What Next?

Riot police are so cute.

Been busy today, but wanted to comment on the apparently coordinated assault on OWS across the country by police officers.

I'll try to be even handed here.  I understand - I guess - that OWS could not continue to occupy public space.  Part of me thinks that another month of winter chill would have done the cops work for them.  And if it didn't, then maybe OWS was demonstrating the sort of commitment to protest that we laud in our history books whether it's Boston Harbor or Selma, Alabama.

Why now?  What happened to make this the moment when OWS needed to be evicted.  And note that they are being evicted from parks across the US, not just Zuccotti Park.

I'm not sure we'll ever get a full answer to "Why now?"  But I am much more interested in "What now?"

One thing OWS has shown is creativity.  What made it so striking is that many of them come from a generation that connects virtually, yet here they were physically occupying the landscape.  This is not what we are trained to expect from young people.  They are supposed to be on Facebook, not on picket lines.

So the next step could be interesting and unpredictable.  One brilliant off-shoot of OWS was Move Your Money Day.  We are tied hand, foot, mortgage and equity line to Wells Fargo, otherwise I would have quickly moved what meager cash we have to a credit union.  That was creative and effective.  Want to get rid of Too Big To Fail?  Shrink the banks from within.

Not to get my nerd on here, but I'm reminded of the scene in the original Star Wars movie where Kenobi and Vader are fighting.  Kenobi says, "If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can imagine." (Or something, screw it nerds.)

I have to wonder if maybe the same thing will happen here.  Having cleared the Park as a focal point of the protest will the ideas and actions metastasize throughout the body politic, throughout the internet ether?

Here's to hoping.  Here's to hoping OWS enters a new phase: more ideas, less drum circles.