2 • The Southwest Portland Post
EDITORIAL
December 2011
It’s important for the Occupy Movement to stay peaceful
OPEN FORUM
By Wim Laven
There is an old adage for journalism:
If it bleeds, it leads; we are reminded of
this sentiment regularly.
Earlier this year I wrote about our
need to see Osama bin Laden’s body;
the thirst for blood was alive and well
after Muammar Gaddafi was killed as
well. It is important to avoid such a
reaction with the nonviolent Occupy
Movement.
On October 25th images of police in
gas masks, armed with tear-gas, vio-
lently dispersing a crowd in Oakland
California, went viral.
Scott Olson, Veterans for Peace, was
critically injured by a canister that
struck him in the face and a subsequent
flash grenade appears (very obviously
in my opinion) to have been intention-
ally thrown into the group of protesters
coming to his aid.
The images are disturbing, graphic
and upsetting; resist the urge to fixate
on the violence, but don’t ignore it. On
November 2nd, the people showed
their solidarity and held a general strike
and marched to the port of Oakland.
But, by midnight, the coverage had
shifted; the interest was no longer the
thousands of people who peacefully
walked. It had turned to the bonfires,
destruction and vandalism, and the
renewed conflict with the police.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously used
American bloodlust to garner attention
for the African American Civil Rights
Movement. The images of peaceful peo-
ple—attacked by dogs and hoses turned
on them—helped awaken people who
didn’t believe things were “that bad.”
It was important to show the violence
of inequality; it was important to shock
people into action. The struggle for civil
rights showed the struggle between the
oppressed and the oppressor; it was
graphic and clear.
Many people may not have under-
stood the painful sting of being told,
“move to the back of the bus,” or “Not
Allowed Here,” but the ferocious im-
ages of violence weren’t something
people were merely “whining about.”
Gandhi didn’t have the advantage
of ubiquitous cell phone pictures and
film, but he took advantage of all the
press he could get. He knew: the more
real the violence directed against the
nonviolent, the stronger the voice of
opposition.
The world paid little attention to the
challenge to the Salt Tax—it was easy
to ignore such a “modest tax”—but,
when Webb Miller described “they
went down like ten-pins,” it was too
difficult for the world to ignore.
“From where I stood I heard the
sickening whacks of the clubs on un-
protected skulls,” wrote Miller. “The
waiting crowd of watchers groaned and
sucked in their breaths in sympathetic
pain at every blow. Those struck down
fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing
in pain with fractured skulls or broken
shoulders.”
The Occupy Movement has many
parallels. After all, the challenge many
are making is that occupiers are lazy
whiners. Others say: if you don’t like
the banks—don’t use them, and if you
don’t like the corporations—don’t buy
their products and services (I suppose
the Indians didn’t need salt either).
But many are changing their minds
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and paying attention, because violent
responses to nonviolent resistance have
always called to the collective human
consciousness. At our cores we know:
whatever the problem, violence is never the
solution.
The Occupation is about peace and
social justice. In my mind it is all about
the question of equality. The Declara-
tion says: all men are created equal,
and have the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.
This is the Declaration of Indepen-
dence; the United States of America
was built on equality—not a healthy
economy (read corporate profits).
Occupy Wall Street is only exposing
this failure; people want to work, and
don’t want to have to make tough choic-
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Its about what we can do,
not what we can’t.
es about things like whether to pay for
rent or health insurance or groceries…
I really hope that people can stay
committed to the nonviolent struggle
that is the Occupy Movement. Change
does not come easy (the Montgomery
Bus Boycott took 381 days!), and it does
not come without sacrifice.
At this point, however, it is something
the world needs. “America Shows Its
Soul” reads the cover of The Hindu
Magazine in Delhi.
This is a year of revolution—any-
thing is possible—and with nonviolent
struggle the voice is the loudest. I hope
the country rediscovers its democratic
voice; we only passed the Voting Act in
1965, in response to the long struggle
(Continued on Page 4)
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