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Macomb, IL – Right-wing radio and cable pundits say the "Occupy" effort is dead, not unlike police telling bystanders, "Move along. Nothing to see here, folks."
But consider the sources: Fox's Bill O'Reilly (who once falsely claimed President Nixon never met with Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung) and radio's Rush Limbaugh (who falsely said not one Republican voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP] when 91 House Republicans and 34 Senate Republicans voted for it). Their demagoguery sounds like the old line: "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?"
True, police in some cities rousted "Occupy Wall Street" camps, arresting hundreds, removing many more, dismantling shelters and confiscating gear. (Double standard monitors will notice police recently gassing peaceful protestors at the University of California-Davis and compare that treatment to "town hall" protests where Tea Party demonstrators carried firearms.)
But Occupy continues despite verbal and physical attacks.
Occupy is merely changing and growing. And there are government/corporate defections. Not as dramatic as soldiers defying Syrian dictator Assad, there are Sharon Cornu and Dan Siegel, deputy to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and one of her closest advisers, who resigned in protest.
Also, Las Vegas police have defied "marching orders" to raid encampments there and instead worked with demonstrators. Such acts of conscience are reminiscent of the turning point in the 60s anti-war movement: Vietnam Veterans Against the War and especially active-duty GIs (recounted in the documentary Sir! No Sir!).
However, there is a smear campaign underway, exploiting the suicide of Josh Pfenning, a 35-year-old homeless Vermont man with a history of substance abuse, and associating any troubling incident in an Occupy city with the protests. Maybe there's a Fox memo somewhere ordering compliant hosts to inflate or falsify reports that Occupy has violence, vandalism and primitive living arrangements, and to stereotype Occupiers as drug-dealing freeloaders or worse.
Even the Associated Press succumbed to the tactic, using the words "violence," "riot," "chaos," and "sexual assault" in a story about cooperation between Las Vegas police and protestors there.
Still, exaggerations or attempts to discredit Occupy aren't effective ways to address legitimate grievances. And they cannot evict everyone; everyone cannot be jailed.
"99%" has meaning to the public. 90% of income growth since the "end" of the recession has gone to corporate profits, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Americans want wealth "more evenly distributed," according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. And 54% of the nation views the Occupy Wall Street protests favorably (compared to 27% who feel favorably toward the Tea Party), a recent Time magazine poll found.
In November, author and war correspondent Chris Hedges filed an inspiring report about Occupy deniers, writing, "They think they can clean up the mess' by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke."
Occupy, by linking income inequality and corporate greed to banks' deliberate destruction of home ownership and the economy, already has achieved what few have, and income inequality, corporate greed, government corruption, and the bailout of Wall Street versus cutbacks of help for Main Street all are being discussed at kitchen tables and news desks.
But barely in Congress, not surprisingly. Capitol Hill still yaks about deficits, not jobs. Too many elected officials remain taken by corporate lobbyists, campaign contributors or the corporate-funded Tea Party.
So work remains, from parks and campuses to neighborhoods and polling places.
Changing the status quo that unleashed economic disaster, put money at the root of campaigning and lawmaking, and jeopardizes our rights all are worth working for.
Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio.