How to Legitimatize a Movement

It seems that Occupy Wall Street is, far from my expectations, not dying out but actually growing. As it turns out, it's growing to the point that it's going international. There are protests cropping up in New Zealand, London, Frankfurt, as well as all over the USA. With this profound of a political movement cropping up it was only a matter of time before someone got the bright idea to call it the "Tea Party of the Left." Privately, I have to roll my eyes at pundits trying to associate the two , but it seems to have struck a nerve with the Teabaggers.

[Link]
The tea party isn’t about to make room for the new protesters on the block.

Big tea party groups have launched an attack against the Occupy Wall Street protests, challenging the line that the anti-corporate uprising is the “the tea party of the left.”

Tea partiers and their allies are looking to de-legitimize the protests circulating in the anti-Wall Street crowds, hunting for evidence of union ties, fringe rhetoric and bad behavior — ranging from news of arrests, to recordings of incendiary speeches, to tales of littering, drug use and debauchery.

They’re posting what they find online, like a photograph of a demonstrator apparently defecating on a cop car that has circulated widely, and are accusing the mainstream media of ignoring extremist elements.

This actually makes me chuckle a little. The idea of such an astroturfed movement getting a bug up their asses over another movement is hilarious in its own right, but what is just rib ticklingly funny is what one commenter pointed out;

Michael DiZazzo
"Nothing legitimizes a protest movement nearly as much as it's opposite number attacking it. True believers are terrified by the sight of their opposite pole."

Rarely do I find myself in agreement with a comment on Yahoo News. as I said before, the Yahoo News comments section seems to be a bastion of conservative knuckle draggers. However, this seems to be one of those rare comments that cuts right to the truth of the matter. What happened when the Arab Spring started sweeping the Middle East? They were largely written off until people started to actively attempt to discredit them or put down the movement through force. So guess what Mayor Bloomburg tried to do.

"If Bloomberg really cared about sanitation here he wouldn't have blocked portapotties and dumpsters."

On Thursday afternoon Occupy Wall Street called an emergency General Assembly down at Liberty Plaza to deal with the announcement that Friday will see a cleanup of the park by the City, starting at 7 am. Representatives of Brookfield, the company that owns the park, said in the clean-up notice that everything left behind will be thrown away. On Thursday it was also revealed that Brookfield had sent a letter to police commissioner Ray Kelly asking the NYPD help clear out the protestors. A group of New York civil liberties lawyers warned the CEO of Brookfield that forcing protestors from the park violates their first amendment rights, stating, "Under the guise of cleaning the Park you are threatening fundamental constitutional rights. There is no basis in the law for your request for police intervention, nor have you cited any. Such police action without a prior court order would be unconstitutional."

And guess what he failed to do?

A planned cleanup of the Lower Manhattan park that has been home to the Occupy Wall Street movement since September 17 was delayed just hours before it was due to begin by Brookfield Office Properties, which manages the publicly accessible park.

The move averted a possible showdown between police and protesters who viewed the cleanup as a ploy to evict them. Protesters loudly cheered the decision, and several hundred set off marching toward the city's financial district.

Police arrested 14 people, but there were no widespread disruptions.

"This development has emboldened the movement and sent a clear message that the power of the people has prevailed against Wall Street," Occupy Wall Street said in a statement, estimating more than 3,000 people had gathered in the park.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his weekly radio address on Friday, said his office was not involved in the decision to postpone the cleanup.

"My understanding is that Brookfield got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying, 'If you don't stop this, we'll make your life much more difficult,'" said Bloomberg, who added that he did not know which officials had called the company.

So thank you, Teabaggers, 1%ers, and righties of all stripes. You've done more to validate OWS than anything the left ever could have done.