American Action Network, the 501(c)(4) founded by former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin, just posted a new video tying the Occupy Wall Street movement to President Obama. Its titled “Rise of the Obamavilles.” Rush Limbaugh has been calling the Occupy movement “Obamavilles” for weeks now. My column from Monday did the same:
Occupy: to enter and stay in (a building) without authority and often forcibly, especially as a form of protest: the workers occupied the factory – The Oxford English Dictionary
“The sunshine protesters will leave,” a man only identifying himself as “Zonkers” (because of a felony marijuana conviction) told New York Magazine.
“The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle. … It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”
The “block party” Zonkers was referring to is the Occupy Wall Street encampment currently burrowed in at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. It seems that the movement, which has quite famously failed to articulate what exactly its participants want, is having some trouble keeping the peace among the 200-plus protesters who make up the supposedly leaderless collective.
This is quite a shocking development for a community whose very identity comes from “occupying” someone else’s property.
“This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort. It belongs to comfort,” sanitation group leader Lauren Digion tells a protester rifling through a pile looking for “his” sleeping bag.
Silly occupier, where did he get the idea he could claim possession of something just because he wanted it?
The residents who actually pay to live in lower Manhattan sure hope Zonkers is right about the Occupy Wall Street protest’s imminent decline.
“They are defecating on our doorsteps,” stay-at-home-mom Catherine Hughes, who lives a block from Zuccotti Park, told a Community Board meeting last week. “A lot of people are very frustrated. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of our kids.”
Hughes should just be thankful she lives in the Northeast, where the imminent arrival of winter provides hope for an end to the Occupy movement. The sunny California cities of Oakland and Los Angeles are not as lucky.
While the Occupy Wall Street protest has flatlined at around 200 overnighters, the Occupy LA protest has zoomed past 700 campers and is still growing. Further north, the Occupy Oakland protest has also outgrown its original City Hall site and has spread to another park near Lake Merritt.
Although Oakland police told protesters at the new site they would not allow tents like they have at City Hall, by morning the protesters, and their tents, were still there.
Back at City Hall, the original Occupy Oakland site has descended into anarchy. After occupiers pepper-sprayed a homeless man and beat him unconscious, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan sent protesters an eviction notice.
Citing an “increasing frequency of violence, assaults, threats and intimidation,” as well as a growing rat problem, the notice decreed, “no tents or overnight camping permitted.”
But Oakland officials have no idea when, or more importantly, how, police will enforce the order. One Oakland police officer told the San Jose Mercury News, that the tent city resembled something from “Lord of the Flies.”
He said it was “interesting for a group that claims to be against current civilization and rules to set up a far more oppressive society than our own.”
No one knows how many Occupy encampments there are nationwide, but every one of them is a living testament to President Obama’s failure to oversee an economic recovery.
During the Great Depression, tent cities of homeless people became know as Hoovervilles, to the embarrassment of one-term Republican President Herbert Hoover.
If the Occupy protest tent camps persist through this winter, Obama will be haunted by these Obamavilles straight through to the election next November.
