Forum Post: On the distribution of resources

By B Psycho, on October 8th, 2011 Included in HuffPo’s coverage feed of OccupyWallStreet today was a link to this, a guest post about it by a member of the NYPD. No surprise, it’s chock full of false assumptions:

I have friends on both side of the Wall Street picket line. I have tried to see both sides of the story. I would love to understand what the protesters are trying to accomplish. All I see are a bunch of unorganized kids wasting the NYPD’s time and resources. What is your goal and endgame? All I know is that my wife is being forced to work on our weekend together because you want to sleep in the park and pretend you are part of something making a difference.

Public protests, in principle, are meant to draw attention to a situation the participants find objectionable. This means that to what extent people previously unaware find out and start formulating responses to it, a protest is accomplishing what it was intended to do: people are speaking about it, discussing the subject of the grievances. In the case of the OWS protesters, they may have differing views on the solution, but they all are pointing out the general problem: the economy is a rigged game. If I could recommend anything to them on that count, it’d be to keep in mind the role of the state in how it got that way, but to be honest I’m still getting over the shock of people concluding that (figuratively speaking…) it’s Pitchfork Time on such a scale.

The whiffing by of the overarching point to some people, I think, is due to a psychological system blindness of sorts: you get so used to the environment you’re in that you forget anything keeps it that way, so for you it just Is. Imagine being stuck in a single room for a really long time: maintain that position long enough, and if you hear people outside making comments about how the building containing your room was built one day, you just may ask “what are they talking about? There’s just this room!”

We are not rich “wall street devils”. We are hard working moderate people trying our best to make a living in a tough city. We both have sacrificed for our city and our country, regardless of the politics of the moment. I served under both Clinton and Bush, Democrat and Republican. I am proud of my country and will always protect our citizens’ right to protest. BUT… protesters… you are not doing a thing to hurt corporate money, you are helping guys like the Park Slope rapist. You are taking resources from the real crime and wasting time “storming” wall street.

While there is cause for concern in the perception of quid pro quo in the recent donation by J.P. Morgan to the NYPD, anyone there that is calling the cops “rich wall street devils” is clearly missing the point, in terms of both target and reason (it’s not the money, it’s how they got it. There’s nothing wrong with the gains derived from honest exchange in an open market, the problem is that’s not what we have). Read more:

http://www.thejeffersontree.com/on-the-distribution-of-resources/