Alpe d'Huez said:
I live in Portland, not Seattle. We are a large and diverse city, but the closer to the core you get, we're like Leningrad compared to Seattle. George Bush Sr. called Portland "Little Beirut" when people here protested the first Gulf war. We have an openly gay mayor who is a total patsy. The woman who is most likely to succeed him is an owner of a health food store chain. I'm telling you, we're left of San Francisco. That city has much more money, and the bourgeois class Rhum speaks of hardly exists here. People like Scott probably think of me as being center-left, most of you might. But in this city, I'm like Rush Limbaugh compared to most people.
As to the port-a-poties. First, the park did have public restroom, that was quickly overused and overflowed. The city fixed it, and then did put port-a-poties in. And they got overfilled. The city paid to have them cycled. The city also paid for extra police OT as there were fights and drugs and people ODing in the park. It ran up a huge bill - not including the now massive clean-up. Guess who's paying for it? And in case you weren't certain, just like many other cities in the US, Portland is flat broke, and by law cannot go into debt. The money is going to have to come from somewhere else.
I should also note that we're not Oakland. The police here didn't use tear gas, nothing like that. There were a handful of arrests, and two protesters and one police officer received minor injuries. That's it.
Look, I'm definitely part of the 99%, and I have no problem with protesting. But the occupy movement in my town went way beyond reason. It wasn't protesting anymore, it was obstinate and intransigent for a lost point. The people occupying were not representing the 99% and had not for weeks. Compounding that, they at this point were damaging their cause, any cause, and pushing themselves to their own 1%, and pushing the people in the general "left" away from them. It was doing more good for conservative causes than not.
If these people were wise, they'd follow similar paths to the Tea Party and repeatedly protest, march and find new ways to draw attention to their cause, without piissing everyone off who doesn't share their extreme mindset. Because that's exactly what was happening, even in this very liberal city.
My points were initially directed at your reaction to the protest and, in spite of my mistaken locality, my general impressions stand. I can imagine that, by the standards of Portlanders you so knowingly frame, that you would be perceived by some as the "Rush Limbaugh" of the community, though this is only because I know you are basically a conservative with a heart though, which is why I respect you. And why I'm not so prideful, nor arrogant enough to not admit when I've made errors in judgment, as I did regarding the details of what actually went on.
This is admittedly because of my ignorance over these specifics so thanks for correcting me. However, the general impression I get is one of beforehand intolerance to such a protest. I may be wrong, though this was my impression.
Basically, though, I'm perhaps more unperturbed by dirty and unpleasant controversy that rattles a certain type of society to the core by giving into an access to rebellion, when something just demands to be said and done. As in times like these. While I don't agree at all with the opinions of analysts like Friedmen I quoted from the NY Times above, who categorically dismissed the OWS protesters as either want-to-bes or irrelevant.
While it is a shame about the befouling of your beloved park, the bottom line is that financial capitalism and the banks have ruined today's democracy, set a horrendous paradigm for individual wealth and social cohesion, because of a conflict of interests between finance and the political establishment. This is why when the stock market collapsed, the public was called into to assume the onerous burden of saving the financial institutions, without question, as if by a moral imperative, because some banks "are just too big to fail."
No institution in a free-market, democratic society should be too big to fail. This represents a concentration of power that can only be unhealthy to that same free-market and democratic society. The public is beginning to wake up to this reality and this is why the protesters have relevance. Simply dismissing them because you don't like their methods, or look, or that they won't change the system, does not mean that their cause is entirely useless. For if it is, then our civilization really is a lost cause.
I was reading today in the newspaper an article about how the banks and financial transactions are international, whereas politics is still regional and what consequences this has for our daily lives. This is particularly devastating to the European Union in this moment.
At any rate, I would hope that there will be more protests so that perhaps we can at least get a Tobin tax, or any other measure to have some of the wealth generated by finance to be redirected into society, not all to tenuously by market forces, but social principle as a fiscal responsibility.
, but as for me, you suspect wrong.
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