I'm concerned that the occupy movement has clouded its message by sparking a debate over whether it is legal, or even morally acceptable, to take up residence in a public park.
I think there is a very clear difference between this protest method and thoughtfully carried out civil disobedience. When staging a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter, protestors didn't think they had the right to remain there indefinitely. They expected to be arrested. Getting arrested was one way to draw attention to the protest.
The occupy protestors, on the other hand, seem to believe they have a right to take over a public park. When they are forcibly removed, they feel that a terrible injustice has occurred. Even worse, they take this as an attack on their message and they fight for their claim to public parkland as tenaciously as they protest for equality.
This is where their method clouds their message. Their concerns about inequality resonate widely. But it is hard to see their claim to parkland as some kind of fundamental right. I'm obviously no lawyer, but if a public park is a public resource, it makes sense that access is unlimited as long as a group doesn't limit access to others. (I can't even begin to wrap my small mind around how to figure out who has what right to that one park overtaken in Manhattan that is "Privately Owned Public Space".)
Now having said this, that the occupy movement's method clouds is message, I am not impressed with the way public officials have responded to the movement. I think the protesters should in most cases be permitted to remain, simply because it is just against the spirit of a robust democracy to forcefully end a generally peaceful protest. It is especially troubling that the US has dropped down to 47th in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, partly because of all the members of the press who have been scooped up in mass arrests at occupy protests.
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