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2011-11-15 Occupy

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To maintain hygiene, the students cannot use tents to keep themselves warm; to manage the space, students must be kept out; to address “conflict issues,” students had to be attacked; and to keep the students safe, they will be beaten. – The Grass Is Closed, zunguzungu

The OWS news and the police action that goes along with it has been on my mind for quite a while now. Mostly because I follow @xeni on Twitter and she retweets so much of what is going on. Occasionally I read reports from witnesses—such as the one where I got the above quote from—and usually I just cringe inside.

I liked Hawaii. I’d love to go there again. I wanted to see Yellowstone park, visit some of the big cities in the US. But not this. I’ve stopped blogging about Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine and the US involvement with all of them, but my anger is still there, festering deep below the surface. I wrote some angry things back then. I resolved not to visit the USA until things get better. I’m currently assuming this won’t happen in the next decade.

At work, people are sometimes astonished. How bullheaded do you have to be? I needed to draw a line somewhere. This is my line. Last year I got invited to Eclipse Con 2010 in San Francisco and declined. When asked, I sent them a link with the latest TSA scandal or similar stories such as Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border.

Back to the Occupy movement. A few days ago I read another blog post from a person that had gotten arrested, and I decided to write an email. Yes, I know it’s futile. I think I need to do these things in order to keep my sanity.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Sir

I just read the account of one of the recent arrests and I am disgusted by the way the police is acting—apparently on your behalf.

The account I read:
http://oxthepunx.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/arrested/

As a citizen of Austria and France living in Switzerland, my greatest fear is that recent developments regarding police, privatization, copyright excesses and many more things—all the things the occupiers are protesting against—will end up being imported into our countries. The USA has long ceased to be a place to look up to.

Sincerely,
Alexander Schröder
Zürich, Switzerland

I think the world’s main problem is that there is no administration anywhere that is doing the right thing. There is no place to look up to, anywhere. We need to somehow mobilize that secret fire within ourselves, within each other, in order to oppose the change we do not want and in order to exact the change we do want—to steer this boat in a direction that benefits more people, not less people (It's the Inequality, Stupid, Mother Jones).

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