The Hawk's Guide to Occupations

Today's view from the ground: New York, NY

One of my greatest loves of science is its ability to name things. Knowing the terminology of politics makes me feel how I imagined scientists to feel when I was a child. They could point at something magically new and give a Latin definition for it along with its commonalities with the dozens of other things out there just like it. I thought people like that were incredibly wise and steadily at peace. I was half right.

I have the ability when it comes to politics. I was well educated in all the different results of people coexisting and eventually attempting to dominate each other. So it was with great frustration that I completely failed to express how I feel about the Occupy movement until recently.

Despite my proximity to the protest, I haven't been all that involved. However, from my gatherings at work and elsewhere in communities of really involved people, I may be more involved than some. I spoke to doctors about the fundamentals of street medicine as practiced during protests, I spread the word of the movement to groups that were previously ignorant of it, and I lent what support I could to actual demonstrations without sacrificing my job and maybe going to jail. So it's okay to feel something. Here it is.

In New York, this has made everyone look bad. If we liked the protesters, we thought they would stay in Zucotti Park longer and be able to articulate our needs better. If we liked the police (by which I mean general opposition to the protesters as well), we expected this to be over a long time ago. If we liked or were the 1%, the 1% do kind of look creepier now. And if anyone left on Planet Earth still likes mass media news, Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly are the last ones left standing, so everyone may as well be as funny as them.

I liked the protesters. I didn't need to go to a leftastic graduate school to see they had some very good points and we need major changes. The financial world had repercussions throughout the world that it shouldn't have had, given how awful it was being to the real world. The future was growing the wrong way and then it stopped growing. Everyone with a bright idea for the future, far and near, has had it darkened a little by how much money mattered and continues to matter. This isn't just climate change alarmists. This is everyone. This is even the gas and oil industry. We are chasing the wrong dream.

I liked how most of the protesters were saying it. They were being observable and observant. After the initial dislike of the protesters by locals and businesses, the former died away and the latter was exacerbated by the ne'er-do-wells who end up everywhere. A lot of strong protest participants (not leaders, as they make attempts to have no leaders) were kind and peaceful although orthodox to their cause to the point of defiance. And let's do away with the exaggerations of the press. New Yorkers weren't terrified of these people. Everyone I talked to about this, from doormen to deans, said "They have good ideas, but. . ." Let's stop right there and admire that. It doesn't have to be "I agree with them" or "I like their ideas." How many ideas these days are good even when expressed from the absurdity of a tent city in lower Manhattan? Even if the protesters were histrionic at times, remember Socrates. People who really believe in good ideas are occasionally prepared to suffer for them.

I like police. They're good people. Anyone willing to put their time in to protect other people's lives and livelihoods with force and responsibility is worth what their paid or more. I work closely with police a lot. I speak their language and I've heard the dreams. As my friend said today, another 99% to consider are the 99% of police who are decent guys. If we really want to yell at the right people, they're usually not cops. This is from someone who has been struck by cops.

Raids of "military precision" like the ones on Tuesday are not engineered by a bunch of guys in blue uniforms with a phone in one hand and a hard-earned beer in the other. The ones who command the police are the ones who can't hear the shouting but still get scared of it. They are the ones who make policy. Although I would never obey an order to beat non-violent protesters, I've never had to make that call for real. I chose a profession that would never involve that choice. What was the first thing I learned from an officer? "The average police shoots his gun zero times in action." The numbers are nearly the same for tear gas and batons.

Police screwed up, first due to a lack of clear orders and second due to an overabundance of them. Several have been and will be punished, some for good reasons. And fortunately, most people aren't throwing rocks and yelling "pig," even among the ones who were being arrested or driven off. The police as a whole were embarrassed, because the entity of law enforcement acted embarrassingly. They tolerated some but not all, meaning they bent and didn't break. The powers that be could have uprooted these occupiers with a backhoe two months ago. They didn't. They were stumped.

This confusion was part of the mystique veiling Occupy Wall Street. Another part was the protesters' dedication. Everyone knew that no one there was well-equipped for an urban winter spent outdoors and felt they were valorous for that. And, of course, they had good ideas. Now, just like in a stressful interview, I will turn those strengths into weaknesses.

The questions outnumber the answers offered by the occupiers. Their ideas were popular but the methods were not. A great memory has imbued this nation with a great disapproval of anarchy, which put us off the partial solutions offered by a people without a leader or a party. A team big enough to tackle real change in generall-assembly fashion will always have dissention, a point unfortunately proven by the small enclave of protesters in Zuccotti Park. With reports of theft and rape being confirmed, the group was unable to be sanitary and respectful - in some cases decent - in a normally clean and polite part of New York, leads us to weakness #2.

The location was chosen for its visibility and not its practicality. Open-air festivals don't happen on concrete with gas fumes for a reason; there were more environmental health problems valiantly beaten back by the street medics in Zuccotti Park than there would have been in a field in Vermont at the same temperature. Even outside the city, the camp would have been Valley Forge by Black Friday. No one would have tolerated that.

Strategically, a movement needing to defend itself - with violence or without - should probably not be easily surrounded, a point well made by the occupation chronicled here. The park itself was not part of a good plan; occupiers admit it. Meanwhile, the drama that made it fascinating became its undoing in the shadow of people's dark sides. It also made it physically injurious to good people on both sides of the barriers standing up for what they believe in. Those condition make for valiant actions but horrible wars.

Now, we arrive at the ideas. As we already established, a lot of us feel cheated out of our dreams. A lot of the people reminding us of that were the people with the means of achieving dreams (maybe not theirs). I witnessed a scuffle in the 125th Street subway station today between a young occupier and a large man. I did not hear the beginning of the argument, but once it was being broken up, I heard the large man yelling "We got enough sh*t up here, we don't need your sh*t up here." Harlem has sympathy for occupiers of downtown, but not for white rich kids' nonsense on their own ground. Harlem was created by an occupation, one that took a lot of blood, money, and patience. The new guys are amateurs. Yes, it's hard to be a white college graduate these days, but still not as hard as other parts of the city.

Even if we are in the 99% (which, for your interest, is defined as a person with an annual income of less than $506,553), we don't like losing more of the things we own. Even if weren't the targets, the idea of a line over which you are a worse person does not sit well in the American mind, especially when the line can move with something as mercurial as money. A life without a home or possessions, as exemplified by the occupiers, is not appealing to people doing it all the time, let alone the rest of us. Social change is fine, political change is great, but this one would be financial. Most people don't like anyone suggesting we mess with finances. Even the 60s didn't get that far. Most of those protesters became lawyers and businessmen.

I can't name the politics of this movement. To do so would weaken it, as what it represents in all of us is what makes it special. It was the people who know and fear the politics that destroyed this incarnation of a good idea just as the police and sanitation workers destroyed the library in Zuccotti Park two days ago. The shame of this situation is that it leaves everyone in disagreement and disturbance about the one thing we knew. Change is needed. Change should be coming. We should be better.

That's the view from the ground.