Things to Consider While Occupying America

Things to Consider While Occupying Americaby TimothyB. Tyson | special to NewBlackMan
If policeofficers leveling assault rifles at unarmed citizens were not so disturbing,folks in Chapel Hill might act like Sheriff Andy Taylor does whenever DeputyFife misuses his service revolver. "Give me the bullet, Barn," he'dsay.  Poor Barney fishes into his shirt pocket and forks over the shell. 
Chapel Hill isnot Mayberry, but a big university town where law enforcement is dangerous andcomplex; we honor and support the men and women who protect us.  When ourcops point assault rifles at our citizens, however, they imperil our values—notjust our image--and court real tragedy.  We cannot pretend this was okay. Whoever decided that our police officers should go in with assault riflesleveled at unarmed citizens needs to resign right this minute.     
Self-romanticizinghotheads are shouting, like the muddy peasants in Monty Python, "See theviolence inherent in the system!  I'm being repressed!"  In thesociety of the globalized spectacle, front-page pictures of cops with AR-15smake their own fevered case.  To the extent to which those dystopianimages speak the truth about us, we must change Chapel Hill; to the extent thatthey misrepresent us, we must tell our own truth still more loudly.
"Our policedepartment responded," Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt announced, "in a deliberate andmeasured way."  In the next breath, he denied responsibility, saying thatour council-manager system won't let the mayor direct the police.  This isthe classic hallmark of a politician who knows he landed on the wrongside.  In fact, he claimed, Police Chief Chris Blue did not brief himabout the weekend seizure of a downtown building by a violent mob until Mondaymorning. 
Every parentcan translate the mayor's dubious narrative: this was not a mistake and I am not responsible for the mistake; in fact, Iknew nothing about it.  Not once did my kids ever get the car keys backuntil they did better than that. 
Chief Blue'sdecision to reenact the Normandy invasion also defies grown-up logic. That goes double if he actually thinks a two-day building seizure by what hedescribed as a threatening mob does not merit informing the mayor.  "Ourdeliberate response was appropriate," he says. 
Uh, wouldeither of you gentlemen care to try again?   
Before wesuffer any of these fools further, we should ask ourselves what the words"Kent State" mean four decades after the National Guard fired intothat crowd of students in Ohio.  Any actual "deliberate response" to therecklessness of this lost weekend must weigh the enduring costs of having"Chapel Hill" become that kind of national metaphor.    
To a largeextent, I share the rage of this flubbed-up flash mob.  Land-use policiesand real estate prices in Chapel Hill are pushing working families and the poorout of town; neighborhoods long owned by people of color are being replaced byhigh-rise housing for millionaires.   If the fashionistas wanted acommunity center in the long-abandoned Yates Motor Company, though, they mighthave recruited, well, the community.   We desperately need to talk aboutwhat is happening in this town.  A public education campaign, somerecruitment at the churches, a few press conferences and protest rallies, andit might have happened.  We all know that property rights are notabsolute, as zoning ordinances, building codes, eminent domain and affordablehousing laws attest.  Had the groundwork been done, this old buildingcould have become a symbol of our generous vision;  most people in townknow the building exists only because of the front-page showdown. 
But theAnarcho-Stylin' Dance Alliance yearned less for a community center than for aconfrontation that would validate their paranoid fantasies, some of which,alas, are not entirely paranoid.  Their victory created a global spectaclethat a single cop stumbling over the curb could have turned into a tragedy forChapel Hill and a debacle for Occupy Wall Street.        
I embrace theOccupy movement, which sparks my hopes for a better world.  At theinvitation of our brilliant offspring, my wife and I spent several days atZuccotti Park.  (Unlike our kids, Perri and I slept at a friend'sapartment.  It is possible that we did not subsist solely on the granolabars we bought for the masses.  We can neither confirm nor deny the yummysushi buffet.)   Figuratively speaking, and almost literally, we sawPete Seeger meet Kanye West in that park.  Young and old, poor andaffluent, aspiring democrats vowed that the gap between rich and poor inAmerica must not continue to widen and that corporations will not be allowed topurchase our political system.   
Occupy WallStreet has shifted the national conversation sharply for the better.  Butits future depends on our poise.  We must reach beyond the fashionistaimpulse to outrage the uncool and instead recruit and educate a largermovement.  That means coalition politics.  (See Rustin, Bayard. See also Wellstone, Paul.) 
As a historianof American social movements, I assure you that the national security state isinfiltrating the movement and attempting to strengthen its fringe and isolateits influence.  Agents provocateurs or local hotheads—it does not mattermuch which is which—will  alwaysadvocate extremist adventures.  They will berate more thoughtful activistsas "Uncle Toms" or the timid bourgeoisie.  If this spirit of ginned-uprecklessness prevails, fueled by infiltrators, Occupy's political vision willdescend into a fun-house mirror in which moral authority passes by default tothe craziest sumbitch in the room. (See Panthers, Black.  See alsoUnderground, Weather.) 
Instead, wemust invoke the ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu: "Do not do what youwould most like to do.  Do what your opponent would least like you todo."  Those desperate to avoid a public conversation about the powerof corporate money will relish seeing the Occupy movement tied to mob seizuresof property.    
It is time forChapel Hill, whether we are Occupied or merely residential, to say who does anddoes not represent our community: this includes the Car-Lot SeizureCooperative, our officially not-responsiblemayor, and whatever mallet-head passed out the assault rifles.  Hand overthe bullet, Barney.
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Timothy Tyson is the authorof several books including Blood Done Signed My Name and Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williamsand the Roots of Black Power.