The End Of Overnight Camping By Occupy

The editorial that I found for this weeks assignment was featured in the Austin Statesman, on February 6, 2012. Instead of aggressively bashing the movement, which set up “camp” in downtown Austin back on October 6, 2011; it is more an informative piece about the Occupy Wall Street movement and how the people involved, were forced to leave City Hall and were not able to sleep/camp there overnight anymore.

The movement started on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District. Their reasoning was to, “Fight back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair economy that is foreclosing on our future”. (OccupyWallSt.org)

Unfortunately, as the author points out, and I am in total agreement, the people involved in the movement had simply wore out their welcome. In the grand scheme of things, Occupy is no longer able to do what they intended. They brought the discussion of the world financial crisis to the forefront of everybody’s mind, but then had no vision or organization set up to help show the individual taxpayer/voter what they could do to help solve the problems facing the world today. Instead, they put more of a strain on the City of Austin, (as well as hundreds of other cities), and the taxpayers, by costing us around $800,000.00 in maintaining police patrols and cleaning up after them. So I ask, how was that beneficial to their cause?

In conclusion, I feel that, if you are not doing anybody any good, you are costing taxpayer money that we don’t have, you are not organized in your stand and unable to give some kind of guidance or thought provoking discussion on how to fix what you are protesting about, then what good are you actually doing. I think it is time for Occupy to step back and reevaluate their stand and how best the time and resources could be spent. I wholeheartedly believe in the US Constitution and everybody’s First Amendment rights, but at least make a serious effort to make a change in the policy or procedure.