
{"id":24685,"date":"2012-03-29T10:01:45","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T14:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=24685"},"modified":"2012-03-28T16:29:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T20:29:24","slug":"letter-carrboro-commune-shifting-focus-away-from-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2012\/03\/29\/letter-carrboro-commune-shifting-focus-away-from-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"LETTER: Carrboro Commune shifting focus away from issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I support the Occupy Movement locally, because I have spent my life fighting against arbitrary authority, and for social and economic justice.<\/p>\n<p>I do not, however, find favor with Carrboro Commune. I feel they focus on issues that have little relevance to ordinary Carrborites. And they do so in a way that brings Occupy into disrepute.<\/p>\n<p>Commune members rail against the arbitrary authority of corporate America. Yet, they employ a similar arbitrary authority to impose unwelcome behavior on a community from which they have received no permission.<\/p>\n<p>They complain about the police response to their alleged civil disobedience, quite forgetting the incivility of their screaming match with the mayor only a few weeks before, after they had equally uncivilly broken into an empty office building.<\/p>\n<p>I was present at the Carrboro Commune protest. I saw no harassment. What I saw was a police department properly and carefully exercising thoughtful concern with regards to a group that has a history of breaking the law in an uncivil fashion.<\/p>\n<p>This in contrast to the response of the Chapel Hill Police last November to the break-in at the Yates building. And I would point out that I remain pretty much the last man standing and still actively calling for an independent investigation of that police reaction.<\/p>\n<p>I have the greatest of respect for our Board of Aldermen. But they are sworn to uphold the law, so long as it remains the law. If they would prefer to protest that law, then they should resign, and join the protesters.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, provided our police force operates within the policy guidelines monitored by the Board of Aldermen, then aldermen have no business publicly criticizing police officers whose professionalism does not allow them to respond.<\/p>\n<p>The danger of folks (including aldermen) being allowed constantly to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153decry\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and protest, without someone calling them out, is that the center of gravity of the conversation gets moved by default.<\/p>\n<p>And my greatest problem with Carrboro Commune and its supporters is that they are shifting focus away from the issues that are central to the fight for social and economic justice in our community. The concerns that are of real concern to ordinary folk, struggling to make ends meet. And we are letting them do so, way too passively.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Geoff Gilson<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Carrboro<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I support the Occupy Movement locally, because I have spent my life fighting against arbitrary authority, and for social and economic justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24685"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24690,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685\/revisions\/24690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}