Soon after that, the police approached with full force in riot gear, with batons. We had no intention to move, but they jabbed some of us repeatedly in the stomach, pulling people onto the floor and arresting them." Hundreds of protesters had gathered at the town's Sproul Plaza to protest against tuition fee increases and public education funding cuts.
The focus of the country has lately been on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, or “OWS.” You know, the people who claim to speak for the 99% of Americans who are not wealthy capitalists and who think they can create social justice and equality by marching around the New York Stock Exchange and other centers of capitalism, like Greenwich Village.
Here is how the leaders of the leaderless OWS describe themselves on their Web site: “Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions.
The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.
” They go on to promise: “We are growing. Block by block – city by city. We will see change in this country, in this world. It will happen sooner than you can imagine.” Now it occurs to me that there is only one appropriate and sensible response to the “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists and street urchins. And that is to create a competing grassroots mass movement that will challenge the attention OWS is receiving in the media, while offering a rational and constructive alternative agenda for real social change.
OB will specialize in civil disobedience and street theater. Among its initiatives will be a mass roundup of Berkeley hippies who will be conducted to the central facilities of OB, where they will all be given free baths. A special re-education campus will be set up in Orange County, California, where all Bay Area communists and drug users will be sent to learn about the disadvantages of communism.
OB will also rid Berkeley of those asking passersby for spare change. Instead, OB will promote entrepreneurship for panhandlers and for homeless youths. Anyone in the Bay area stopping passersby and asking for spare change will be ordered to do pushups, where the first 40 are unpaid but after that, payment will be made to the panhandlers at the rate of 20 cents per pushup. Tax free. Pregnant panhandlers and those over 70 will be permitted to do their pushups from the knees.
Telegraph Avenue will be renamed “Wall Street West” and Shattuck Avenue will be renamed “Milton Friedman Boulevard.” The area within 4 miles of the University of California (CAL) campus will be declared a tie-dye-free zone, where no tie dyed clothing may be worn. Discounts to the BART and other forms of public transit will be offered to Berkeley residents wearing ties and jackets. All the “head shops” selling drug paraphernalia along Telegraph Avenue will be converted into barber shops and Bible stores. When not using public transit, travel in SUVs will be not only permitted but made mandatory.
Special retreats will be held for Berkeley residents still believing in communism. There they will be housed in Gulag barracks, woken up at 5 AM, and ordered to do physical labor without getting paid. Berkeley socialists can also be sent to the retreats, but they will only be woken up to work at 5:30 AM. Non-competitive sports will be prohibited during leisure time, only competitive sports allowed. Afternoon breaks at the camp will be devoted to generating greenhouse gases. On Saturday nights, “Dirty Harry” movies will be screened. Attendance will be mandatory. Vegan foods will be absolutely prohibited there.
Berkeley is of course only the beginning. After Berkeley is occupied by masses of marching conservatives, it will be the turn of Madison, WI; Amherst, MA; and of course San Francisco. Any city or state approving of medical marijuana will be targeted next. Cities undergoing occupation by OB will see reverse affirmative action implemented, whereby anyone who was harmed in the past by affirmative action programs will be entitled to preferences, compensation, and reparations.
Occupy Berkeley is growing, town by town, block by block, taser by taser. We are drawing bipartisan support from people sick and tired of the selfish indulgence of leftwing radicals and hippies. Unlike OWS, the only genders we represent are men and women. And we are accepting donations because we believe in materialism and selfishness.
We chant: “The world is watching!”; “This is how democracy looks!”; “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!”; and “It is never too late for a spanking!”
