Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street protests, movement is at a crossroads

The rights of one group to protest is conflicting with the rights of others to use the same public space. Isn't 2 months more than enough?

And perhaps it's really a good idea to reduce the time of demonstrations. Same should happen with opinions: you may say/write/articulate yours for a short certain period, but then you'll have to move on to something more productive.

Occupy Portland dispersal a tough call for mayor
(By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2011)

Portland Mayor Sam Adams, the first openly gay man to lead a major American city, is no stranger to street protest — he's been in the middle of more than he can count. He's battled for bike lanes, railed against social services funding cuts and led the charge for green buildings.

Now, he's the progressive mayor of one of the nation's most progressive cities — and his police force recently stormed in riot gear through a camp full of true believers.

"It turned into a brawl over Porta Pottis and crime," Adams said glumly last week at City Hall, not far from where the abandoned parks of Occupy Portland stood empty and forlorn, surrounded by makeshift chain-link fences.

From New York to Oakland, Occupy camps have worn out their welcome, with crime, squalor and traffic blockades increasingly capturing more attention than proclamations about corporate dominion and inequitable wealth.

But the decision to close them has been heart-wrenching for mayors in many cities — particularly in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, Canada, where bicycle-riding, carbon-hating politicians probably feel as much sympathy for the people in the camps as for the downtown business executives upset about threats to the holiday shopping season.

"I support a lot of what the movement stands for, as a political leader. But as a mayor, I have responsibilities that are different from that," Adams said.

Adams, who was elected in 2008, was almost exuberant when the first of the Occupy Portland protesters planted themselves downtown at Lownsdale Square and adjacent Chapman Park.

"My first email to the staff was, 'All right, let's plan on how we can make this peaceful,'" Adams said. "I wanted the city to respond from a principled approach. We were going to balance free speech while managing the impacts of that and keeping the city safe and moving. We were going to be patient, we were going to staff ourselves, and we were going to engage."

But as time wore on, so did the city's patience. Five weeks in, half of Adams' progressive supporters were in the camp; the other half were pleading with him to make it go away.

The warren of tents, tarps and cookstoves, as with many camps across the country, had become a haven for teen runaways and the mentally ill homeless. Assaults were rising; there were drug overdoses, staph infections and reports of rats; the camp had to open "safe injection" and "sexual assault response" tents.

Commentators at the leftist Portland Mercury were calling the campers "whiners" who were "like student government types from high school … protesting the fascist police state on campus."

One reader wrote: "Before Occupy, I would have bet several needed internal organs that I would never side with the Portland police in any situation involving protesters. But here I stand, siding with the police and the mayor. Thanks Occupy."

Adams managed to pull off possibly the cleanest Occupy eviction in the country so far — no pepper spray, no rubber bullets. He did it by giving the camp three days' notice, allowing upward of 5,000 supporters to surge in for a last street party Saturday night as the deadline slipped by, then sending officers with batons in Sunday morning to clear out the few entrenched campers who remained.

That would be up to them. After two months, occupying public space becomes counter-productive. They are burdening local governments and local taxpayers.

I disagree that their actions are counter-productive and I would not recommend that they make the changes you are recommending. Instead, I would like to see them evolve and grow over the course of the next year in two ways:

1, by organizing ever-growing protests that are not necessarily 'encampments' in nature, on a regular basis; and

2, continuing to keep the pressure on our society and politicans by specifically finding and highlighting as many corrupt aspects of the system as possible. There are a lot of smart youngsters without a job involved; they should get their act together on the marketing angle.

I believe they should do those things IN ADDITION to what they are currently doing; not instead of what they are currently doing.

The fact that their continued actions are annoying and potentially expensive isn't a bug or a problem, it is a specific feature. If they didn't annoy anyone or cost anyone money, nobody would care what they had to say at all. You do realize that, right?

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I believe they should do those things IN ADDITION to what they are currently doing; not instead of what they are currently doing.

The fact that their continued actions are annoying and potentially expensive isn't a bug or a problem, it is a specific feature. If they didn't annoy anyone or cost anyone money, nobody would care what they had to say at all. You do realize that, right?

Cycloptichorn

I do realize that, but what they are doing now is burdening the 99% more than it is burdening the 1%. Parados is aiming more in the proper direction.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I disagree that their actions are counter-productive and I would not recommend that they make the changes you are recommending. Instead, I would like to see them evolve and grow over the course of the next year in two ways:

1, by organizing ever-growing protests that are not necessarily 'encampments' in nature, on a regular basis; and

2, continuing to keep the pressure on our society and politicans by specifically finding and highlighting as many corrupt aspects of the system as possible. There are a lot of smart youngsters without a job involved; they should get their act together on the marketing angle.

Your ideas are excellent. Those actions would be more productive. It is time to try something else.