http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/11/two-shootings-occupy-oakland-campsAround here, we inhabit a different reality than the news stories describe.
One of our local certainties is violence, unfortunately. Oakland had its 101st homicide of the year last night, typical of the ones that take place every three days on the average, with many familiar elements to the typically garbled story. Young guys, drugs, an altercation, a gun.
There is a Catholic church I drive by on my way to work where they put up white wooden crosses each year for every Oakland homicide. The churchyard is empty of them each New Year's morning, and then they begin to accumulate. I suppose they are stored in some closet back in the parish house, along with holiday decorations, perhaps, to be used year after year. Now, in November, there is a small forest of them out front, joined by another one this morning.
Last night's shooting happened to occur nearby the Occupy Oakland encampment. The news people make significance of this, rather like amateur seers with a personal agenda reading their own story into the tea leaves.
Closing down the Occupy encampments will not make troubled young people stop shooting each other over drugs. Nor, for that matter, will it stop severely depressed veterans from committing suicide--another event that the constructors of reality on the evening news have somehow worked into their narrative.
The only thing that might prevent those things from happening, or perhaps make them happen less, would be what the protesters are calling for-- forcing the fabulously rich to give their fair share for things like education, job training, job development, and health services.
And the main reason why these protests are now happening is that a whole generation of young people are finding themselves corralled into a dead end like that ones where inner-city youth and damaged war veterans have been hanging out for a long time.
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