It’s People’s Park all over again, as the homeless take over New York and Oakland

In 1969, during the height of the 1960s protest era, a bunch of activists seized land that the University of California, Berkeley, owned, and unilaterally declared that it was a “People’s Park,” unfettered by the petty, mundane and bourgeois concerns of property rights.  The takeover was entirely successful, as UCB never was able to develop the land and eventually turned it over to the City of Berkeley to be turned into . . . a park.

The takeover also demonstrated what happens when the lowest common denominator of people “take over” some piece of property or another:  it quickly devolved into a homeless encampment.  When I attended Berkeley more than a decade later, walking by People’s Park was always frightening (and very, very smelly).  Although I left Berkeley some years ago, it seems nothing has changed:

Today, People’s Park is a free public park. Although open to all, it is mainly a daytime sanctuary for Berkeley’s large homeless population who, along with others, receive meals from East Bay Food Not Bombs.

Yup.  Forty years after the take over, the highest use to which the property is being put is as a homeless hang out.  I’m not saying that the homeless shouldn’t have a place to go.  I’m just saying it’s not a “People’s Park” if most people are afraid to go there for fear of needles, lice, and attacks by crazy people.

So, let me share with you a couple of stories about the protests the Left has now staged. From New York:

Infuriated lower Manhattan residents went ballistic on Zuccotti Park protesters at a chaotic Community Board 1 meeting tonight while blasting politicians for allowing the siege to continue without any end in sight.

“They are defecating on our doorsteps,” fumed Catherine Hughes, a member of Community Board 1 and a stay at home mom who has the misfortune of living one block from the chaos. “A lot of people are very frustrated. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of our kids.”

Fed up homeowners said that they’ve been subjected to insults and harassment as they trek to their jobs each morning. “The protesters taunt people who are on their way to work,” said James Fernandez, 51, whose apartment overlooks the park.
Local resident Gordon Crovitz disagrees with representatives of OWS at a Community Board 1 meeting regarding the Good Neighbor policy between the Occupy Wall Street protesters and local residents.

Board member Paul Cantor said that residents are fed up with the incessant racket that emanates from the protest at all hours. “It’s mostly a noise issue,” he said. If people can’t sleep and children can’t sleep because the protesters are banging drums then that’s a problem.”

And from Oakland:

There were unemployed workers in the camp in larger numbers until violence broke out earlier in the week, said Thomas, 32, a protester who would give only his first name.

“Things have changed dramatically this week, and many of the people who were here left because of the violence and fighting,” he said.

[snip]

But for others, the tent city is a party scene with wooden-pallet sidewalks, a first-aid tent, a T-shirt maker, booze, weed and whatever.

[snip]

Several protesters, including Zachary RunningWolf, a Berkeley activist and former mayoral candidate, said they have no plans to leave the Oakland plaza – ever.

In 2006, RunningWolf was one of the protesters who occupied a grove of oak trees that UC Berkeley planned to chop down to make way for construction of a new athletic center.

[snip]

But even as some folks have gathered to prevent what they believe are wrongheaded notions to actually police Oakland, they have also undertaken security measures inside the camp to maintain the peace.

Young men, some with phones clipped to their lapels, and others with large sticks act as security guards in a scene that resembles an updated version of “Lord of the Flies.”

City officials have observed some of them practicing in the yard with long sticks, either honing their “security” skills – or perhaps preparing for an inevitable confrontation with police.

Perhaps in light of that last sentence (it’s possible that protesters are arming themselves), Oakland has suddenly decided to act, and issued an eviction notice against the protesters, citing public health and safety concerns.  I anticipate that there will be war, with police on one side, armed with nice modern weaponry, but afraid to act, and protesters on the other side, armed with stone-aged weapons, and not afraid to use them.  The visuals will distress nice people and excite the rabble.

There is a ritualized quality by now to these Leftist protests.  Walter Russell Mead has noticed it, and written a fascinating essay about the hollow (albeit still dangerous) spectacle.  After first comparing the protests to the equally hollow (and dangerous, if you fear being bored to death) spectacle of political conventions, Mead has this to say:

In a mass democracy where everyone has a vote, and normal peaceful demonstrations carry no professional cost or personal stigma, if 100,000 people gather in Central Park for a protest rally it means that about 8,000,000 New Yorkers chose not to attend.  It is not really news and it doesn’t mean much about where the city is headed.

Back in the day, when most workers in American industry had workweeks of seventy and eighty hours, had little or no formal education and lacked the money and the leisure to do much about politics as individuals, mass demonstrations really meant something.  People were giving up all the leisure time they had in a week, they were risking being blacklisted — losing their jobs and being blocked from working in their field in a time with no unemployment insurance or social safety net — and they were walking into situations where “police brutality” meant getting killed or disabled, with no lawsuits or compensation.

Those demonstrations meant something; they were a powerful signal that could not be sent any other way that people were deeply stirred and that something needed to be done.  Those protests were news, and power brokers and policy makers paid attention.

I don’t discount the destructive power the OWS movement has.  Anarchy is always damaging to society at large. But I’m increasingly disinclined to give meaning to these protests — and I suspect that the Democrats, by having hitched their wagon to this star, will find that, just as the protesters are relieving 1968 and 1969, so too are the Democrats.  While the protesters seem to be enjoying themselves (provided that they’re neither raped nor robbed), I think the Democrats will find that this ride is much less fun than they imagined it would be.