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I, as have many of us, have been following the various #Occupy efforts with some interest. News coverage asking the plaintive whine "but what do they WANT?" combined with all the various attempts to make it all just a bunch of DFHs, druggies, and so on. (Rather defeated when even the Washington Post has articles like yesterday (Wednesday, November 16) where they lede with an admission that maybe the #Occupy folks did have some points in mind after all):
The movement began as a protest of major economic and political issues, but lately the most divisive issue has become the protests themselves. The Occupy Wall Street encampments that formed across the country to spotlight crimes committed on Wall Street have become rife with problems of their own. There are sanitation hazards and drug overdoses, even occasional deaths and sexual assaults.So, in this one article, the Post manages to paint the original effort as valid but now has lost its way. In the overall online world there is an oft seen type of commenter known as a Concern Troll. That quoted paragraph from the Post seems to fit the definition to a tee.
Let's examine this a bit though. One of the themes of people like Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo as well as many other mayors and governors around the country is how things are so bad economically that the states must cut back in so many services, laying off teachers, first responders, cutting Medicaid eligibility, rolling back unemployment benefits, and generally destroying both the social safety net and wages and benefits for state workers. Yet here it is, New York City can incur millions of dollars in overtime costs going after unarmed, mostly peaceful protestors (according to this from WNYC it was over $5M by late October), yet city agencies are scrambling for funds:
The council’s concern over the issue comes as city agencies are scrambling to find ways to cut 2 percent of their current fiscal year budget and six percent in the next fiscal year. Those rollbacks are expected to help the city save $2 billion dollars overall.As of this past Monday, Oakland had spent $2.4M dealing with Occupy Oakland and Portland, OR had spent $450K just for this past weekend's activities. Cincinnati has spent $128K in overtime. Jon Walker at FDL Action also asked yesterday where the money is coming from for these police actions.
