Occupy Philly: control yourselves

Channel 6 answered my not-so-rhetorical question from yesterday, "[I]f the Occupy movement is truly so anarchist and leader-less, why doesn't a contingent separate itself out, splinter away, and offer to negotiate separately, away from the bad-faith consensus-blockers?"

One group of Occupy Philly protesters spent the day preparing for confrontation, another faction was meeting with city officials trying to defuse the situation and work on relocating the encampment.

A group calling itself Reasonable Solutions has distanced itself from the bizarro hardliners who are gearing up for a pepperspray 'n' bulldozer showdown with police by retrenching, defacing the transit concourse with graffiti, and "[leaving] a trail of human waste" on the lower levels of Dilworth Plaza.

You know what separates humans from animals? Choosing not to defecate where we sleep. You know what separates adults from children? Choosing not to protest perceived injustice by inappropriately dealing with our bowel functions.

If Occupy Philly can't get this nonsense under control, then public sentiment, which is at best ambivalent about Occupy groups -- for god's sake, don't read the comments on that news article -- will seriously go south. And by "public sentiment," I mean the sentiment of even hard-core radical feminist commies like myself.

I walked through Dilworth Plaza this morning about 8:00. Maybe one tent out of ten is correctly pitched, tied down tightly, and kept neat. I dig that it's a challenge to properly maintain a campsite over weeks or months, and not everybody spent time with the Girl and Boy Scouts or Guides when they were kids -- but damn, read the instructions that came with the tent, take away your trash, and keep your site neat and clean.

Late last night, I got e-mail asking if I would kindly volunteer to serve as a Legal Observer if (when) the police start clearing out the camp. Someone justify to me why I should help out the bad-faith operators who've decided to piss and shit all over my city. I'm not going to be a tool to help those Occupiers avoid jail time or even a police beat-down.

Now, the Reasonable Solutions people, that contingent I'll be happy to help out.