Occupy Oakland’s State-Sponsored Riots
Posted 11/03/2011 06:48 PM ET
Politics: “Occupy” protest propaganda would have you believe the downtrodden are rising up against the rich. But as Wednesday’s riots in Oakland showed, it’s really the political elites attacking the embattled private sector.
Marching under a huge “Death to Capitalism” banner and egged on by 1960s-era glam-radical Angela Davis, some 7,000 leftists marched on downtown Oakland’s businesses in what they called a “general strike,” trashing cafes, breaking bank windows, and barricading and spraying graffiti at a Whole Foods Market.
Seems local retailers were on the receiving end of this violence — hardly members of the mob’s hated 1%.
Some retailers, such as Men’s Wearhouse, seemed intimidated into closing early, leaving desperate signs in windows declaring they, too, supported the protests.
After that the mob headed over to the Port of Oakland, the nation’s fifth busiest, to shut down commerce. They did so by erecting burning barricades, blocking trucks, and effectively holding drivers hostage. CBS reported that they then hurled chunks of concrete, metal pipes, Roman candles and Molotov cocktails at police.
The aim? To “shut down the means of production,” they said, and “stop the flow of goods,” which they did for at least one shift at the busy Oakland port, affecting thousands of workers’ jobs.
With that, they showed what their muddy agenda really is: to crush the private sector and replace it with state power — through tax hikes, of course.
This violent demonstration was particularly noteworthy because so many in our political class supported it. The rage was fueled by the fawning support uncritically given the rioters by everyone from the U.S. president to congressmen to Hollywood celebrities.
Listen to the PodcastThe event was heavily populated by well-paid government employees, with some 18% of Oakland’s city workers and 5% of its teachers taking holidays to go rioting against their own city and taxpayers.
And Oakland Mayor Jean Quan actually encouraged them to go. This, just one week after pleading with the federal government for more port funds. She sent her merry protesters to shut the commerce at the port with a taxpayer-provided police escort.
This is OWS’ dirty little secret. They’re not the poor or downtrodden. The Daily Caller and New York Post investigated the backgrounds of the 700 people arrested last month for shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge and found nearly all of them to be trust-fund idlers from well-off homes.
The poor? The unemployed? The students? All recipients of government checks, with unemployment extended as long as 99 weeks, federally subsidized student debt into six figures, and welfare for years.
The only people not represented in this kill-capitalism mayhem were the businesses, producers, taxpayers and consumers — all the people who quietly benefit from capitalism each and every day.
The disgrace of Occupy Oakland was its curious way of making war only on workers and producers.
In short, it was the elites on a rampage, declaring war for the first time on those who work and create. But one thing now is clear: It’s the takers against the makers.
Battlefield America 
I’m not sure if you realize but that most of the OWS protesters are pretty peaceful. You get a handful of agitators, but on the whole, they’re just average Americans exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Furthermore, you attempt to convey that they’re all either trust fund idlers or recipients of government largess. I’d like to mention that most hourly jobs will simply fire you if you attempted to take a day off to do something like protest. You say the following were not represented: Businesses, producers, taxpayers, and consumers. Well, since businesses aren’t corporeal, it’s hard for them to represent themselves. In any case, the other three were definitely there, since we’re all consumers, we all pay some amount in taxes, and I’m sure somebody there had to have a manufacturing job at some point.