WE WANT TO KNOW: MOVE OCCUPY OUT OR LEAVE ‘EM ALONE?
Welcome to our first Pencil Poll.
Several of the Occupy encampments around the nation have been struck down by authorities this week. Some mayors and police departments say the camps are becoming dangerous and unhealthy. Even Bloomington’s Occupy site at People’s Park has been the site of some recent troubles: A homeless man was found dead in an Occupy tent on November 6 and an Occupy participant was knocked unconscious and suffered a fractured skull during a confrontation with a passerby late Thursday night.
Mayor Mark Kruzan told a WFIU interviewer this week he’d received a few messages from constituents asking him to shut the protest down. Kruzan cited one person who complained he couldn’t use People’s Park anymore.
Tell us what you think. This poll is open to people around the world. Feel free to tell us where you live in the comment section. You may check as many answers as you’d like.
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Though I voted to let the Occupy Camps remain because that choice captures more or my sentiments, the truth is you don’t have enough questions in your poll to cover the complexity of this question. In the end, if the movement is strong and substantive enough, it will keep going no matter if the city “camps” are closed or not. We shall see – but I hope the movement continues. It could help defeat Mitt Romney.
Peter (AJ) Ajemian
The encampments are one stage of the movement and they’ve done well to focus the attention of those who are sympathetic and those who are opposed. While this has been going on, various other aspects of the Occupy movement(s) have been engaged in many different activities, including focusing attention on the fracking controversies in the Delaware River valley and occupying homes to bring about new negotiations with banks and mortgage holders. The people who sparked the movement for folks to remove funds from big banks into local banks and credit unions credit the Occupy movement for indirectly providing momentum and information dissemination toward the success of that effort. The movement will continue to evolve.
I find the reasons to “close” the camps to be a bit disingenuous. The violence and death that has occurred would likely have occurred with or without OWS and the unhealthy conditions make me smile. We have huge corporations spewing and pouring pollutants into our air and water and we are worried about unhealthy conditions in the camps??
In order to win the game first you need to learn the rules. If occupy wants to make wholesale changes to the corrupt system we labor under they will need to engage the political process. As odious as that sounds .
The camps were a means of getting attention, not an end, particularly since they haven’t blossomed large enough to really shut anything down for long. The Occupy folks could use a winter respite to focus and hone their message, particularly as we go into this election year.
The Occupy Camps all hold a grand opportunity to witness democracy in its purest form. The park is not off limits to the public, as the complainer stated to Kruzan, but all are more welcome than ever before – now with shelter, direct involvement in community and politics, and three free meals a day. This is, after all, People’s Park… but, more importantly this movement asks, “Why not a People’s Planet?”
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