Reason Magazine, the Koch Brothers funded libertarian publication had a surprisingly fair and balanced look at the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Occupy Wall Street: Beyond the Caricatures
Outsiders are criticizing a heterodox movement that they choose not to understand.
It’s very easy to decree from afar that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators flooding Lower Manhattan right now are there for no other reason than to recite hackneyed leftist bombast. Indeed, without interviewing a single attendee, National Review editor Rich Lowry determined that the thousands who have flocked to Liberty Plaza in recent weeks are nothing more than a “woolly-headed horde” spouting “juvenile rabble.”
I strongly disagree. By and large, the folks I’ve spoken to have not come off as “woolly-headed” in the slightest. On Wednesday, for instance, I chatted with Jack Zwaan, a self-described “Tea Party Libertarian” and Ron Paul supporter who had flown in from Little Rock, Arkansas, to attend the demonstration. Zwaan wielded a humongous Gadsden flag—yes, the kind of flag commonly seen at Tea Party protests.
While he does say that it’s a largely “leftist” movement it’s one of the first articles I have seen that that admits Tea Party members are participating. He also said that Ron Paul had guardedly supported the movement.
“The banks got bailed out / we got sold out” is probably the most common chant I’ve heard at Liberty Plaza, and I think it best encapsulates the protest’s overriding sentiment: that regardless of political persuasion, people are sick and tired of a select few billionaires, in collusion with government, making decisions that hurt the rest of us behind closed conference-room doors. The feeling is fundamentally post-partisan. Everyone knows, on some level, that “Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit”—as one placard put it. And rampant police abuse has only confirmed that something’s got to give.
It was that very police abuse that got OWS the attention it was seeking. He quotes Ron Paul:
Then on Wednesday, hours before more protesters and journalists were beaten and pepper-sprayed by the NYPD, Paul elaborated on how he views the protests: “I think civil disobedience, if everyone knows what they’re doing, is a legitimate effort. It’s been done in this country for many grievances.”
And speaking of police abuse:
On Sunday evening, as I spoke with a cop on the sidewalk, some kind of “community affairs” officer approached me and asked if I was recording audio. I said yes and showed him the voice recorder I’d been holding in my hand. He instructed me to cease recording. I complied, then took out a notepad. The officer informed me that I was not allowed to write notes either. When I asked the officer issuing these instructions for his name, he refused to provide it; he was wearing a royal blue polo shirt with no name tag.
“The directive that you had to stop recording and taking notes was unlawful,” said Chris Dunn, an associate legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Not disclosing his name would likely be a violation of department rules.” Indeed, on Monday, when I asked another community affairs officer whether departmental code requires members of his division to provide their names upon request, he replied in the affirmative.
The OWS people have changed the conversation and the plutocrats are very afraid. Is that why Goldman Sachs gave several million dollars to the New York City police department? You bettcha.