For weeks now the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle have been filled with venomous texts purporting to be news articles about #OccupyOakland, #OccupySanFrancisco and the movement in general (when they have noticed at all).
This morning I was shocked to see a front page headline that was neutral instead of being derogatory:
Big Challenges Ahead for Occupy Movement
.
And the writer, Joe Garofoli, actually said something reasonably accurate about the message of the movement:
Occupy spawned a worldwide movement through a provocative act -- physically occupying public space -- that gave voice to a widespread belief: The middle class American dream is slipping away because of broken political and economic systems that favor the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
Well thank you! I couldn't have said it better myself (perhaps MinistryOfTruth could have, but I digress). Compared to the vitriol that has come out of the Chronicle since the #Occupy movement began to pick up steam this is a shot of ambrosia.
Garofoli also listed other achievements of the Occupy movement:
-- Public support
-- Tapping into widespread frustration
-- Reaching young people, the lifeblood of any protest, who are deeply affected
-- Changing the national conversation
Someone from the mainstream media actually seems to have some sense of what's going on!
Another article, by John King and Matthai Kuruvila, entitled Occupy Rallies Held Across the State gave what appeared to be an unbiased overview of various #Occupy protests occuring all over California yesterday. It even mentioned #OccupyOakland's plans for a General Strike on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in the paper, in his weekly column, former mayor of San Francisco and former Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown weighed in on Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland, and it wasn't pretty:
The Lord must be really angry with Jean Quan.
How else can you explain how she went from being the #1 Oakland community activist to a symbol of the Wall Street police state?
And talk about handling a situation badly. First she leaves town, knowing full well that her first major test as mayor will happen any moment. Then she comes back and tries to act like she was out of the loop...
So now, Quan has the left made at her for the police action, the right mad at her for allowing campers to return, and everyone else wondering what the hell she's thinking.
My advice: Find some American Indians and get a rain dance.
So What About the Oakland Police Chief?
In another opinion column by Matier & Ross, they make it appear that Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan is openly disagreeing with his boss and is itching for more violence:
Jordan ... tells us that the decision to allow Occupy campers to return ... is going to "pose significant public safety hazard to citizens and police alike."
"If there is a call for service in that camp, if someone gets injured, it's going to be very difficult for police to respond." Jordan said.
"The crowd is going to be very hostile and aggressive towards police because they have been given carte blanche to be in camp and they really don't see us as coming to help."
Words fail me (well, not really, I'm still typing). The crowd is not going to be hostile because they've been given carte blanche, they're going to be hostile because
you m*f*ers arrested them without cause, teargassed them and nearly killed someone, and shot them with rubber bullets.
Really, why would that upset anyone?
If this man, and this kind of attitude, are not removed from the Oakland Police force, then there's going to be another, possibly even more violent, confrontation. You can just feel it in the tenor of his words and implied attitude.
Finally, I leave you all with something to ponder, a quote from a Berkeley student via another student, one of the #OccupyBerkeley protesters:
Sophomore Jenna Pinkham, who has been attending the protests, spoke to a student in her math class who declared: "Why would I want to occupy? I want to be one of the 1%." Mireille Nassif, a senior, gave a similarly telling impression of her classmates. "They come in to become corporate products rather than to be part of a local movement."
Now you know why the Berkeley campus has not arisen en masse to support the protests. Many of them believe they will be part of the one percent. Little do they know. Even at an elite university, it is doubtful that more than 10% become the 1%.
Perhaps this is why the Berkeley campus has not arisen en masse to support the protests. If some part of them believe they will be part of the one percent they are, at least statistically, mistaken. Even at an elite university, it is doubtful that more than 10% become the 1%.
10:44 AM PT: Well, the SF Chronicle hasn't completely changed its tune. Under "Parting Shots", where they have nominations for "Good Week" and "Bad Week", under "Bad Week" they list
Occupy Movement: The squalor and unruliness of the camps in SF and Oakland suggest the protesters represent the 1% who would tolerate such conditions.