Like scattered wildfires flaring up all over the nation, the Occupy Wall Street movement will be hard to extinguish because of its decentralized nature.
In a nationwide effort over the past week, police units dismantled Occupy encampments at UC Berkeley, downtown Oakland, San Diego, Albany, New York, Denver, Colorado, Portland, Oregon, Salt Lake City, Utah and other locations.
Police use excessive force against peaceful, unarmed protesters at UC Berkeley, where 39 people, including students and faculty, were arrested following a brutal crackdown by police on Nov. 9 (just check out the videos on YouTube).
On separate occasions at the Occupy Oakland encampment, Iraq War veteran Kayvan Sabeghi was beaten by police on Nov. 3 and veteran Scott Olsen was sent to the hospital with a skull fracture after police (comprised of over a dozen different forces from surrounding jurisdictions) fired tear gas and projectiles at demonstrators on Oct. 25.
These acts just adds fodder to the fires. The people will keep coming back, as was the case with the massive display of solidarity when people shut down the Port of Oakland and held a citywide general strike on Nov. 2 in reaction to the police’s excessive use of force the week before.
With more general strikes likely to come, and occupiers refusing to back down, we may be going down a path not seen before, where martial law could be around the corner if enough people are willing to civilly disobey by refusing to be evicted from public spaces.
Many people, however, still question what the Occupy Wall Street movement is all about, disregarding the demonstrations as trivial or meaningless. Aside from the brute force of the law (police), this attitude is what the one percent is relying on. In fact, they have been relying on people’s apathy toward national affairs for years, as they continued to amass their wealth.
Now that more people, especially the youth, are beginning to wake up and ‘join hands’ with domestic and international movements against corporate corruption, the one-percenters are scared.
What else could have provoked such a violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations?
