As Occupy camps across the nation are swept up and out, we find ourselves in a puzzling and contradictory state of both expulsion and exaltation.  While we may have been dealt a technical blow, suffering the loss of space and materials, we have gained significant ground.  A revived zeal, cheers of ironic victory, and a hell of a lot of media coverage garnish the beautiful affirmation that we are winning.  Amid the noise of political banter, police actions, and even the underlying hum of counter-Constitutional conspiracy from our nation’s highest office, we tune our senses to the subtle yet resounding message: we are getting to them.  Though public statements made by directed (not independently reasoning) local officials outline reasons to break up the camps that range from public safety to impeding on the picnic spaces of area employees, there are a few very real reasons the powers that be want the movement dismantled, and all of them are odious, not odorous – as they would have us believe.

The obvious reason to break up Occupy camps is our edging closer and closer to our first inevitable victory, one we must win over our most visible adversary: the police.  To do this, the movement needs only to continue to show up.  Peaceful assembly in large numbers, arrests resulting from civil disobedience, and the tactical maneuvers and discharging of weapons by police add up to more than public failure and embarrassment for city officials.  The simple fact is that our cities, fiscally crumbling beneath the economic pillage of the higher-ups, cannot sustain the expense of continued police action against the movement.  The obvious question is then raised, why carry out said action?

Any logical, logistical thinking person would deduce that it would be easier, cheaper, and more pleasant to let the camps stand, cooperating with internal working groups to keep occupations clean, safe, and free of unwanted elements.  Instead, the cities leave occupations to fend for themselves, blaming occupants for problems only reconcilable through cooperation from local officials then wasting city resources in unsuccessful attempts to unseat the movement, citing problems stemming from the city’s systematic failure and political ineptitude in dealing with the camps.  While the cities struggle to pay for actions against Occupy and the public relations necessary to recuperate both the city’s reputation and the personal political careers of those in office, the bottom of the shilling purse fast approaches.  Meanwhile, the only thing these actions succeed in doing is strengthening our resolve and exposing the corrupt ringers of a much larger, far more crooked game – an expense of a different kind, equally unaffordable for the city, but with pressure from the top to dispense the movement, local officials find themselves the scapegoats and puppets of multi-millionaires and are left holding the checking and the smoking gun.

Given the cost and blatant unconstitutionality of these relentless assaults, the indication becomes clearer that those in power are in fact struggling to protect something they feel is worth the increasing social and financial costs.  What they stand in firm defense of is not, however, the things they were sworn to protect: our national sovereignty, our freedom, our people, peace, and prosperity – nationally speaking.  It is to protect the illusion of democracy which serves as a façade for political pirates and their network of corporate accomplices who, with focused intent and great efficiency, have managed to turn our government into a well-oiled wealth machine for an American criminal elite so devoid of ethics that they conduct their business at the cost of human life and liberty, and from behind the protective cover of titles and privilege we unwittingly bestowed upon them in good faith.

Though we, those who comprise and support the Occupy movement, relay our messages to the public in terms more common and understandable terms – buzz words like “income disparity,” “bank bailouts,” and “corporate welfare” – it is essential that we understand our mission will not be completed with the passing of meager legislation that will be torn down and reconstructed to the benefit of these American traitors and capitalistic mutineers.  We must change the structure of our government so that it is no longer possible for the public servants we elect to govern themselves as they are clearly ill-suited for a task of such great moral obligation, having proven themselves unscrupulous manipulators of legality and hoarders of wealth.  We must change the checks and balances of an old system that relied on the goodness of man and was constructed before the design of the economic system that is now our undoing.

This brings us around to the battle of Antietam, something I mentioned in a previous letter.  At the birth of the American Civil War, Confederate and Union soldiers fought in one of the bloodiest wars the world has ever known.  At the time, the goals of President Lincoln were solely to preserve the nation, keeping the North and South united.  However, it was in the wake of this battle that Lincoln realized that the hardships already faced and those to come amounted to a war that would not be worth the end prize of a rejoined but unimproved Republic.  It was necessary to make the nation greater, stronger, and more just that it ever was before the secession of the South.  It was through this effort, this weighing the ferocity of the fight against the victory to be won, that the abolishment of slavery was decided upon, an act Lincoln believed would create the better society he so desired for us and justify the critical path that our nation was forced to forge by other circumstances.  From this we learn that it is not enough for us to simply correct tax law and imprison a few stuffed suits from various financial institutions.  Doing so would only mop up the puddle created by the leak in our roof.  It in no way corrects the real problem or secures our ability to weather future storms.

Those who have risen to power, occupying offices won in backhanded games of democratic manipulations and shadow deals by mystery men, now sit atop the world’s most dangerous con.  They peddle propaganda about the merits of capitalism and publicize dramatic political epitaphs laden with invented terminology and imaginary economic science, all the while stuffing down our throats values of materialism and servitude to the market.  They sit in secret meetings, gathering insider information that translates into stock market trading tips.  At the end of the day, the rearrange their personal portfolios, using privileged information to amass obscene personal wealth, something any citizen would be locked up for, but they do legally, protected by laws and exemptions they have created for themselves.  This is why Willy went to Washington.  This is why they clamor to serve, clawing their way through mudslinging elections (an insight into their true, frayed moral fiber), to grasp in the mêlée public offices that pay less than $200,000 annually.  Not because they feel an earnest sense of duty to their nation; not because they hear a calling to serve their neighbors and community; not because they could not make this much or more money working for the companies that own them, but because it permits them access to money making opportunities far beyond anything they could ever tap into on their own or take advantage of legally.  In exchange for access to the money machine and their resulting personal fortunes, American politicians repay the people and corporations who funded such opportunity by placing them and their private agendas into positions of power and priority, creating business networks and removing legal barriers so their financial backers can bulk their own treasuries without limit, at any cost, and at our expense.

To stand up and say that we want our grievances with these outside industries addressed by the people we have entrusted with our political process is like telling the wolf that the fox ate our chickens.  He simply doesn’t care, but he’ll lick his chops of his portion crumbs and promise you anything to keep the henhouse guarded as is.  We, as a movement, do not want our government to hear our grievances.  We want it to hear our wrath.  We want these criminals to scamper futilely under their fancy oak desks, pulling in those big leather chairs behind them in helpless panic, as we storm the capital, cuffing every profiteer who has abused our trust and capitalized on our former ignorance.

We must organize in greater forms and with loftier goals, fueled by the apparent desperation of our cities as they tip of their hand, revealing their struggle to contain our movement and our message.  This is not a plea to be heard.  This is a change in ownership.  Remember this in the days ahead.  We are not a protest to be stifled or stymied by the confiscation of books and tents.  We are here to overthrow the criminal hijackers of Washington as well as Wall Street.  Change will not – cannot – come from within.  It can only come from us.  It starts in our streets and ends on the hill.  Aim high, think big, and keep your feet on the ground… marching, park or no park, tent or no tent.  Ours is a critical path.