"Occupy Cleveland" Made Its Mark

Last month, seven hundred arrests on a famous bridge awoke the world to a movement so inclusive in its fuzzy agenda that only a fractional privileged few would not be enveloped in its masses but would rather become the target of their dissent. It has been a while since protests grew so big they became events in our national history. Occupy Wall Street aims to do just that for the sake of change – a change that would expose, and hopefully begin to close “the great divide” - that financial chasm that separates the "haves" from the "have-nots" created by an ambitious sector catapulting across to capture the crown of CEO on the other side.

How the chasm got there in the first place is one point of attack for OWS supporters who have vilified with bright banners and homemade signs what they believe is at the root of this unjust state of imbalance: greed, namely corporate greed, perpetuated by the inside possibility that you, too, could someday capture the crown if you played your cards right. Getting on the inside is the golden key here, and the devil himself - the key master. What used to be called ambition, and commonly felt a good trait to possess if one were to succeed, has been denigrated over time to include other baggage traits not wholesome for the common good. If one is to succeed, one must be corrupt, the OWS movement seems to say, and it appears they are spot on with their denouncement. 

Even the papacy in Rome was alerted enough to move Pope Benedict the XVI to draw up a document in recent weeks addressing the International Financial System and its practices. In a previous 2009 encyclical “Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth)," he wrote, “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty." OWS supporters would readily agree that is exactly what has happened, resulting in our present economy.

Zero in last week to our own downtown Cleveland, where a tiny camp of mainly young dissenters, appearing as a bizarre Hooverville engulfed by the skyscrapers that surrounded it, had attempted to occupy Public Square. They succeeded for over two weeks in turning heads to take notice of the injustice. They were a courageous lot who preached reform against the titanic machinery of Wall Street, held non-violence workshops for those who wished to join them, endured ridicule amidst the cold and the rain, and took private risk to carry the torch for the promise of a better tomorrow. They didn't last long – driven out by threats of arrest and a city decorating project that pulled their permit, but not their spirit. All was not in vain. Occupying Cleveland is no picnic in the winter for the residents who have houses here, let alone campers. The movement will most likely have to take better shelter in cyberspace and emerge next spring with a new plan. 

And what an exciting year it will be in 2012 – another primary, another presidential election, another climate of change – will Occupy Parma be next?