Finally, sanity has been arising. The housing program agreed not to house Tonye Iketubosin, a man who allegedly raped one occupier and sexually assaulted another, and who is on trial for these incidents. But the most game changing incident occurred on night of Jan. 18th. A homeless man by name of Will demanded a metrocard from the team that distributed metrocards at spokescouncil. To be eligible for metrocards, one must be in a OWS working group, and each working group gets only limited number of metrocards for its members. When he wasn't given a metrocard, he stole one. It led to a violent confrontation in which Will assaulted several occupy members. The police had to be called. They came twice and one person was taken away on an ambulance. Jeffrey Brewer, presented an emergency proposal to the spokescouncil to have them ban Will from OWS housing and other OWS spaces such as spokes. The proposal was debated for hours, but in the end it passed. Will is banned from OWS spaces, pending a community safer spaces agreement.
Also many sought to pass friendly amendments to water down Mr. Brewer's proposals, in the end there no escaping how this emergency procedure created a precedent. While when the park was in operation, trouble makers were ejected from the park, there has never been a proposal passed by spokes or GA that banned someone from OWS spaces in general. Not only does this help ensure the safety of occupiers, this actually helps other homeless. Will, by stealing and being violent, gave all homeless people a bad name and made more people reluctant to work with homeless people. This is unfortunate as there are truly nice people who are homeless due to hard times in life. I applaud Mr. Brewer for pushing this through spokes and I applaud spokes for passing this. Troublemakers cannot be allowed to sabotage the most important political movement of a generation. And also, as human beings, we are all bound to treat each other with respect. And we have obligations to laws, city, state, and federal that must be followed. This man, by stealing a metrocard and assaulting occupiers, quite clearly demonstrated no respect for other individuals, the community, or the laws.
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hey Justin, I appreciated your posts on OWS and the homeless. It's been a tricky road to navigate, and at least OWS gets credit, not only for giving the problem visibility again in the national discourse, but also for attempting to live out what they preach about inclusiveness and care for all. I'm afraid what you have seen happening as time has gone by, points to an even bigger problem to come, which is, how tricky it always is to do good, and in particular, to help the poor. It's tricky especially because you will always have those who refuse to work and just want to game the system. I'm definitely advocating for the poor,and I'm disgusted with a lot of the political talk about how that will only create an entitlement society, etc. That's the GOP problem, and it's going to come back to bite them. I think the problem on the other end of the political spectrum (including with OWS) is how to provide for the poor, and still have proper expectations of them. I'm not saying that poor, black kids should be janitors (LOL), but that it's only right to give out help and money to people with certain expectations about what they will do. (Look at how well it worked when the Fed gave money to the banks with no strings - and it could have been worse.) Anyway, I'm no economist, for sure, but I think the simplistic answers from the right and the left need to be informed by some real dialogue between them, and on trying to find a sensible way to help and at the same time not to encourage a welfare mentality. Not likely to please anyone I suppose, and the two sides can't seem to talk, so I don't know what to expect. Even so, it's important and I appreciate what you wrote, because (I assume) you have the sympathy towards the poor that comes with being involved with Occupy, but you've also seen and readily admit the limitations and problems. I hope this makes sense. Rev. Bill Briton occupyevangelicals.org
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