Sacramento is a place of contrasts. There are the contrasts between a tiny, city block square central park and Wall Street. There are the contrasts between the feral homeless and the long term unemployed.
There are the contrasts between those protestors who strive to remain peaceful and the troubled individuals who hate the police because they deal with the police on a regular basis and not in a pleasant way.
Most of Sacramento, which is commonly quite happy with the police force, supports the police. But there can be a dicey relationship with the Sheriffs department.
Sacramento is a place of social contrasts where the richest man in northern California can live in the same neighborhood as a person who depends on Section 8 housing support.
Sacramento city and county is a place of political contrasts where the city itself is a determinedly Democratic and union positive district, but the surrounding counties offer support to some of the most rabid right wing and extremist politics and criminals in the nation.
This morning, CésarChávez Park was sparsely populated by a few lethargic and tired people. The unofficial organizers, about 16 of them, had been "arrested" for violating the park's rule for not being in there after hours.
The rule is designed to keep the homeless from making the park into a permanent settlement, but there are no provisions that allow an exception for protestors.
I met two gentlemen who said that they needed JOBS! That's it for their main concern. But both were more than capable of discussing all sorts of public policy debacles and conspiracies that began with the Clinton Administration and continue through the Obama Administration.
While there is very broad support for a leaderless occupation, where one individual or group is calling out the orders, there was much appreciation for those who were scheduling, guiding and managing events like the march to the city jail.
Word was that some very well known and experienced California union, social activist and other protest organizers were behind the César Chávez Park occupation happening at all.
A couple of union organizers had a novel concept for unionizing: all employees are in the same union. This makes sense. As an airline management level employee, I discovered that the divisions between workers allowed the pilots, flight attendants and mechanics to get their perks while the rest of us were screwed.
At one point, we were considering starting a management union.
I talked with a Sacramento police sergeant and let me tell you, it took uncharacteristic boldness on my part. It was a major breakthrough for a citizen journalista! I asked the sergeant for a statement that the public could use when dealing with the occupation or when planning to join the events.
I wanted a public safety statement, but was reminded of a talking head on MSNBC who demanded that we ask the police about their job satisfaction. This talking head expected us to engage in the belligerent salesmanship that the old party apparatchiks love to engage in. I hate that kind of useless banter.
The man knows what his work issues and ailments are, and did not need to tell me about them. Nor did I need to proselytize to the dude.
He gave a well prepared statement that began with "Keep it peaceful". That was pretty good. It was a simplistic statement in the way that soldiers and public officers speak, but the concept is enough to deal with California's propensity for minor disputes that can easily turn in to shootouts at the "NOT OK Corral".
The main concerns relate to the location of the protests. The north and south boundaries of César Chávez Park are downtown Sacramento's major freeway accesses and traffic routes.
Nobody wants their freeway access messed with when getting out of downtown Sac.
You have to BE one of us to know what that means.
If protesters block the streets or engage in disputes with drivers, then California's spectacular and unique species of road rage could turn into a gun control problem.
Most Sacramentans are also well aware of the possibility of trouble at night when our very special "youth, substance management, and mentally ill movements" can turn Sacramento streets into battle zones.
Any gathering or event can become a magnet for the dark forces in our society.
As a result, the next two or three days will determine if Sacramento can provide enough public safety for a continuing occupation of our beautiful park that honors one of our nation's greatest labor leaders.
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Comments
OE: Many of the people that I saw were middle aged! These were folks who didn't get anywhere near retirement and lost whole lifetimes of working in their fields. The kids, I feel the worst for because they do not have what we had: an opportunity to learn how to work and to live as grownups, with hopes and plans that panned out. They will set up their own way of doing things.
nanatehay: Oh, it's bad here. Our riverbanks are full of homeless who have been that way for so long that they are no longer fit for society. I had some pics of them sleeping in the park (look to the left of the Chavez statue). Believe it or not, many of them come from colder and meaner states to live out here like the ancients.
Where are the crowds?
The homeless are a ridiculous aspect of so-called civilization. But a demonstration of the homeless would get dealt with pretty quickly, I imagine.
"then California's spectacular and unique species of road rage could turn into a gun control problem" heh :D
Let’s get real here. This is NOT about “the poor & homeless” one little bit. They have been with us for decades..... no, centuries. Nobody cared a damn. We relegated them to the trash heap, calling them lazy and shiftless and bums and we declared, in our so superior wisdom that all they needed to do was have a bath and get a job. We sure as hell didn’t march and protest on their behalf - and we’re not doing so now.
This series of protests is not about them. This is about the middle class. A middle class that is in danger of finding itself in the same dire straits as the poor whom they so despised.
This is about the class that had the opportunity to get well educated and to earn good, sometimes superior, incomes. This is about good people becoming not-so-good people in the eyes of those still employed and - worst of all - in their own eyes. This is about a whole class of people (in a classless society, yet!) who are being pushed into the same situation as “the poor” and who don’t like it one little bit. So they are squealing like stuck pigs. No big surprise there.
But what do they expect will be done about it? By whom? And, most importantly, how?
It is all very well to march by the thousands or even the millions, “demanding” jobs. But who is to provide those jobs? How?
It is all very well to revile “the rich” but what exactly does such venting do to make better the lives of those marchers? If the rich didn’t have their money, would you have it? How does your life get better by messing up theirs?
So my question to them all is this: What do you want and HOW do you see it coming about? Lay it out for us, please. Just having a childish tantrum and “demanding” anything, serves no purpose unless you make it clear how what you are demanding might be accomplished.
Do you have a plan? Do you have a means of satisfying your demands? What do you propose?
It is good that y’all come out so as to let others know that they are not alone in their suffering. It is good that you are letting your government know that you are hurting and mad as hell about that because you know it could have been prevented. But you can’t turn back the clock. What’s done is done.
Where do we go from here? How do we build a society that will not be borne down by our past errors and our technical innovations (automation) and by off-shoring jobs? How can the companies you depend upon for jobs compete if they have to pay you American wages and are up against competition from companies that are only paying third-world wages? How, how, how, do you solve these problems?
Or do you just throw temper tantrums in the hope that
somebody, somewhere will find a way to pacify you?
The nation needs to see your solutions - please....
.
.
Still need a job, but...~shrug~ :D
R!
BUT...gotta start somewhere, and protesting against Wall Street and the screwing-over from the financial establishment is a good start.
As for the poor and dispossessed - when there's a solid middle-class, then there is more $ and will to help them. When there isn't, as now, austerity is even harder on them than before.
- The IWW, and the idea of a single labor union for all workers, is by no means "novel." It's been around since 1905! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World
- The two men you spoke to may not be aware of much beyond their own employment situation, but that's no reason to deride either them or, by extension, the movement. Not everyone has time to follow the ins and outs of what led us to this disastrous situation we're in. But many people down there do, and they're educating others who come down to these protests.
- Yes, this group may draw some "riff-raff" (i.e., your "feral homeless" and mentally ill) Any group would. Why does that reflect poorly on the group? Would you (did you) judge the Tea Partiers, or any other group, for the same? What if they showed up at a PTA meeting for the free cookies? Would that be the fault of the individuals or the PTA?
- what better way to celebrate a great man who made the world a better place for so many, than by starting a movement to make the world a better place for the 99%
- older/exasperated - have you actually been down to a protest? I have, and I can tell you it's NOT all young people there. I'm going on 40, and I was by no means the oldest person there. I saw many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. We weren't even a minority. The youth have the time and energy to camp out, it's true, but us older folks are down there as often as we can be, because this movement speaks to all of us!
You missed the point by a mile. The point was that the two men had joblessness as their most overwhelming challenge in life. Add in the hundreds of other people who have their individual issues, and we get a picture of the complexity, not the quality of the protests or the protesters.
Plus, look to the left of the Chavez' statue's leading foot for a peek at that "better" world.
The homeless use this park and have their own challenges that are being brought into the light, but no one group is the sole focus of the protests.
Brazen: cheap shot about the generalization! Sacramento has so many rapidly changing facets that, while I am very cautious about my statements, I do speak for myself and a lot of others.
There are some theories coming up that speak to the benefits of urban living, especially in the area of mutual support in crisis.
But even parts of California are as hateful and segregated as parts of the deep south and the northeast. Race seems to be the main dividing force that overwhelms any other social component.
I now live in a part of Sacramento that was wild grassland about 7-10 years ago. Now it is a densely populated and incredibly diverse suburban city! Placer, Sutter, El Dorado and Yolo counties were empty land, then came the housing boom and whole new populations. Then the boom went bust and here came the foreclosures!
It is one fluid and dynamic place, I will tell you that. So a few main "contrasts" are all that I can do right now.
I hope to investigate further It looks as if most of the crowd are fairly young. We have two huge universities here, so we will have a healthy population of students. But there is more to the people than is visible from the surface. Like the two English major student buddies, one from China and one from Japan. These two English majors hardly spoke English. Maybe they were spies, trying to figure out how to steal our protest technology! Ha ha!