In New York City, the Occupy Wall Street folks are not happy. They’ve been occupying a privately-owned park for some time now, and the park’s owner has gone along with it. But now, they’ve had enough. They want to send in a professional cleaning crew to the park, and have asked the demonstrators to clear out long enough for the cleaners to do their work. Then, once they’re done, the protesters will be allowed back — but with some conditions. They can’t camp out in the park any more, and need to stop trashing it.
In response, the OWS folks — along with the ACLU — have put out a call for help. They intend to refuse to leave, and want folks to show up to rally to resist the police-enforced eviction notice.
So, in other words, the OWS people, in their outrage at the Wall Street sorts, took over private property that didn’t belong to the people they’re mad at. The owner went along with it for a while, then said “look, you’re destroying my property. You don’t have to clean up after yourself, but you gotta let me at least pick up your messes and stop trashing it so badly.” But instead the OWS has essentially taken the private property for their own use, are attacking the owner, and are insisting on their right to take from him for their own purposes, without compensation, purely because their cause is so just. Oh, and they don’t have to clean up the messes they make — that’s someone else’s responsibility.
Really, folks — as tempting as it is, do NOT read too much into this. This is in no way symbolic or representative of the bigger picture, and in no way gives us insights into their mindset and philosophy and general attitude.
And for god’s sake, don’t even for a moment bring up how the Tea Party always got their permits, never confronted the police, and left their assembly places cleaner than they found them.
Update: As Chico noted, the protesters won a reprieve by agreeing to clean up after themselves. Towards that end, they have obtained several high-pressure washers. The park in question has no water supply, of course.
So add to things one should not read into too deeply is how they only agreed to clean up after themselves under duress, and even then did it utterly incompetently.
