. 

In the end, Occupy is nothing but an extortion racket and its only purpose is to exist. It has no social justice agenda, merely a long list of items it borrowed from the traditional socialist agenda and the activist handbook for dummies. This intellectually deficient and overly pompous tribe of trouble makers simply moves from one action and issue to another in an attempt to find some meaning in order to rationalize its pathetic existence to itself.

Another Occupy thug who can
only find courage by hiding his face in a  mob

The hypocrisy of a movement that screams about victimization even as it tramples the rights, the property and the safety of others is almost palpable. It condemns corporations while basking in the glow of Time's declaration of protesters being its "Person of The Year" never seeing for a moment the hypocrisy of accepting attention from a magazine owned by one of the largest media conglomerates in the world.

OWS has collected in excess of $600,000, earning as much as $15,000-$20,000 a day during the glory months of October and early November. It still has more than $400,000 in the bank; according to its web site which, considering the impoverished state of many of its cousins in other cities puts OWS in the 1% within the movement.

How does OWS operate? It does exactly what it accuses the 1% of doing. It doesn’t share the wealth; it hoards it for its own purposes even as it attempts to raise more. Recently, after criticism from within its own ranks about the fact that the powerful Finance Committee exercised to much control over the money, OWS responded by changing the name of the committee to the Accounting Committee. Did it change how it handles the money? Of course not, it did exactly what it accuses of others of doing. It made paid lip service to the concerns of its own members and kept on with business as usual.

To put it bluntly, I am fed up with this rabble. It claims to represent the 99% but lacks the integrity, the ethics and even the simple values of self-responsibility and respect for others that are predominant across the broader 99%. Occupy does not represent us -- we do and it’s time we made that clear.

Eight people died in Occupy camps in less than two months

As for those who continue to support this unprincipled and undisciplined rabble, you need a serious values check. I've talked to so many idealistic suburbanites who have some deluded and romantic idea of what Occupy is all about. Get off your back deck and get informed. There are real people being hurt and who are having the rights you take for granted while you wander the suburban malls and drive about in your Subarus and Nissans. There are real children who have been assaulted, eight people who are dead and millions in costs to our cities. Get your head out of the dark part of your anatomy and find some real values.

Some within the church have criticized Trinity for its position but I ask them, where was your outrage when one of your own churches was vandalized by this gang you support? Where was your outrage when young girls were raped and molested? Where was your voice when children were harassed and used as human shields? Where was your concern for the disease, including tuberculosis that was sprang up in Occupy camps? Where are your real Christian values?

There is no hypocrisy in Christ’s message and there is nothing Christ-like in Occupy.  If you can’t defend the teachings of your own faith and confuse your own political biases with your responsibility to your faith and your church, it’s time to turn in your collar, move on and say nothing. You have nothing to teach your congregations about Christianity social justice or standing up for what is moral.

As for the rest of us, the ones who are not fooled by this cult of self-indulgence, the time has come to stand up and speak out. To do nothing is to allow others like us to continue to be harassed and bullied.  If we do that, we become complicit in those acts.

OWS bullies a single member of the 99%

It is no longer good enough to turn a blind eye to this mob. It is time to defend our communities, our society and our values. It can start right here by speaking out against what OWS did today in New York. We can start by expressing our outrage over Occupy's attempt to brow beat a church that has more social relevance on any given day than OWS has had from its beginning.

The system can and does work as was proven again this week with the arrest of a number of executives from Fannie May and Freddy Mac for fraud during the Wall Street collapse and bail out. These investigations are complex and take time, something Occupy doesn’t understand and they are only the first of more to come. We don’t need Occupy to clean up Wall Street and never did.

The truth about Occupy has become all to clear and is demonstrated by its plummeting support. Where it once could draw thousands to an action in the larger cities, it now can only attract a few hundred and in smaller cities, it’s lucky to make it into double digits. Where once OWS was pulling in thousands a day, it now barely receives $100 and often less.

Occupy never learned. The 99% are not interested in hypocrites or self-aggrandizing thugs who do not share the values of our society, our communities or each other. If we are to live our values, it is time to stand up and speak out in defense of those like Trinity Church and take back our cities from what is nothing more than a gang of self-deluded thugs.

To do less makes hypocrites and cowards of us all.

LINKS

Full Text: Trinity Church Statement On OWS Protests
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/trinity-church-occupy-wall-street-statement-ows-new-york-city-protests-135800548.html

Church That Aided Wall Street Protest Is Now Their Target
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/nyregion/church-that-aided-wall-st-protesters-is-now-their-target.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Occupy Protests Plagued By Reports Of Sex Attacks And Violent Crime
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3913113766829019414&postID=6635397189319370827

Seattle Bank Trashed, "Revenge For Occupy Oakland." Painted Outside
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=34350

Former Fannie and Freddie Execs Charged With Fraud
http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/12/16/former-fannie-freddie-execs-charged-securities-fraud/print

Occuppy DC Using Children As Human Shields
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIuHyDQzjxk

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