When I was a kid, my parents tolerated a lot of nonsense before laying down the law. Then it became, "If you don't stop that, you are going to get a spanking." If I kept it up, and giving them a petulant attitude, guess what happened?

I got spanked.

With the mix of homeless, aging hippies, “professional activists”, and naive students, anyone with half a brain could tell this movement was going to end in disaster. All the mature adults who would make a movement like this successful are busy doing things like working, paying bills, and providing for their families.

That the Occupy Portland folks are running with the narrative that they've been victimized by the police and local government after receiving unprecedented latitude and cooperation is mind boggling to me. It's also a bit shocking that, after going to all this effort to get people's attention, this is how they're going to spend their 15 minutes of fame.

I think people would be a lot more receptive if they'd have thanked city hall, the police, and the citizens of Portland for their patience and cooperation then articulated their message and encouraged people to get involved. The Occupy people seem to have a knack for getting attention they just have no clue what to do once they've got it.

They picked the wrong poster boy.

This guy's bio and websites will be his undoing. Unless he curtails his athletic stage appearances, and clarifies if he was in the wheelchair before -- or after
-- the police injured him, he has no credibility.

They could not articulate their message because they didn't really have one. They got their moment in the spotlight in their hipster outfits which met their original goal. They should be apologizing to the citizens of Portland for making such a god awful mess. They should be paying for the clean up.

I am down on it too. You don't just take over land and expect it to be okay. Time to get down to the real work of electing the kind of people who can do the work they claim they want done-- or run for office themselves. Some may not even know why they are there, or what they expect. Sometimes I read a laundry list of everything everybody who is liberal or progressive wants. Portlan's mayor said it well-- time for the next step and if the next step is anarchy, they will lose out totally. They are not entitled to camp forever in the middle of the city disrupting anybody driving by whenever they want. No apologies from the city I certainly hope.

I was downtown today, and got a firsthand view of their press conference. Here's a pic.

The problem is that the electoral process can no longer produce leaders. The people who are elected are largely interchangeable. Except for a few hot button issues, there's no big difference between Obama and Romney; neither one is going to get anything done to help the middle class.

There's a need for protest right now, but leaving it to youngsters like these is the lazy way out, and it's largely a waste of time.

Amen! Jack

At lunchtime today OWS-P had perhaps a hundred people marching through downtown Portland, on sidewalks, and presumably obeying stop/walk lights. About 25-30 police officers were with them.

Of significant concern is the damage this has done and will continue to do to the City's finances - and we all know it won't be the "iconic" projects that get cut, but rather the day-to-day services, including support to homeless and mentally ill residents.

If the local Occupy wants to become more legit they should speak up at hearings/ meetings concerning the robberies of TriMet, PDC, City Hall, Portland Housing Authority (or whatever they call themselves today), Metro, LO City Council, Milwaukie City Council, Clackamas, Washington, Multnomah Co. Commissions, all school boards.

Talk concisely-specifically, no platitudes. They should focus on:
the inequity of trolleys,
lightrail, urban renewal,
less bus service,
building $380 per/sq/ft "affordable housing" when builders can do it for $75 per/sq/ft,
excessive administrative costs of all government,
excessive severance packages of government employees,
and if they can agree on the subject-the hypocrisy in morals of our elected leaders-like conflict of interests.

That photo at the O is precious. Look how important they think they are. Generally, I try not to mock earnestness, but it's getting pretty hard with this crowd.

Sorry lw, that would entail them having any critical thinking skills or sense, no thanks to their parents and professors.

Maybe something like this: "I'm sorry I allowed you smelly kids to camp in the park for so long. Love, Sam"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-sleeper/occupy-portland_b_1089696.html

Honestly, I don't blame them for their tantrum. Everything else they ever wanted from the city, they got from Sam. Now they're acting like three-year-olds who spent their lives pulling on a Rottweiler's ears and are now surprised that it bit them. (Not that Sam and his crew are blameless. It's at this point, though, that the goals of hipsters and developers separate, and Sam has to pay attention to what his real masters want.)

I'm not sure I'm totally at ease with the idea of letting bystanders (present company included) lecture the protesters on how it's done.

I already snagged the domain for ParityForPeople.com.

The Occupy anarchists could begin an initiative to change state law in Oregon to eliminate the privilege of limited personal liability for the beneficial owners of private corporations. It is one moral hazard that is routinely abused.

If the motivation is to address the disparate treatment of student loan borrowers then I'm all for it.

Don't get mad, get even. If someone mocks students with loans then demand that they advocate for the end of dischargeability of all debt.

Swap out "student loans" with something more generic to apply to all government guaranteed debt.

How many of the Occupy anarchists are really just demanding a free and fair market?

If you don't like what OP is doing, then tell Jon Corzine and his greedy, criminal pals to stop.

Oh, but I guess it's too tough to attack powerful people.

Jon Corzine and his pals just filed bankruptcy, and he may very well wind up in jail. It appears there is a sum of $600 million of client funds that were misappropriated.

At a minimum, his net worth is going down together with his reputation.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9R0S2002.htm

For all of you who crit the kids [who braved the cold for a month for you] , and tell them how to do it from the comfort of your plush sofa in your jammies , here is your chance to put your words in action.

MoveOn meetup at 8am thursday at the Steel Bridge to protest the Failing Infrastructure in our Country.

billb - what are your demands from the infrastructure?

And lows of 45 degrees is by no means cold.

billb,

MoveOn.org is an evil corporation.

Arbitrary government is the greatest evil. Bigger arbitrary government is even more evil.

Don't be a useful idiot. Take direct action. There is not one single bill yet in Congress to roll the laws related to student loans back to the way they were in 1989. Will MoveOn.org twist the arm of just one senator or representative to introduce such legislation. If not, ask why not.

Mark my words, Congress is most certainly under pressure by foreign owned corporate lenders to treat all non-corporate debtors just like they have student borrowers. Alert them to the horrors that await them, from our corrupt Congress.

I demand equal protection, and an end to enhanced collections enacted with retroactive effect. I demand an end to arbitrary government action. MoveOn.org offers neither.

The truth is every movement that has been successful has had a reason for the demonstrations like end the Vietnam War. You cannot just camp downtown, say you don't want leaders or spokesman and you just do not like what is happening and expect the middle Americans to support you. The media is milking this for stories as they always do but in the end, to demonstrate has to mean there is a reason and the idea that you own a park and have a right to camp there would mean nobody else did.

Anybody can run in a primary for the nomination. The party will discourage you doing it if you are an outsider but the voters can still vote for you. There is a way to do this legally and giving up or claiming it just doesn't work when you haven't put energy into it won't convince voters. And what a lot of the protesters say they want-- like a new New Deal requires Congress to do it and a president to sign it into law. The power is out there but it's not in sitting in a tent downtown. That simply makes a lot of people angry when they can't even drive past some of the areas they used to be able to visit. It might hurt nearby businesses but it won't really change the power structure. Changing that can be done but it takes real work and finding people to run for office who believe in the values you say you want.

The Occupy folks were a useless joke, but when you run out of weed, what better way to get some but gather up a bunch of your buddies and head to the local park. Waste of time and taxpayer money.

And Billb - moveon.org, oh pleeze, these folks have almost as much credibility as SEIU or most of the labor unions which is to say ZERO. The ONLY weapon we have is the ballot box; granted with people like Sam Adams and Barrack Obama being voted in, well, it has it's flaws, but voting against folks like this does much more than getting head lice in the park.

who braved the cold for a month for you

And what did they do for me/us? It feels something like a bunch of whiny kids just had a party at my house while I was away on vacation. Now we're cleaning up the trashed house (i.e. city parks). What a joke, if these punks can't articulate their message beyond a simple arrogant "you just don't understand what we're doing for you", they can just go occupy a jail cell for all I care.

OWS is like an uninvited guest at a house party that arrives drunk, vagely insults the hosts and other guests, vomits on the rug and then winds up passing out in the living room. The host then has to applogize to his guests and clean up after the creep leaves.

I drove past the scene of the wreckage yesterday. Cop cars parked all around both blocks. Hideous chain link fencing around both squares. Blinding glare lamps illuminating the whole mess, which looked something like the open-air stockade for German POWs imagined in Polanski's uber-brilliant movie, the Pianist.

I wish I had been alive during the civil rights movement to have something to compare ows to. I wonder what was said about them in the early days? How many missteps did they make? Could the CR movement have survived in today's 30 second attention span era?

This is too funny! Once my stepdaughter got in trouble for hitting her sister and calling her a brat. Her dad scolded her and put her in time out. When she was done with time out, she told her dad he should apologize for hurting her feelings. All my husband could do at first was laugh. He then explained that if she hadn't of hit and been nasty to her sister, then she wouldn't have been scolded and placed in time out. He told her that he will not be apologizing for something that she caused.

Occupiers caused this mess. No apology required.