Are Cities Euthanizing the Occupy Movement?

Tear down of the Occupy Oakland encampment. (Photo: Reuters)

Cities around the nation, including some of the most liberal locales, are shutting down overnight Occupy Movement encampments. Local police officials in Portland, Seattle, Oakland, and other cities have raided downtown Occupy camps, torn down tents, and collectively arrested hundreds of resistant protesters.

In New York City, at the very heart of the Occupy Movement, Mayor Bloomberg ordered the dismantling of the original Occupy Wall Street camp located in Zuccotti Park, and a judge has ruled that protesters may return to the park, but that their constitutional rights to assemble and speak freely do not extend to bringing tents, blankets, and sleeping bags in order to live in the public space around the clock.

With the Department of Homeland Security providing strategic support for these coordinated efforts at shutting down Occupy camps, many strong First Amendment advocates have leapt to the conclusion that the federal government has now conspired with city officials to squelch the civil rights of the economic injustice protesters. In the wake of increasing issues with crime (including a murder in Oakland, for example) and sanitation around the camps, I view the actions of city officials against the camps more as follow-through on their commitments to ensuring the safety and security of the public in general.

As I said in a post two weeks ago, the Occupy encampments were initially constructed on the firm ground of high-visibility protests that served to raise awareness and ire about economic injustice in America. In the absence of unified leadership though, and without the development and promotion of meaningful corollary resistance tactics, the encampments and to some extent the entire Occupy Movement are slowly hedging toward a cliff of irrelevance.