Zuccotti Intestine

There is much concern about the filth and disease, e.g., Zuccotti Lung, infesting various Occupy Wall Street sites around the country.  Repeated incidents of personal waste elimination in public has Noman wondering if a new illness doesn't afflict protestors, Zuccotti Intestine.

Occupy Wall Street is compiling quite a rap sheet.  In a couple of months, this phenomenon has generated 248 "incidents of sexual assault, violence, vandalism, anti-Semitism, extortion, perversion and lawlessness."

Skipping over the headlines concerning run-of-the-mill predation, indecent exposure and exhortations to bestiality, it is the recurring reports of scatological incidents at protest sites that especially tie OWS to the godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky.

Yesterday's incident was captured by neighbors on video taken in Washington, D.C.  This protestor curbed himself, or nearly did, beside a garbage can.  So, Noman will assume that he was raised badly, but nevertheless tried to answer nature's call responsibly.

Not so with the protestor who relieved himself on the American flag.  The intent there was definitely to engage in Constitutionally protected speech.

Americans can thank five Liberal-thinking Justices on the Supreme Court in 1989-1990 for establishing this precious right of flag desecration in Texas v. Johnson and U.S. v. Eichman.

The first excrementous OWS incident reported also evinced an intent to communicate.  There is definitely a message for police and society here.  But, what is it?

Thankfully, we have a a brief disquisition on this form of community-organized protest in Alinsky's magisterial tome on the subject, "Rules for Radicals."

In his chapter on Communication, Alinsky writes:

Every now and then I have been accused of being crude and vulgar because I have used analogies of sex or the toilet.  I do not do this because I want to shock, particularly, but because there are certain experiences common to all, and sex and toilet are two of them.  Furthermore, everyone is interested in those two--which can't be said of every common experience. 

His recounting of community action in Rochester, NY--the home of Eastman Kodak, a then-great (but now bankrupt) company that was in Alinsky's crosshairs--is instructive.  Noman quotes at length from the chapter on Tactics.

It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it. You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him. this causes an irrational anger.

The resources of the Have-Nots are (1) no money and (2) lots of people.  All right, let's start from there.  People ... have physical bodies.  How can they use them?  Now a melange of ideas begins to appear.  Use the power of the law by making the establishment obey its own rules.  Go outside the experience of the enemy, stay inside the experience of your people.  Emphasize tactics that your people will enjoy.  The threat is usually more terrifying than the tactic itself.  Once all these rules and principles are festering in our imagination they grow into a synthesis. 

I suggested that we might buy one hundred seats for one of Rochester's symphony concerts.  We would select a concert in which the music was relatively quiet.  The hundred blacks who would be given the tickets would first be treated to a three-hour pre-concert dinner in the community, in which they would be fed nothing but baked beans, and lots of them; then the people would go to the symphony hall--with obvious consequences.  Imagine the scene when the action began!  The concert would be over before the first movement!  (If this be a Freudian slip--so be it!) 

First, the disturbance would be utterly outside the experience of the establishment...  Not in their wildest fears would they expect an attack on their prize cultural jewel, their famed symphony orchestra.  Second, all of the action would ridicule and make a farce of the law for there is no law, and there probably never will be, banning natural physical functions.  Here you would have a combination not only of noise but also of odor, what you might call natural stink bombs... The law would be completely paralyzed. 

People would recount what had happened in the symphony hall and the reaction of the listener would be to crack up in laughter.  It would make the Rochester Symphony and the establishment look utterly ridiculous.  There would be no way for the authorities to cope with any future attacks of a similar character... Such talk would destroy the future of the symphony season.  Imagine the tension at the opening of any concert!  Imagine the feeling of the conductor as he raised his baton! 

To start with, the tactic is within the experience of the local people; it also satisfies another rule--that the people must enjoy the tactic... The reaction of the blacks in the ghetto--their laughter when the tactic was proposed--made it clear that the tactic, at least in fantasy, was within their experience.  It connected with their hatred of Whitey.  The one thing that all oppressed people want to do to their oppressors is shit on them.  Here was an approximate way to do this (emphasis added).

Noman bets that you never knew that about oppressed people.  Doesn't it make you wonder whether, and how many, disciples of the master in Zuccotti Park and the White House share Alinsky's sentiment and feel that way towards "the enemy"?

I must emphasize that tactics like this are not just cute; any organizer knows, as a particular tactic grows out of the rules and principles of revolution, that he must always analyze the merit of the tactic and determine its strengths and weaknesses in terms of these same rules.

Alinsky goes on to discuss the possible affects of similar bodily-function tactics in diverse fora such as the Chicago Seven's federal trial court, and Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Given Alinsky's stress on black hatred toward Whitey as a psychological laxative, Noman notes that the incidents referred to above involve young, white men.  That's to be expected, as OWS is decidedly a white-bread affair.

Beyond that, Noman supposes that everybody hates somebody, or something.  And, these incidents are that: an expression of the utmost contempt.

America and capitalism have always served as especially reviled objects of Leftist hatred.  Why should that change now just because the White House and the Democratic Party have underwritten, praised and encouraged the movement?

With respect to the overall rap sheet, you certainly cannot accuse community organizers of not trying to provoke violence, arrests, and altercations with the police.

Anything to help the President.

And, those are just the reported incidents.  Occupy Portland organizers recently encouraged victims of sexual violence to keep the assault confidential and to report it internally rather than to the police.

Such is the character of OWS, which has paid agitators to thank for tactics regarding how best to manifest contempt, provoke reaction, and shock the populace into capitulation.

Ironically, the more outlandish OWS gets, the more boring it gets.  These tactics are old hat.

Protestors represent the status quo rather than the Have-Nots.

Their leading lights already control the White House, Senate, the Courts, academe, media and, ironically, Wall Street.  These institutions have already colluded to set the country on the fast track to bankruptcy and decline.

Protesters represent the past fifty years, when Alinsky's antics were startling and risque.  They were always an outsider's tactics, and never intended for one entrusted with the responsibility to lead the nation.

Community organizing is only good for tearing things down, taking things from others and pitting people against each other in crude dichotomies, e.g., The Haves. v. The Have Nots.  It is useless for building up things like an economy, nation or people's spirit.

America needs elected officials who can govern in reality, and not just plot tactics on blackboards and in back rooms; who know better than to publicly cheerlead for people that defecate in public.

The electorate will definitively pass judgement on OWS and all that preceded it in November of 2012.  At that time, fear of reaping what one sows might well provoke a resurgence of Zuccotti Intestine at the White House, and on Capitol Hill.