I guess it’s not too surprising that the first Occupy actions to make the authorities really nervous have been in cities with mild climates and therefore large homeless populations.

Perhaps we need to think through what kind of protest action works best in different kinds of communities. Camping out to draw attention to the issue of unemployment may not be the most effective action in cities where thousands of unemployable people have been camping out for years.

One of the issues we have to confront as a society, of course, is the blurring of those categories. Thirty years ago, one assumed that anybody living on the streets was probably on booze or drugs, or had some other kind of problem negotiating reality. Now all kinds of people are homeless, and many of us who are employed and look relatively comfortable are really only a few paychecks away from it.

Another obvious long-standing issue is why thousands of people who belong in hospitals or rehab or halfway houses are sleeping on the streets, getting sicker and wierder and angrier all the time.

But in a place like Oakland, an Occupy encampment rapidly gets occupied by the endemic homeless population, creating an excuse for the cops to move in and deal with it, in a hyped-up version of the way they have always dealt with an ongoing "nuisance."

Time to get creative about some other effective actions. I’m for boycotting banks, for instance. Just use credit unions, and explore other alternative systems like the old-fashioned and now disappearing British building societies.

It also could be entertaining to identify the homes or neighborhoods of some of the more egregious 1%, and go hang around in some irritating but legal manner. I am not sure specifically what I mean, but if I keep thinking about it the ethos of my gentle Quaker upbringing might suggest something.