I was inspired when I saw the video of Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas chewing out the New York City Police present at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration. I have also viewed videos of other ex-military and active duty personnel participating in demonstration not only in NYC, but also in Oakland and San Francisco and who can forget the footage about Scott Olsen who was hit in the head apparently by a rubber bullet which fractured his skull. Why is it that our military men and women endure privation, danger and hardship only to come home to find that the police and elected officials are not the friends they thought they were? Because they have a refined sense of duty, honor and obligation to do what is right, they choose to get involved in a demonstration that is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. My question is, how can the police use force so indiscriminately against peaceful citizens as we have seen in New York and Oakland?
When I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1961 at the age of eighteen years old, I took an oath to defend the United States Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic. I still take that oath seriously and have used it as a guide to professional and sometimes personal behavior. I also had drilled into me by drill instructors the right I to disobey any order I felt was illegal. Twenty years of my professional life was spent working in prisons and in the community and I also used this as a guide for professional behavior. Fortunately, like nearly all individuals I worked with, I found no need to protest what I felt was an illegal order, but I think I would have. What I find puzzling is that all police officers seem to believe that any means to meet the goal of removing protesters is legal. Surely many police officers do not believe that orders to remove protesters can be accomplished by use of clubs, pepper spray, or whatever is legal. I know that most find the task distasteful. So why don’t they speak up? Fear of losing their job? What is a job compared to a loss of honor? There is an Indian proverb that states, “Every man is the guardian of his own honor.” There are no exceptions to that concept; we have seen how Wall Street executives sold their honor for thirty pieces of silver. We cannot allow men and women who work in the criminal justice system to sink to their level. Honor stays with our name forever. Now back to my orginal thoughts.
In my opinion, the mayors of New York City, Oakland, and others are using ordinances originally designed to keep the “undesirables” out of sight, that is, the homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes. The OWS protesters hardly fit that description, although they are undesirable to greedy bankers, hedge fund managers, and others who think they can do anything to increase their wealth just because they are wealthy. In addition, the elected officials of any city really do not call the shots when it comes to economic decision making and take their cues from the informal power elite.
The Middletown Studies of 1924 and 1935 by Robert Stoughten Lynd and Helen Merrill Lynd revealed that the Republican business class made the economic decisions, in this case the Ball family of Muncie, Indiana. Floyd Hunter (1953) looked at the power structure of Atlanta and more or less validated the Lynd’s assertion that the power elite are the informal rulers of a city. M. Kent Jennings (1964) and Clarence Stone (1976) upheld the findings of his earlier colleagues. My point here is that the OWC protesters are getting too close to the real problem and the elite are afraid that they just might upset the economic and political apple cart, which of course, is what they hope to do.
Just as in an earlier post, I need to ask, “where are the intellectuals, where are the union members (although they seem to be waking up more and more), and where are the minorities who have been hit the hardest by the “Great Recession?” My hope is that everyone touched by the recession will in some way begin to take part in demonstrations. In those cities that have ordinances prohibiting singing, chanting, and so on (as does my home city of Grand Rapids, Michigan) attend city council meetings to protest the arbitrary use of the ordinances to prevent protest from occurring on the streets.
I have been away on a long planned trip coinciding with the birth of our new grandson and have been away for five weeks now. We plan to be home on November 7th and you can bet that we will be participating in planned activities that coincide with the Occupy Wall Street protests.
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