By Mickey Friedman
November 7, 2011
This Sunday morning, after an hour of serious shoveling, I was able to get my car to Fuel for my Sunday latte.
My deepest sympathies to our Great Barrington pear trees which fell overnight, victim of our premature nor’easter. And an apology to those who said the trees needed to be replaced. Nature voted with you. And it’s time to pick more wisely. Maybe trees with no leaves and no limbs.
Great Barrington Pear Trees vs October Snow Storm - Photo: Hayley Weller © 2011
Anyway, this was one of those deadline-approaching-mornings when I had absolutely no idea what to write about. But lucky for me, the Berkshire Eagle was handy. I began reading in the Entertainment Section about my friend, local potter Daniel Bellow. According to Eagle writer Jeremy Goodwin, Bellow’s decision to replace writing editorials for the Eagle for making beautiful porcelain pottery, was motivated “by a sense of the newspaper industry’s decline.”
Jeremy’s words made sense. So naturally I turned to the Opinion page to read the morning’s editorial for an up-to-date status report on Daniel’s replacement. For some reason, the Eagle never credits its editorial writers so I don’t know who’s responsible for some of this silliness.
The Eagle decided to tackle the Occupy movement and to make some broad points about American politics and American protest. Beginning with this powerful pronouncement: “The irony in an Iraq War veteran being injured in an anti-Wall Street protest last week is both obvious and cruel.”
This sounds like it makes sense. But what irony? We have mistreated our Iraq War soldiers from the very beginning: sending them on a stupefyingly impossible mission from Day One. Refusing to give them properly armored personnel carriers or adequate bulletproof vests. We’ve allowed military contractors to improperly house and feed them. When they quite naturally developed Post-Traumatic Stress from being sent on an impossible mission, we tried to pretend they were just malingering.
We have never taken care of them. Or their families. We’ve ignored the fact that our soldiers commit suicide in horrifying numbers. And yet politicians and Presidents of both parties, wrapping themselves in false patriotism, have shamelessly used and abused them, showering them with praise as they cut veterans’ benefits.
Chart can be found in "Losing The Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide" by Dr. Margaret Harrell and Nancy Berglass - www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_LosingTheBattle_HarrellBerglass.pdf
That an Iraq War Vet was seriously injured at Occupy Oakland, because he knows something is desperately wrong with our democracy, is just business at usual. We have all of us put them in the line of fire year after year after year. And tear gas canisters, and rubber bullets are probably an improvement over the ever-present IEDs none of us want to think about. There is no irony here. Only the profound truth that our servicemen and women are the 99%. And some of them know it. And won’t take it anymore.
The Eagle continues: “An ugly 1960s-era vibe has grown in the Occupy protest camps in recent weeks.” What 60s vibe is he talking about? Did someone take some bad acid? Then this: “Protesters and police accuse each other of triggering violence, but whatever the cause, bloodshed results. America doesn’t need another Kent State massacre. Protesters must obey laws and police must refrain from overreacting if they don’t.”
The great fallback position of lazy journalists: blame everybody equally. In the name of objectivity. With no evidence. There is significant eyewitness testimony at many Occupy sites of a continuing, successful commitment to non-violence. As someone who lived through the 1960s and participated in demonstrations across the country, it is patently ridiculous to equate violence coming from a few mentally-unbalanced demonstrators or from undercover police and agent provocateurs with the violent response of heavily armed, frightened riot police, or National Guardsmen acting under orders from those above.
And doubly pathetic to equate the hapless, unarmed students of Kent State University with the National Guard armed with automatic M1 rifles firing into a crowd, killing four and wounding nine. Yes, some people threw rocks and set fires in Kent as they protested the illegal invasion of Cambodia. But the important issue is about the first Amendment right to protest and the right to assemble vs. disproportionate force. At Kent State and Oakland.
Veterans March at Occupy Wall Street - Photo: Veterans for Peace
Perhaps no one at the Eagle was watching during the 1950s and 60s as the brave black men and women and their white allies of the South sat-in, prayed-in, marched in, occupying a seat at the lunch counter, on the bus, in the classroom. Many were beaten bloody, some were shot, some lynched. They were tear-gassed and clubbed. Until more and more Americans said no. How do you equate the victim with the executioner?
The Eagle continues: “The Occupy movement has needed a public face to rally around and Mr. Olsen has quickly become that face. Protesters, however, must rally around his cause, not use his fate as an excuse for counterproductive violence that will hurt Mr. Olsen’s cause and their own.”
What does it say about the Eagle that they don’t know the 99% is a million faces?
Some of the millions of faces marching in support of Occupy Oakland - Aerial view KTVU News
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“A Million Faces” appeared in The Berkshire Record, Thursday November 3, 2011
According to Reuters: “A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans group said he was beaten by police during clashes with demonstrators this week.
The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.”