Jane's aged dog is splayed out in the back seat, groaning softly. The animal is blind, incontinent, no longer able to navigate the stairs. Jane is taking her old friend to the vet's, to be euthanized. But she finds herself stuck in a long line of cars. She peers up ahead, sees through her tears that the bridge she must cross is jammed with wall-to-wall Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, an eighth of a mile deep. No one's going anywhere -- no backing up, no alternate route -- until the protestors decide to clear the bridge. Or the mayor or the police chief decides for them.
Other motorists have similar stories, each of them in the same logistical fix. A blue-collar worker will be late for work yet again, and likely lose his job. An elderly heart patient, fresh out of life-sustaining medicine, is stuck two miles from the pharmacist. A recently divorced man, on his way to pick up his son and take him to a movie won't make it. Several people in the bumper-to-bumper jam really, really really need to pee. One motorist's Camry is running on fumes. Another is rushing to pick up her daughter before the childcare center closes. These and countless other examples of real, not hypothetical people pose a serious challenge to the efficacy and credibility of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Most of these immobile motorists fully realize they're part of the 99 percent. They've been gouged by bailed-out banks, lost jobs and mortgages, watched as corporations, their executives awash in bonus cash, continue to buy legislation in the nation's capitol. These legions of potential Occupy recruits don't need to be reminded that they've been failed by a congress that won't tax the rich, a president who looked good in the warmups, even a supreme court ruling that corporations are homo sapiens.
But there's little chance they'll join the movement so long as they are irritated, inconvenienced, frightened, or put at genuine risk by some of the tactics employed by the Occupy movement.
Shutting down a critical bridge or snarling highway traffic during rush hour may be a grand, empowering experience. But it pisses off thousands who would otherwise, in their own enlightened self-interest, sign on to the cause.
I visited Zuccotti Park on a recent trip to New York. I saw the tents, heard the drumming and the speeches, read the signs. It filled me with awe and appreciation for those willing to make visible and audible their opposition to a miserable and unjust status quo -- not just in lower Manhattan but in cities across the country. But my time in the park also left me with a fatalistic attitude.
The politicians, eventually, bowing to growing complaints of business owners and residents, will order parks off limits at night and bridges open 24/7. The police will clash with demonstrators. There will be arrests and injuries and pepper spray.
(I'm not letting law enforcement off the hook. See here. Increasing militarization of America's police forces has certainly exacerbated clashes between cops and demonstrators. The use of pepper spray in Oakland, UC-Davis, Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle, to name just a few west coast cities, is especially troubling.)
It doesn't have to be this way. Surely there are tactics most can agree on, without one side feeling co-opted, the other claiming victory. Imagine demonstrators making a point about bridges and infrastructure and jobs by lining the sides of the bridge, allowing traffic to flow. The sight of 50,000 activists stretched out over miles would, I think, inspire awe and good will from passing motorists. (Imagine, further, the police working with the 99 percent, collaborating on tactics, and eschewing chemical agents.)
Some say the issues are too important, the timing too momentous for Occupy forces to compromise tactics that include, by design, blocking traffic.
I say, tell that to a mom trying to get her sick child to the doctor.
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John Stoehr: The Media Bias No One Talks About
Gabe Zichermann: Occupy Wall Street and the Crisis of Choice
On the other hand police come out in riot gear to arrest people when they clog traffic in a single location, in one city, on a single day, for less time than daily traffic congestion.
Of course, I’m not seriously suggesting police arrest people in traffic, but neither should they over-respond to a small delay.
Also, the police and media shouldn’t publicly inflate the potential (i.e. not actual) effect of the delay. If the media and police said “There will be a protest at “x” bridge today at “y” time. It will cause similar delays to a traffic accident in rush hour. If you travel at a different time, you can avoid this delay.”
This is not to say that demonstrators shouldn’t consider the likely public response to their tactics, but the police and media should address these protests humanely, not try to inflame public response to protests.
Good intentions is the spark to accomplish good deeds. Just as important is your actions which is the path to good deeds. Sometimes, too much effort is made beating our chest and expounding our goals and not enough time checking that our actions are not counterproductive.
With apologies for the confusion, I'm not talking about demonstrations on the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC or the Montlake Bridge in Seattle or any other particular bridge. Likewise, the scenarios of the drivers. They are fictional, intended to put human faces to those who, absorbed in their own dramas, are more angry at OWS tactics than at the harm done to their lives by the banks, the multinational corporations, their own government. For the record, I do believe OWS has, in fact, done the "heavy lifting" for all, including those motorists stuck on a bridge somewhere. OWS has, in fact, done a "stellar" job to date.
Which is more than can be said about the police.
Yes, I was the police chief during the "Battle in Seattle" 12 years ago. Yes, I authorized the use of tear gas against nonviolent demonstrators. It was the biggest mistake of my career, and I will always regret it. My hope, in watching the OWS movement develop, was that today's police officers would have learned from my failures. Judging from the images we see daily, they have not.
We are not a political party. We are not trying to get people elected, or get particular pieces of legislation passed. So popularity is not our concern. It reminds me of a story my partner's father likes to tell about when the students at UW shut down I-5 during the morning commute back in 1970. It was to protest the war in Vietnam, and it pissed a lot of people off. He was an engineer at Boeing at the time, and he loved it, as it was the first time his co-workers talked about the war.
Our budget is busted not because we offer a crust of bread to the poorest of the poor, but because we gave massive tax breaks to the wealthiest, and are fighting two unjust and unfunded wars. We don't care how many people we have to piss off, if we get them mad enough to change the system.
I've been to the Occupy Portland Camp (before it was broken up), and I saw......many Real, Smart, Hard Working People with Legitimate, Doable Ideas that could really address the issues at hand nicely; I also saw a so-called "anarchist" dissing the organizers for "incorporating" - because it sounds like "Corporation" to him (doesn't know how the food gets here, would starve to death if he had to feed himself, and, if he held a protest, he would soon be....) - which any person with a basic knowledge of How The World Works would applaud their brains for setting it up so THEY CAN'T BE PERSONALLY SUED FOR ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS AT THE EVENT (an especially poignant concern, when one considers the potential for havoc represnted by all the Rebel Youth, and their near entire lack of Brains).
This person couldn't have explained the Federal Reserve Bank System (just that it's "Bad" - So, that means they can SMASH THINGS, Right?), the Post Civil War Gold Speculation that made it neccessary, or what, if anything, might represent a 'better way'.
Try to be gentle with the former, the latter - they actually want to fight with you.
However, I am not aware of any bridges being blocked by the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park. Isn't that the whole idea of demonstrating in a park, to avoid inconveniencing average joes?
I would also express concern over the growing Right-wing radicalization of some of the police forces on the west coast. It is very disturbing that the police would have so little regard for our laws that they would casually pepper spray non-violent demonstrators. I think prosecution is called for for these officers who swore to defend the public, with possible loss of employment and pension. Police officers need to defend the public, not abuse them.
In today's America it's all about ME, ME, ME! Sure, people will be inconvenience and will immediately turn on the cause without giving a thought to the bigger picture, that the protesters are doing the heavy lifting for the apathetic public. The lesson, as always is, look in the mirror, the problem is "US"! From the people we elect who promise us the moon without the reality of the pain, to the selfishness of the promise to bring home the bacon in the form of a new defense contract or a bridge, this is the way the system is set up!
What's needed is a major change, so major that almost no one is bold enough to even go there, we are arguing about the color of the paint while the foundation is collapsing...
There was only one time when OWS "occupied" the traffic lanes of a bridge, which would have been nothing more than a march across it if the police hadn't penned them in. Would it have caused a delay? Sure. But, not to the extent that it did by the cowboy policing who could have swept everyone up in the park on the other side of the bridge. You left out that point here. The plan wasn't to sit in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was to walk across it. The long delay was largely caused by the police response, not the marchers.
"A blue-collar worker will be late for work yet again, and likely lose his job."
If this is so likely, can you cite me some examples of people who lost their jobs as a result of being delayed by protesters?
Here in Portland, too, the squares and even the street connecting them that were occupied may be an amenity that the downtown crowd likes to rely on; but they never were a vital artery for traffic or business. Far more important to raise the issue that most people don't have the basic economic wherewithal to rely on a stable and worthwhile job, than that this inconvenience be the pretext for (maddeningly expensive) police action. The substantial obstruction was to the impulse to ignore our economic problems in hopes they would solve themselves, not to the business of running a safe and orderly community.
In both cases, the biggest cost and threat to safety has been the outsized police presence, not the activities going on in the encampments. Proper police policy would have required far smaller direct patrols of the area, emphasizing first-response to safety concerns and fast backup in the event of crowds getting out of hand. Certainly by the time of the rolling evictions all of the encampments had not only shown themselves to be willing to tackle some of the hardest problems most police forces must face -- mental illness, homelessness, etc -- with grace and generosity, but also proven that unprovoked rioting was not a legitimate concern for law enforcement or municipal governments. The policies that were pursued instead not only aggravated the situation, they must be held directly responsible for the clashes and any police (and most protester!) misconduct that occurred.
Norm -
You're quite right that protesters need to balance the impact of their obstruction/occupation against the inconvenience/outright trouble and danger it can cause to the general public. Those horror stories you cite about lack of access to medicines or workplaces are exactly what police should be, indeed are, empowered to address for public safety concerns. Without being obstructive at all, protest would not get any attention and would not generate any pressure to resolve the issues that caused the unrest in the first place. But of course causing outsize trouble for one's natural allies is a great way to get marginalized or alienate potential sources of help and recruitment.
That's just the normal strategic question planners (or GAs) have to resolve when choosing locations and tactics for their protest.
But it's worth pointing out that for the most part #OWS has done a stellar job of making smart choices on just this issue. That part of lower Manhattan is not a thoroughfare! Nearly nobody lives there, there are scant local businesses outside of those serving the lunch crowd from the finance/B2B companies based there, and the inconvenience they cause by being there is directed at exactly the right people. Lower-level employees at banks may take the threat to their economic security as a personal one, but it's focused at the system that makes their current jobs the only remunerative ones they can find and hold.
The only time OWS has gotten it right is when they went to the Upper East Side, where truly wealthy people live.