Just read an article on a news site about yet another confrontation between police & protestors in the Occupy movement, this time at UC Davis campus. Police sprayed a group of sitting protestors with so much pepper spray that 1 person had to be taken to the hospital with chemical burns from it. In the last 2 weeks, I've seen footage and photos of police beating people with truncheons, setting off tear gas and noise bombs, shoving people & spraying them with stuff. In none of the videos have I seen protestors doing anything threatening towards the cops.
At the beginning of the week, I realized why this all looked so familiar. I recall the anti-war protests in the 60's & early 70's and cops behaving the same way. It's depressing to see nothing has changed in 40 years.That is why it makes me anxious when I see people with dogs and children by the tents and marching. The situation is too dangerous and volatile, the cops have shown no compunction at all about hitting women in the stomach, spraying old people and pregnant women with pepper spray and lobbing tear gas cannisters into crowds. In the first violent clash between police & protestors, the one in Oakland where an Iraq veteran was, there were people pushing a person in a wheelchair through the smoke to get to safety.
When I saw photos of the People's Library in the NYC Occupy encampment, I worried about all those books. And this week they were scooped up by city workers and thrown into the garbage as police cleared out the protestors tents & evicted them from the park they were in. There is something dark about destroying books, it's more than just the actual objects they are trashing, it harks back to barbaric times. And the US has invested so much in supposedly transforming "our" kind of democracy to other countries, that I wonder what their citizens think seeing our authorities acting very similar to theirs. The only difference is that US cops aren't using guns and tanks. Yet.
Obviously, the police are overreacting. And some of the mayors keep changing their minds on what the protestors can do, forcibly clearing them out one day, inviting them back the next. Are they really that confused or is it to keep the movement uncertain? To look at it cynically, if the cities would wait a little while, cold weather will drastically reduce the numbers. The protestors might wonder why they are freezing in a flimsy tent on cold cement while the one percent lounges by the fire at their ski lodges.
The lack of leaders and specific goals I think is part of the reason the powerful writes the movement off, anything that vague can't be bothered with. But part of the point of the Occupy movement is to call attention to income inequality, corruption and the elusiveness of the American dream, which used to be more possible with hard work and determination. The fact that people are now talking about these things is one of the successes of the whole movement. There's also a Zen feeling in the lack of leaders & list of demands, the protest just IS. The statement can exist indefinitely, the camp outs just a reminder.
It's remarkable to me that with each confrontation, the Occupy movement grows bigger, the marches expanding, the status quo looking more repugnant. One would think that government and businesses would start reforming, but that would require them to actually listen to the message of the movement, instead of dismissing it. Like most people who are following the protests, I wonder how it will all end? With a bang or a whimper?

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

                     
-Lt. Col. John McCrae (1918)