Occupy Oakland

Unethical Quote of the Week: Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

“Passionate, organized hatred is the element missing in all that we do to try to change the world. Now is the time to spread hate, hatred for the rich.”

—-Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, a retired professor from Cal State East Bay, addressing a rally this weekend of the Occupy Oakland  group, which fought police in a pitched battle that ended with 400 arrests.

I said that the Occupy movement would end badly, and it is, not that it should have taken advanced psi-powers to divine that a protest based on ignorance, envy and anarchy with no practical and constructive proposals to offer would eventually end in violence, anger and ugliness. Hate is what it has come down to now, and the party and supporters of the President who came to office promising hope are now pinning their hopes on a sad movement fueled by hate. To say that the protests are also unethical is to flog the obvious. They have cost communities millions of dollars that will be made up in cut services; they have soiled parks and public places, they have provided a meeting place for thugs, vagrants, criminals, and worse ( an Occupier was arrested over the weekend for strangling his parents), and they have embodied a cultural rejection of personal responsibility.

Not to mention an escape from reality.“The fact that everyone now talks about the 99 percent, the 1 percent – that shows Occupy’s won,”  Carter Lavin, 23, of Oakland told the press. “The debate was about debt, not jobs. Now it’s about jobs.”

Sure, Carter. Continue reading →

Ethics Tales From The “Occupy” Movement

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

1. Integrity Check

"This week only: half-price on all chicken suits!"

Reports out of Occupy Wall Street, unconfirmed but apparently credible enough for New York’s Mayor Bloomberg to rely on them, suggest that the “Occupy” gang is refusing to report the various criminals in their midst, opting instead to protect the colony by ejecting and banishing them….and, of course, inflicting them on somebody else. Such wrongdoers range from simple thieves to sexual predators, or, as in Occupy Oakland,  the violent provocateurs who have seeded riots. They might not even be banished…just protected.

How ironic. The ethical rot in America’s institutions, from government to the business world, to religions and Hollywood, to athletic teams and academia, manifests itself by a progressive willingness to ignore misconduct, lawlessness, and unethical conduct among colleagues and others within the group, cementing a “them vs. us” mentality that encourages increasingly irresponsible conduct and erodes integrity. The so-called 99% have the same vulnerability to corruption as the 1% they revile. Continue reading →

Scott Olsen, The “Occupy” Movement and The Protest Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The critics of the various Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are hustling to defuse the backlash from an incident that took place this week in Oakland, where a confrontation between police and Occupy Oakland protesters not only led to many arrests, but also a severely injured protestor. Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen is hospitalized with a fractured skull as a result of being hit by a projectile directed by police, probably a tear gas canister.

In the age of YouTube, the various images of Olsen’s injury were quickly exploited by protest organizers, as should be expected and is entirely fair. All demonstrations and protests are ultimately about public relations: if the protesters manage to be viewed more sympathetically than the group they are protesting against, then they attract sympathy and support. They win. If the protesters become unsympathetic, then they lose. All intense demonstrations eventually become a game of chicken between demonstrators and the government’s law enforcement force, be it police or National Guard. The demonstrators refuse to clear out of an area where they do not have a right to be, either because of the lack of a permit, or because they are disrupting the public peace, safety and welfare. They will try to provoke police without appearing so violent, unruly or scary that they lose public support. The police (or National Guard) have a job to do—they also have their own physical safety to protect—and yet they have to avoid making martyrs out of the demonstrators by appearing too militaristic, and also to make sure that their efforts don’t evoke images of police state oppression. Continue reading →