The "Occupiers" are supposedly moving out of Burnside Park in Providence today, even thought they were supposed to be out by midnight Saturday. My opinion of Occupy Providence may be unpopular, but here goes...
In the beginning, the Occupy movement was pretty powerful and I was rooting for them to bring attention to important social injustices. I am not sure what, if anything got done in other cities, but I do know in many places they were kicked out of their encampments, arrested and the movements were squashed. I applaud Providence officials for the way they patiently handled the movement. As a result, the protest and end of it were peaceful. It seems as if the subject of protest within the Occupy movement was varied depending upon the location. Here in Providence the main protest became about the homeless. The Occupiers came up with a deal to move out of Burnside Park if the city opened a day shelter for the homeless. City officials agreed and The Dioceses of Providence stepped in and provided the money to fund it.
It seems as if the homeless issue took center stage because after a week or two, when everyone who has jobs and responsibilities left the park to get back to their lives, all who were left were homeless people who live in Burnside Park anyway. I mean, who can actually live in a park for months and months? The tents that littered the area in the middle of Providence were mostly uninhabited, left to look like the movement was still going strong.
The Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless became affiliated with Occupy Providence, and some say they hijacked the movement to fulfill the goals of their organization. I am not saying that the homeless problem is unimportant, but it seems as if the end goal could have been something much more powerful than simply opening a shelter. There are already shelters in Providence that are not full. Homeless people have plenty of places to go.
When you build a house, the first thing to do is lay the foundation upon which everything else will be built. Not addressing the real issue of the homeless is like building a house without that foundation. All the work will eventually crumble.
A large number of homeless people suffer from mental illness or some sort of substance abuse. How about an outreach program to treat the mentally ill and addicts? Wouldn't that be a better way to use the power of the people? Getting to the root of the problem is the way to solve it, instead of just taking a pill to temporarily deal with the symptoms.
Although the Providence Occupiers have agreed to vacate Burnside Park, they have also made it very clear that they may show up somewhere else. I wonder what their next demand will be?
FYI, Occupy Manchester (NH) set up a camp in Victory Park, just across from the main branch of the city Public Library. They appeared in the early fall and left after the first really bad cold-snap. Of course, the Union Leader newspaper (a.k.a. Fox TV News in paper format) gave them either no coverage or bad press, so not too many people up here in ManchVegas know what was on their minds. The only thing they managed to do was to interrupt President Obama (Obama: the Kenyan form of O'Brien? :D) when he came and spoke at Central High School. They were quickly shouted-down by Manchester High's senior class.
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