Occupy Oakland Revisited

Occupy Oakland Revisited

It is a problem with me that I sometimes “connect the dots” between events inaccurately.  It is also true that sometimes I connect the dots between events, sometimes seemingly unrelated, totally accurately.

For example, as I have stated before, when Ronald Reagan began his “get government off the backs of business”, my brain whipped through all sorts of memories of the 1930’s such as those involving labor disputes and bank regulations being imposed on banks and mortgage houses.  My immediate thought after hearing Reagan was, “And who is going to get business off the backs of the people”?  I had connected those dots with total accuracy, as it turns out.

Well, in the middle of the night last night I began connecting more recent dots and came up with a disgusting conclusion.  Rather than giving the conclusion first, I’m going to explain the dots so the readers to this can draw their own conclusions as to whether mine is accurate or not.

This past August in our rather small city (by Los Angeles standards) of San Luis Obispo (SLO), CA there was a mail-in ballot measure to get rid of binding arbitration for the police and fire unions.  The people of SLO had voted in binding arbitration some 11 years ago, so it required a vote by the people to get rid of it.  Eleven years ago the proposal was on a regular ballot, so the unions had people on street corners with signs leading up to the election, and all over the city on the day of the election.  Also, 11 years ago the City Council was very supportive of its employees, and their unions. Time marches on.  Four of the five the City Council candidates this time around assured the unions that they would still be supportive, but shortly after being sworn in, three of them changed completely.  One City Councilman never supported the unions, so only one kept his word to the unions. 

By having a mail-in ballot over the month of August, there was no way the unions could mount a “street corner” campaign.  The unions did their best through TV and radio ads, plus all the other usual campaign methods such as direct mail.  The local paper, The Tribune, a McClatchy paper, was very anti-binding arbitration.  This was easily explained because their advertising is dependent on Chamber of Commerce approval, which was obviously not in evidence during the campaign.

At one point in this campaign, I was asked to fill in for the one City Council man who did not pull his support to the unions to be on a local radio show talk program.  I agreed, and one of the City Councilmen who did not support the unions was to be on at the same time.  For those of you who are not acquainted with my background, I have been involved in politics for 30 years.  The Councilman immediately began by stating that we could not be emotional about this issue; it was strictly numbers and numbers only that we had to deal with.  A standard Republican trick, by the way, is to confuse the issue with numbers no one can remember.  He used a couple of other ploys, like attempting to change the framing of the issue, and several others, all of which I was experienced at recognizing and countering.

Obviously the Councilman had been well coached by the local conservatives, even though we had no documentation that it was the Chamber of Commerce, we could see the pattern emerging.  And the unions lost the vote.  When the vote was tallied, the same conservative  Councilman proclaimed that, “Eleven years ago, the unions won the battle.  Today we won the war”!  

Since this was a local issue, I didn’t see any relation to the #OWS in New York at all.  But I had plenty of time yesterday to think about the fact that when the movement first started, the police officers were not in the least violent, and some would tell the protesters if they weren’t on duty, they would be there with them.  It wasn’t until the upper echelons of the police, in the white shirts, got on the scene and began making trouble.  There was the video of Anthony Bologna pepper spraying the isolated young women, and walking down the street indiscriminately pepper spraying mostly women, although one of his officers had to dodge the results of his itchy trigger finger.  Soon thereafter, Mayor Bloomberg began issuing orders to the police to arrest protesters, clear out the park, become aggressive.  Why did he do that?  It certainly wasn’t because the protesters were doing anything differently than they had been.  Those of us far away observing began to recognize that the protesters were making the 1% very nervous, and the 1% were putting pressure on Bloomberg to “do something”. 

The same scenario was happening all over the country.  Protests that had been peaceful now were turning violent, and the police were being blamed everywhere.  These were the same police that people were fighting for the police unions to keep their collective bargaining rights just months ago.   

What about this scenario?  Take an event that starts off with a peaceful protest, and with only the intent of bringing attention to the inordinate influence that money has on our political system.  We are the 99%, which is making the 1% with the money and the power very nervous.  The problem for the 1% then becomes how to turn this movement somehow to their advantage.  It would be very much to their advantage if they can destroy the public employee unions because it is only the public employee unions collectively that have the financial power to oppose Freedom Works and the entire Koch Machine.  How better to give the police a really bad name than to order them to arrest protesters for violating suddenly imposed curfews, clean out the parks the protesters were able to occupy legally and peacefully the day before, etc. 

Remember, it is not the police who suddenly come up with these ideas.  IT IS THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT!! This is dirty politics in action. They are using the police for their own nefarious ends, and thanks to the corporate media, they are getting away with it.  Imagine how people will respond to cutting collective bargaining for those “jack-booted thugs” now?  The image of the police is being smeared all over the country.  Perhaps in the big cities the police have become militarized and may be out of control, but on Main Street America, the police are still our friends, and relatives.  They are the ones who respond on Main Street when some elderly lady living alone hears someone trying to get in her back door, and she is frightened.  They respond and assure her that they have called Animal Control who will be there shortly to trap the raccoon and take it away.  They are the ones who track through feces and vomit to get to a mentally ill homeless person who is threatening anyone who is near, calms the person down, and takes him or her to the appropriate center for a cleaning up and treatment.

If the police continue to be denigrated, responsible people will choose another career. When salaries and pensions are cut to the extreme in the interests of balancing budgets, our police forces will be filled with people who are less educated and not well trained, and will still be understaffed.  When, which it will, crime rises to a point where the local police are not in control, and it becomes obvious that more police are needed, we have private companies ready, willing and eager to take on that role.  Blackwater, Inc. – Your friendly neighborhood public safety corporation.

Remember the G-8 summit in Seattle years ago when a group of “protesters” came in suddenly, all dressed alike, and totally disrupted the heretofore peaceful demonstrations by attacking the police.  It is not inconceivable to me that there aren’t shills in police units around the country now, such as the one in Oakland who lobbed the flashbang device into the small group surrounding the fallen Iraq veteran, deliberately trying for whatever reason to create trouble.

You think this is all paranoia?  What about Ohio, where the Republican Governor, Robert Kasich, gave himself the authority to dissolve city and county governments which are not functioning as he wants them to, and he can appoint one person to manage that city or county to his liking?  Do you think he wouldn’t hesitate to fire all of the police and hire a private corporation?  Dream on!  The only reason he hasn’t done it so far, is he probably recognizes that he can’t get away with it. Yet.

What to do about all of this?  Do not allow yourself to be diverted by the corporations to supposed malfeasance by the police.  Sure there are members of any police department who are irresponsible in their actions, but the majority, like everyone else, just wants to do a good job.  When they are ordered by the politicians to clear out a park, they are not given the reason why.  It is not up to the on line officers to question authority, but to carry out the orders from ‘on high’.  There are good reasons for this, but we don’t need to go into them here.  Keep focused on the 1% which is destroying this country by its obvious greedy power grab.  When I refer to the Koch Machine, this is my short hand for the entire Wall Street/Bank/Mortgage/Koch Brothers cabal.

Keep focused on what the majority of the public sector employees do for you, and support their reasonable union positions.  Make this support of unions known, and at this time in particular the public sector unions.  If your company or agency has a union, support it, go to the meetings and make your wishes known for responsible union actions.  The stronger the unions are in this country, the stronger the country.

Make sure you know the positions of those for whom you vote.  Look at their past records to determine if they can be trusted to deliver on what they say.  Find good candidates to run for office.  Being in office is a learning curve.  Start small on a local Board or Commission and work your way up. One doesn’t need a lot of background in say accounting to be in office.   Good common sense and a profound sense of justice are required.

Go to your nearest Occupy Wall Street protest.  If you see someone who is about to throw something at the police, sit or lie down.  This pinpoints for the police the perpetrator who will be the only one left standing, and gets you out of the way.

But be vigilant.  Go or speak where you can and where you are needed.  Stand up for justice.