Occupy Elections

I was talking to a great friend yesterday about the Occupy movement. She is a veteran demonstrator since the Vietnam war and anti nuke demonstrations of the 70's and 80's. She has been hauled off to jail from numerous demonstrations. She has marched and voiced her opinion for about 40 years. She also votes in every election. When I was talking to her I mentioned about how the press generally refers to the Occupy movement as an anarchist group of lazy spoiled parasites or something similar. She responded with a description of an organizing and planning meeting for the Occupy Oakland group.

The group makes all its decisions by consensus according to her. She described a meeting with about 1400 people present that was making plans for a future demonstration. Everything was put to a vote after the discussions were finished. They elected their platform for what to do and say as well as when and where. Each point was put to the vote of the entire group.

That does not sound very anarchistic to me. It sounds more like true democracy in action. Like the kind of democracy this country was founded on. Our founding fathers were considered radicals and called other names just like these Occupy members are being called names all the time in the media. The differences between the portrayal of the Occupy movement by the media and the reality of who they are and how they operate is astounding. Occupy members are generally well educated, hard working people who believe in the principles of our founding fathers and who vote regularly. Many of them are veterans of service in the military and professionals in many fields. They want to save this country not tear it down.

The media continues to try to spin them as anti-American spoiled idiots. Maybe the media should investigate their stories a little bit instead of just spouting politically motivated smear campaigns like they are doing. Occupy members will vote in future elections and there are lots of members. The few instances of violence associated with the Occupy movement are condemned by the vast majority of members. It would not surprise me at all if many of the violent acts were actually perpetrated by planted undercover anti-Occupy infiltrators as well as by individuals that just like to riot for any reason and who took advantage of the demonstration to get their kicks. I would like to see the arrests compared to other unrelated riots to see how many were common names in all of the riots.

The Oakland General strike is a good example of this. There were thousands of demonstrators marching most of the day with no violence but a few dozen individuals started violence after the main General Strike was over. The majority of the media only wanted to cover the small violent group. Several undercover police were photographed during the demonstration and were later identified. I seriously doubt if they were the only infiltrators present and active.

In the end it will come down to elections. The media is making a mistake thinking the Occupy members do not vote. They do vote and will vote in the future.