Occupy Eugene is no more. Alas, the brief and fragile light of higher consciousness and social awareness that disguised itself as a muddy huddle of tents, tarps, and crude cardboard signs was closed down last week after a series of "incidents", most notably a man being beaten and then choked to death. The Eugene Weekly expressed outrage at the merciless, insensitive actions of the police, who apparently were growing tired of living full-time at the site in order to keep assaults, body odor, public defications, and acts of severe violence in check:
The man, Rick Youngblood, was a not a member of the camp, according to Terry, a firefighter who has been volunteering at the camp. Terry and a police officer worked together to give Youngblood lifesaving CPR. [Youngblood died four days later at the hospital.]
The eviction hurts, Terry said, because the incident actually showed “we work well together.” He said several of the incidents written up as assaults in the police report that led to the council vote were merely arguments without physical violence.
"We" apparently referring to the fireman and police officer, as Occupy Eugene folks don't seem to know how to perform CPR, or to recognize an assault victim. But, amidst the tragedy, there is also humor, albeit unintentional:
“Shut down before Christmas. How crude,” Greg Nagle said. Nagle holds a doctorate in watershed science from Cornell and had been volunteering washing dishes at the camp.
If my Occupy camp ever needs a volunteer dish washer, I'm all for it being someone with a Ph.D. in "watershed science". It makes perfect sense. And lest it be said that the Occupy Eugene movement didn't educate anyone, pay heed to the lesson nestled in this nugget of information:
According to Valkyrie, one of the extraordinary things Occupy has done is bring the street families together and let street kids learn from older activists, and the activists in turn learn from the street families.
“A Ph.D. stands next to a homeless kid and they both have an equal say and an equal vote,” she said.
Who really is more intelligent: the man who spends many years and tens of thousands of dollars earning a doctorate in watershed science, or the street kid who figures out how to get said Ph.D. to wash dishes for her? (Put that in your dish washer and rinse it!)
Finally, lest my glib remarks appear flippant (or my flippant observations seem glib), the executive director of FOOD for Lane County points out the obvious:
It was pointed out that there were homeless people in Eugene. And some people were hungry. And for some reason some among the movement thought that those conditions had gone unnoticed and ignored in our community until the conditions were pointed out by demonstrations in the downtown park blocks, Alton Baker Park, Franklin Boulevard, on the University of Oregon campus, and finally at the Washington-Jefferson Park portion of the Willamette Greenway.
What a shame they might have thought that. And what an affront that suggestion seems to the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who for decades have been giving their time, their money and their hearts to the needy people in our community. ...
It’s amazing how generous the people of Lane County have always been. And it’s a little frustrating for somebody to come along and suggest that you haven’t done anything before.
This gets to one of my biggest issues with the Occupy movement: its ignorant arrogance, fueled by an angry and sometimes destructive self-righteousness that was both obviously naive (about history, reality, and everything else) and ideologically driven. It was, in short, infantile, and in the worst possible meaning of the word.
• Meanwhile, in an alternative universe... (Dec. 5, 2011)
• What would Jesus Occupy? (Nov. 29, 2011)
• Occupy Olsons: A Report From the Front Lines (Nov. 3, 2011)
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