COMMIE GIRL: PROTESTING THE PROTESTERS WHO ARE PROTESTING THE PRESIDENT
By Rebecca Schoenkopf
[Editor's dote: Rebecca Schoenkopf is the former editor-in-chief of LA CityBeatLA CityBeat and former senior editor at OC Weekly, where she wrote about art, music, politics and more. She taught political science at UC Irvine and was an Annenberg Fellow at USC, receiving her master's in Specialized Journalism focusing on urban policy in May 2011. She lives with her son in a neighborhood we'll just call Hancock Park-adjacent. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/commiegirl1 and rebecca@fourstory.org]
Until I left, when I called over to them goodbye, and have a fun protest, I never really made eye contact with the 30 or so Occupy LA-ers (they estimated 50) who’d taken a field trip to Hancock Park (adjacent) to protest the “bought and paid for” president.
The elementary school kids who mob up outside my Highland and Wilshire 7-Eleven, allowed in only three at a time, came up to solitary me in droves, wanting to know what the protest was across the street, and was I part of it, with my sign? I explained about the 99 percent of us who aren’t rich banding together to make things more fair, and how much I agreed with the other protesters on that. But I explained that this group was saying President Obama was part of the problem, and that I was there to stand up for him. Most of the children nodded wisely, totally agreeing Obama was awesome, except for one Latino kid who talked about working hard for success in life. I agreed that hard work was important, but gave him the nutshell Elizabeth Warren, that nobody becomes rich on his own.
I have a lot of issues with Occupy LA and Occupy Wall Street, none of them centered on the crustiness or the hippie flair that so annoy Andrew Sullivan. (I love crustiness and hippie flair!)
Exhibit A, of course, is the lady who got fired from her substitute-teaching job at LAUSD, for saying the “Zionist ews” need to be run out of our country, as they have 109 countries already. Only one person? Sure! But if that only-one-person was saying it at a Tea Party rally, you and I and everyone we know would take her as representative, and don’t pretend we wouldn’t.
Exhibit B? The itchy, irksome scene in Atlanta, when civil rights hero John Lewis asked to address the crowd, and it was determined that interrupting the Green-meeting-style agenda would make him “more important” than others. Oh, not at first: at first most people in the crowd were clearly excited to hear him speak. But eventually, the beardo leading the agenda pushed the crowd to the outcome he expected, and John Lewis walked away.
And Exhibit the Third? The goddamn Ron Paulers. They are here at Wilshire and Highland, their bellies painted up “Impeach Obama,” their signs reading “End the Fed.” One comes up to convert me frequently, which is nice of him, and I’m nice enough in return to give Ron Paul credit for his stances on both the drug war and the war wars. But if Occupy
Wall Street and Occupy LA are mostly focused on economic justice, Ron Paul is not going to be the man to remedy that. I have nothing particularly intelligent to say on that score, since I don’t have Wonkblog in my pocket, but I agree with Belly over there that Obama’s economic team has been poorly chosen, from Geithner to Summers. And I agree on Obama’s civil liberties record—I hear Glenn Greenwald bitching about it often enough. And the new Justice Department tack on medical marijuana? (Going after not just growers, not just dispensaries, but newspapers that take medical marijuana ads!) Man, I agree with you right there too! You know who isn’t perfect? President Obama! Why, he isn’t perfect at all!
But when my little brother Brad, an Occupy LA stalwart, tells me that it is “counterproductive” to hike up to Wilshire and Highland and “protest a real populist movement,” without seeming to realize that is exactly what his friends are doing when they make Obama the enemy, and when my little brother then argues for a flat tax as the most populist position, I want to take Brad and these little Paulites, with their Love/Revolution flags, and whack them upside their soft little heads.
2 Comments
You don’t have to be a reactionary libertarian to understand that Obama is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
His signature legislation is a plan to funnel more money through corporate boardrooms, he’s left the traditionally Democratic constituency of organized labor to twist slowly in Wisconsin and Ohio winds, and his financial advisers have backed the 1%’s play at every juncture.
And this is good for the majority of people who voted for him in 2008 how?
What really inspires The One? — predator drone attacks.