Occupy This!

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

America’s Bill of Rights expresses no right of occupation, no right to take
over private property and no right to disregard federal, state or local
laws.

Yet, for more than two months, the rabble at the various Occupy
street-theater events have commandeered and occupied property and
disregarded the law with near impunity. But the behavior of the occupiers
has been so flagrantly lawless that even the progressive administrations
governing the jurisdictions in which the motley demonstrators usually
assemble have been forced to act to contain, and, in some cases, disband
them.

Despite the small numbers in their groups, the occupiers’ violations make a
major city’s weekend police blotter look more like an inventory of petty
misdemeanors.

In the New York original, Occupy Wall Street, the charges have included
rapes, sexual assaults, disorderly conduct, rioting, public lewdness, drugs,
felonious assault and obstructing governmental administration, weapons
possession, resisting arrest, assaults on police officers, obstructing
public building access, multiple episodes of criminal mischief, blocking
access to police precincts and blocking vehicular traffic.

The problems aren’t unique to New York.

Philadelphia’s occupiers have committed rapes, sexual assaults and criminal
trespass.

In Portland, Oregon, police arrested occupiers for terroristic threats,
threats of personal injuries and arson, drug possession/use and explosives
possession. There were also a number of drug overdoses.

In addition to an outbreak of tuberculosis in Occupy Atlanta’s scurvy camp,
arrests were made for obstructing traffic and disregard for public safety.

Burlington, Vermont, and San Diego occupiers committed murder and deadly
assaults, respectively, and Oakland occupiers were charged with murder,
vandalism, explosives possession and assaults on police officers.

At Occupy Madison, Wisconsin, a neighboring hotel was forced to provide late
night escorts for hotel employees to and from bus stops because of episodes
of public masturbation and other inappropriate behavior by street
protesters.

Things were a bit more orderly in Los Angeles where charges were limited to
multiple assaults with deadly weapons, and in the District of Columbia where
occupiers only invaded buildings and assaulted elderly women.

In San Francisco and Berkeley, California, the epicenter of the 1960s and
1970s anti-Vietnam war demonstrations emulated by the occupiers, charges
merely included gun possession, assaults on city workers and trespassing.
Clearly, San Francisco and Berkeley have lost their edge.

Similar problems have been reported in many other venues "hosting" the
occupiers, including, but not limited to Denver, Chicago, Fresno and abroad,
notably London in the United Kingdom.

These violations were detected and charges filed despite the efforts of the
occupiers to conceal from the police all crimes committed inside their
camps. Certainly many other violations went unreported.

For the most part American media have been very supportive of the occupiers
despite the fact that they’ve been organized and funded by unions and
radical groups. The multitude of arrests and criminal allegations have been
largely ignored by a national press that repeatedly and maliciously
misrepresented the peaceful, law-abiding Tea Party movement, calling the
latter kooks and racists among other charming epithets. By ignoring the
criminal episodes, the media is willfully covering up the lawlessness that
has come to define Occupy Wall Street.

At least the occupiers are doing good work. They are doing good work, aren’t
they? What, exactly, are they doing?

Other than garnering lots of positive press attention, not much, it seems.
In fact, they are devolving. Occupy Wall Street has turned a small New York
park into a malodorous slum. Period.

A local observer, Michael Goodwin, in the New York Post, views occupy Wall
Street as a civics lesson. He writes, ".the socialist-inspired movement with
a union face.is at a crossroads. The insistence that there are no leaders
and that everybody gets a say on everything is yielding a gridlock to make
Washington proud.

"Most protesters still can’t define their goals beyond ending capitalism and
making life more fair, which means they want other people’s money.

"’The "Lord of the Flies’ descent from utopia to petty power struggles, in
front of TV cameras, is a political-science lesson, not to mention
deliciously ironic."

Goodwin is right. The Occupy phenomenon is an excellent opportunity to
observe what all of America could look like if the radical left were ever
permitted to take over the entire country.

In his book, The Road to Serfdom, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich
Hayek wrote: "To weld together a closely coherent body of supporters, the
leader must appeal to a common human weakness.It seems to be easier for
people to agree on a negative program — on the hatred of an enemy, on the
envy of the better off — than on any positive task."

All negatives. No positives. The Occupy crowd provides ample proof of
Hayek’s wisdom.