Pepper Haze and Shopping Daze

Image via WikipediaIn the months since the Occupy movement on Wall Street started, with people waving banners and repeating each others' words to a financial hierarchy too busy making money and influencing politicians to care much about what the "little people" think, the protests have spread to every city in America and overseas with varying degrees of success.

But the movement still hasn't been successful at getting its message out to the rest of the country, mainly because its list of grievances are all over the map and there's no figurehead.  Republican politicians and conservative commentators tell them to take a bath and get a job.  If you believe the poll numbers, most Americans are plain confused about what Occupy is and what they stand for.

City and government officials, initially tolerant of Occupy protesters camping out in local parks and college campuses as long as nobody got hurt, had finally decided enough was enough and started ordering crackdowns in the name of public safety and local commerce.  In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had bulldozers clear the park next to Wall Street.  In Los Angeles and Philadelphia, there have been orders of evictions to Occupiers that have so far not been enforced.

Then there are the incidents that make martyrs out of protesters and law enforcement resembling armed thugs.  In addition to the melee in Oakland, California that resulted in the direct hit of a tear-gas canister at one man, there were widely-publicized pepper spray attacks in Seattle and the University of California at Davis.

Pepper spray is normally used to foil attackers, and when sprayed it stings the eyes and burns the throat.  Women use it to ward off purse snatchers and potential sexual predators.  The police, who have access to the industrial-strength formula in bulk, spray it on people who exercise their First Amendment rights whether it's a sitting human chain or an 84-year old grandmother, as if they used to exterminate termites for a living.

For all the screaming about being the 99 percent, the Occupiers actually represent about one percent of the population (or maybe not that much).  Truth is, there are lots of other people who would love to take up arms against The Man.  But they have families to take care of, bills to pay and reputations to protect.  Besides, having a police record doesn't look good on a job application.

And there's this:  According to all accounts, Black Friday was one of the most successful in recent memory.  People were ready at the stroke of midnight to spend paper or plastic on cheap flat-panel TVs and the latest discounted video game.  That must have made Wall Street happy, because stocks soared the following Monday and economic pundits speculated that this may have been the long-awaited turning of the corner.

Oh, there was the woman who allegedly pepper-sprayed other customers at a Walmart in California so she could be the first to get a particular item.  And there was also the man who dropped dead at a Target store, and hardly anyone noticed.

So the moral of our story is:  When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.  If the Occupy movement is to succeed with average Americans, this is the mentality they have to get past first.