Return To Hooverville

It was the laissez faire economic strategy of Herbert Hoover that led to the implosion of the United States economy after the crash of the Stock Market in 1929. It was his ambivalence toward government intervention and his unwillingness to use government to aid American citizens that caused the country to slide into depression. The most he could muster was begging and pleading with businesses to stop laying off workers, but at the time, it was everyone for themselves. When World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C. in 1932 (the "Bonus Army") and demanded redemption of their service certificates, so they might use the money to survive, Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to clear them out of their encampment, one of the derisively-named "Hoovervilles." A cavalry charge and gassing later, fifty-five veterans were injured; one hundred thirty-five were arrested. One 12-week-old child died after the gas attack.

Flash forward to 2011, when an economic malaise brought about by a collapse of the housing market engineered by Wall Street, leads to demonstrations across the nation. Occupy Wall Street brings forth collections of the disenfranchised and desperate, making the displeasure heard through civil disobedience, in cities all throughout the nation. They want The Monied Powers and their retainers to see the damage they have done to the American Dream, and they want government to recognize that it has failed them, failing to protect them and their livelihoods and their finances from the rapacious greed of the money-changers on Wall Street. Then, last night, October 26th, the mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, gives her tacit approval for the Chief of Police to move in and drive out the protesters, which he chooses to do by assembling overwhelming force and using tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades. The attack leads to dozens of arrests, and the hospitalization of a two-tour Iraq veteran, who had managed to survive that war without a scratch before being assaulted with a teargas canister, leading to serious head trauma and a trip to the hospital in critical condition.

Those who do not learn the lessons of history...