Forum Post: How Occupy Wall Street (and maybe Occupy Portland) will fail

They are all part of what is being called The 99 Percenters, those who do not have the unimaginable wealth of the richest 1 percent.

By showing how much we all have in common, they created a space for solidarity in a deeply divided nation.

By the end of the day, after I pored through the group’s Facebook page and the event page and the forum and even dragged my butt to a “general assembly” meeting in Waterfront Park Tuesday evening, I realized the fatal flaw in the movement. It’s the same fatal flaw in every movement, from the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s to the 1999 WTO protests.

Those damn radicals.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone is radical about something. The Tea Partiers are so radically anti-tax that they don’t notice the irony in protesting on tax-payer-funded sidewalks. Wall Street execs are so radically pro-capitalism they don’t realize that the casino they’re running isn’t a free market.

Me, personally, I’m radical about the need for these occupations to be peaceful. For better or worse, that means working with the police, something Occupy Portland has yet to do.

I grew up distrusting police, but I’ve since had many positive encounters with them. I believe they too are part of the 99 percent. I believe they have stressful, dangerous jobs and have to make snap decisions about who and what is a threat. I believe they have to work overtime, taking time away from their families, on a moment’s notice, because of annoyingly unorganized protests exactly like this one.

But most importantly, I believe that protestors are guaranteed conflict — likely violent conflict — with police if they refuse to cooperate.

That’s why — despite all my initial enthusiasm — I likely won’t be participating in Thursday’s protest. If I can’t be sure of a safe, legal, family-friendly place to gather, then I won’t go.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

I wish she had said what to do about how those people can distance themselves from an even smaller radicalized group who derail efforts to create change the whole world can take part in.

Shasta Kearns Moore of Southeast Portland is a mother of twin boys, a former newspaper reporter and a writer whose work appears on the blog www.outrageousfortune.net .