The "Occupy" Movement - Deficio Ut Intellectum

Deficio Ut Intellectum: Latin - A failure to understand.

I'm no fan of New York City's Mayor Bloomberg but last night he justifiably sent the NYPD into Zuccotti Park to address the growing public health & safety issues that have arisen in the now nearly two month old "Occupy Wall Street" protest. The official communication from the NYPD was as follows:

“The city has determined that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city’s first responders, and to the surrounding community. You are required to immediately remove all property, including tents, sleeping bags and tarps.”

As one might expect the protestors pitched a fit over it; Claiming often on twitter, multiple web streams, on various blogs and to any reporter that would listen that their 1^st Amendment rights to free speech and public assembly were being violated and that the police were shutting down a “peaceful protest”.



Let’s individually take a look at those two statements made by the protestors. The first is simple enough to refute on the basis that Zuccotti Park is in fact PRIVATE not public property. The park is owned Brookfield Properties Inc, a Commercial Real Estate holding company based in Washington DC.

There is no right assured by our Constitution to commandeer private property. The property belongs to Brookfield and they allow the public in the surrounding neighborhood to use it. But make no mistake - that is a revocable grant of access and Brookfield has the right to determine HOW the park is used. Brookfield has made it quite clear that they are not in favor of the protesters camping on their property…to say nothing of the damage that has occurred as a result. To reiterate, protesters do not have the right to free speech on private property, nor do they have the right to commandeer the property to their use without consent of the owner.

The second point of contention would be absolutely laughable if not for the victims that confound the assertion. The “Occupy” protests are anything but peaceful. Have a look at the “rap sheet” compiled by John Nolte of Big Government.com CLICK HERE . That’s 248 criminal complaints or seriously shady deeds taking place at the various protests across the country and the list is growing daily. Here are a few highlights in case you didn’t read the entire disgusting list:

• Multiple homicides and the overall death toll currently rests at seven
• Multiple rapes
• Multiple cases of child endangerment
• Multiple assaults
• Drug dealing
• Fomenting of violence against police
• Rioting & Vandalism of private & public property and the list goes on and on and on….

This is a “peaceful protest”?



The very use of the term in the context of these “protests” is a slap to the face of those who have honorably engaged in peaceful civil disobedience. I’ll not waste your time with comparisons to the Civil Rights Movement let alone the more recent “Tea Party” protests because we both know there really is no valid comparison but suffice it to say that I don’t think Dr. King would approve.

When just one of these petulant goons can justify to me why they should be allowed to continue this madness I’ll stop laughing my ass off when the police break out the pepper spray and night sticks. Until then I’m on the side of Police.