RESPONSE TO THE SACRAMENTO BEE’S SHAMEFUL OCT 18TH EDITORIAL ON OCCUPY SACRAMENTO
by Red Slider on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 5:31pm
The Sacramento Bee’s October 18th editorial, “Occupy Sacramento Wears Out Its Welcome” was a shameful exercise in manipulating information to its own benefit and a select few whose interests it has served above, all else, for many decades, the 1% of the Sacramento area. Less the Bee managers and editors are tempted to haul out their wallets (as did the City Coucil, with whom they collaborate, are want to do) to prove that they, too, belong to the 99%, let me remind them that the 1% is not merely some litmus test of wealth, but an identifier of self-interested power and control in which The Bee Newspaper has long presented itself as a more than ample case-in-point.
The Bee Editorial needs little exegesis and pretty much speaks for itself,
Sacramento Bee Editorial, October 18, 2011
Our Response:
Besides being the Bee’s version of good theater, this little hit piece certainly exposes the Bee as the voice of the 1%. Their total inability to even comprehend the nature of the Occupy actions around the nation, coupled by insane comparisons between an ordinance designed to affect enforced mobility on the homeless (itself, a draconian application of law couched in the euphemism of recreational “camping”) and the occupation of a public space as a necessary and essential enablement of the citizens Constitutional right “to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”. In this, the Constitution does not set a limit on the number of days or the number of successive hours such a right may be exercised. That does not mean they left such matters up to the states (for you “strict-constructions” the words aren’t there), but that they did not specify and therefore left it up to the exercise of the right to determine what continuity of hours and days was needed. As a number of Supreme Court decisions has made clear (most recently in 2009), the exercise of the Constitution’s 1st Amendment clauses is not to be weighed against the convenience of states and their jurisdictions or to be qualified by other applications or intents of laws that may come into conflict with that exercise. The 1st Amendment freedoms, being so fundamental to the practice and preservation of our democracy, trumps all other considerations. It is elemental and not at all persuaded by desires to control the homeless or some duress a park lawn may undergo during such exercise.
But the Bee’s assault on the right to peaceably assemble is much more than just a specious and faulty understanding of the U.S. Constitution. It is a transparent attempt to marginalize, trivialize and dismiss an undertaking in collaboration with the very 1% they would profess to distance themselves from. Their attempt to reduce the matter to some complaint about the clarity of demands and a litany of issues which have been stymied by the 1% for fifty years or more or, to deflect it into questions of who owns the public commons and to sowing fears of how the occupation might “spiral out of control” is little more than a clumsy attempt to mask their own part in the matter.
Like our city council, the Bee is desperately trying to control and disappear the public’s expression of discontent by co-opting the authority to define the movement themselves. As the vague illusion to serious yet unspecified issues, or to underscore the peacefulness without examining the reasons for that; or, reporting the matter as something that can be resolved with some accords about overnight storage, the Bee attempts to displace the movement’s definitions with its own. In doing so, the Bee, like the politicians and the police all seek to impose definitions upon the occupation in order to manage the discussion and manipulate the matter to a place where they can dismantle it and make it go away as quickly as possible. But the occupation of Sacramento is not a “bike race” or a “nazi demonstration” and will not so easily be dismissed. The occupiers have their own definitions of what they are doing, and after a few lessons provided by the the City Council and the Bee, are returning to their own sense of mission and method in their bid to restore this democracy and return it to its rightful owners from those who have stolen it.
If one wishes to better understand what the occupation regards of its mission and demands, rather than presuming the Bee’s or City Council bogus attempts to define it to serve their own interests, definition, here are two resources that will be of some value:
one should review the film of last night’s City Council meeting; http://sacramento.granicus.com… (item #22, ->1h31m56sec) for a view of some of the most articulate, clear and impassioned descriptions of what is meant by democracy and the right to assemble;
and a short essay by myself, “What is the Purpose & The Mission of Occupy America?
If you still have trouble understanding what the Occupy movement is about, we suggest you go down to Cesar Chavez park and see for yourself. First , spend some time contemplating the man for whom the park was named. After that, go and talk to some of the people there, visit with them for awhile. Not only do we think you will understand why “Sacramento, the city that puts the Constitution to bed promptly at 11pm” is not something to promote in a Bee editorial such as this one, but why it is a serious and shameful symptom of condition that a few very courageous people have assembled to correct and which the rest of us should join, support and be present if possible, and insure that it accomplishes what needs to be done. -
red slider, citizen,
Sacramento Occupy
_____________________
They bring a knife, you bring a camera;
The put one of yours in the hospital,
you put six of theirs on Utube.
