How we hear from a my old home town and Occupy NOLA (for those you non NOLA types, that is a abbreviation of New Orleans LA. From The Nooner, a daily email from The Hayride.
Wasted Away In Obamaville
Tom Bonnette on Sunday, November 20, 2011
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” –Thomas Jefferson
You’ve seen them on television, proclaiming to be the voice of the 99-percent linked in opposition to the economic oppression the wealthiest one-percent is inflicting on our society. Those who stand in front of television cameras speak in platitudes that decry profit over people and greedy corporations extracting wealth from ordinary folks.
Not all of the demonstrators are anxious to leap in front of a television camera, however, so I was curious who the rank-and-file protestors are and how deeply they have thought through the movement that they have joined.
A recent sojourn to the encampment at Duncan Plaza, across from New Orleans City Hall, revealed the intellectual desert that exists in Occupy NOLA and how useful idiots are acting as foot soldiers in a movement they don’t really understand.
To any Occupiers that have stumbled upon this blog and think I am taking a cheap shot at them by referring to them as “useful idiots,” understand that I use the term as it relates to the
historical context of young idealists who allow themselves to manipulate by people who want to seize power for their own ends.
The term dates back to Bolshevik times, in which students supported the rise of Vladimir Lenin without understanding that they would be among the first to be disposed of when the revolution was complete. Much the same is happening here, I fear. I mean no disrespect with the term.
Okay, maybe a little. Call it tough love, hippies.
There is an eclectic mix of protestors at Occupy NOLA, but most that I encountered were 20-something, mostly white, transients who describe themselves as anarchists and put the welfare of the collective above individual rights.
You mean these places are not filled with Mr and Mrs John Q Public. People oppressed by the man. Not filled with middle class middle aged salt of the earth types just oppressed by the 1%. Who would have thunk it?
The right of the collective is a central theme and it’s something that I’ll come back to later in this post.
These are drifters who move around the country, sleeping where they can and often relying on handouts for sustenance. If they weren’t at Occupy New Orleans, they might be found at a homeless shelter or under a bridge. There are those that have a criminal history that includes violent crimes.
It should be noted that of the dozen or so I spoke with, only two were from Louisiana. More often than not, they called places thousands of miles away home. I even met one from Hawaii.
This video is indicative of the life-style that many of the occupiers lead....
...For those who might think the occupiers demonstrating across the country are simply grass-roots protesters in the vein of the tea party movement, you’re mistaken. It’s a well-financed, top-down movement with ties to leftist billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Big Labor and a hodgepodge of anti-capitalist interests.
Stephen Lerner of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) laid out plans weeks before the first Occupy protests of the “spectacular things planned in Boston and New York” among many other American cities for a movement in the street to “create a crisis for the super-rich.”
Does the term rent-a-mob come to mind.
Now just curious. If the TEA Party was back by these groups would it escape notice of Chris Matthews, the New York Times, etc.
Fringe elements in this country that are supporting the Occupy Wall Street include the Communist Party USA and the American Nazi Party. Even Louisiana’s favorite Nazi, David Duke, has lent his support to the movement.
Hello Jesse Jackson...oh wait, he's as anti-Semitic as the Nazi's. Well Al Sharpton...Let me stop the count while I'm ahead.
As I interviewed the New Orleans occupiers, I didn’t want to be confrontational or challenge them too much. I wanted to get into their heads and understand how deeply they thought about what the movement is advocating...
...While the Occupiers have an abstract understanding of the freedom and equality that is their birthright, their argument is missing a key ingredient. ..What’s missing is their fidelity to individual rights above collective rights.
The most in-depth conversation I had was with an occupier from Wisconsin named Chad...He is a sincere man and a nice person, but, sadly incorrect in his beliefs that collective rights and individual rights can equally co-exist. They can’t. History teaches that the collective always consumes the individual and a lot of individuals end up in mass graves because they were a drag on the collective. He said that things could be different this time.
I explained to him about Karl Marx’s vision of the New Man that never materialized and instead led to the murder of millions. The most astonishing thing he said was, “Marx wasn’t radical enough, because he only dealt with the economy and not with the true nature of our being.”
I recall these words, "We Are The People We've Been Waiting For!"...oh yea, B Hussein Obama in Chicago, November 2008.
...With all this said, I do feel a twinge of sadness for these useful idiots. It is a seductive argument they make and, who knows, as a younger man I might have been sucked in. I might have, but I doubt it.
Good article all in all and well worth a few minutes. Also these videos give you a taste of the useful idiots out there.
Now this kinda pisses me off.
Retired Pa. cop arrested at Occupy demonstration
Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis was dressed in full uniform
By Stephanie Farr
The Philadelphia Daily News
NEW YORK — In full uniform and with his head held high, a retired Philadelphia police captain was arrested in New York yesterday while participating in an Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
Ray Lewis — who left the Philadelphia department in 2004 after serving as captain of the 25th Police District, headquartered at Front and Westmoreland streets — reportedly was among more than 170 protesters who were arrested.
Several representatives with the NYPD's public-information office said they could not confirm Lewis' arrest because there were so many people taken into custody who had not yet been processed.
The arrests and demonstrations came on the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Demonstrations raged across the country yesterday as part of a "national day of action."
Chanting "All day, all week, shut down Wall Street!" more than 1,000 demonstrators gathered near the New York Stock Exchange and staged sit-ins at several intersections.
Helmeted police broke up some of the clusters, but most of the crowd reassembled in Zuccotti Park, where the encampment that served as the unofficial headquarters of the Occupy movement was broken up by police earlier this week in an early-morning raid. Protesters later streamed toward the Brooklyn Bridge, where dozens more were arrested.
Lewis joined the protest at Zuccotti Park in his uniform Tuesday night, according to the New York Observer.
In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday, Lewis said that police are "just workers for the 1 percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited."
"They're trying to get me arrested, and I may disappear, OK," Lewis said. "But as soon as I get out of jail, I'll be right back here."
In photos posted to Twitter yesterday morning, Lewis is seen at the protest holding up an orange sign that read "NYPD Don't Be Wall Street Mercenaries."...
My friend Darren made a good point that people in uniform are held to a higher standard. And one thing we've always been told is you don't show your politics while in uniform. I had more than a few issues with B Hussein Obama while I was in the US Army Reserve but while I was in my uniform he was the Commander-in-Chief. Period. I don't go to TEA Party rallies in my current uniform because my agency takes no position and a presence of a uniformed officer implies it does. Suffice to say Captain, you had no business there while in uniform. Take it off and protest all you want.
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