‘Occupy’ movement: Time to go home?

last updated 8 January 2015

Occupy Wall Street is overstaying its welcome, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com. Now almost two months old, the movement has begun to spawn “credibility-damaging incidents” in cities across the country—accusations of sexual assault in New York and Cleveland, an unexplained death in Oklahoma City, and violent clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, Calif. As violent incidents mount, and residents and businesses in various downtowns complain about public urination, filth, and noise, OWS is losing the support of the 99 percent it claims to represent. Only 30 percent of Americans now support the protests, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. The movement had better control its extreme elements, said Joel Connelly in SeattlePI.com. OWS has successfully awoken Middle America to the “real issue of wealth disparity and Wall Street greed.” It would be a shame if that message were undermined by a “small, noisy minority” of “anarchists, show-offs, [and] those just mad at the world.”

This violence isn’t merely the work of “a few bad apples,” said Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. Incoherent from its start, the movement is now being driven by a vanguard of self-proclaimed socialists and anarchists who reject capitalism outright, and are acting like “British soccer thugs” in an attempt to overturn the system. Protesters in Oakland set fire to stores, threw concrete blocks at cops, and even declared a “general strike” to “stop the flow of capital” at the city port. It’s time for the cops to break up the party, said NationalReview.com in an editorial, and they should start with “the living, breathing blight” at Zuccotti Park near Wall Street. Sure, the occupiers have a right to peaceably protest—but during the day, not in tent cities set up in violation of law and common decency. The protesters must go home.

Or they can simply take a leaf out of the Tea Party’s book, said Froma Harrop in The Providence Journal. After starting off with unruly protests dominated by their more extreme elements, the Tea Partiers got smart, and organized into a powerful political movement. OWS has already made its point about our political system being rigged in favor of the wealthy and corporations; rather than descend into increasingly ugly confrontations with cops and city officials, OWS should “declare victory,” fold up the tents, and start transforming itself into a grassroots movement with real political ambition. “Time to get off the lawn and go online.”