The Occupy Wall Street protest hit some milestones this week. It is now 60 days old. That doesn’t sound like much, but to have grown from a few people camped out in a park a couple of blocks from the stock exchange to a movement that is changing the national conversation in 60 days is pretty remarkable. They also got booted out of the park. Not just in New York, but all around the nation, the police have broken up the encampments. The protest in Salt Lake’s Pioneer Park was shut down.
The Salt Lake protest was becoming problematic in the sense that it was impossible to differentiate between the “movement” and the (depressingly high) number of homeless people who hang out there. Thefts, drug dealing, drunkenness, and some violence were becoming problems, and there was no way to distinguish the Occupiers from the background roughness of that location. I suspect that has been a problem in other locations as well. Police in Salt Lake used the death of a man in the park, caused by a drug overdose and/or carbon monoxide from a tent heater, as the excuse to break it up. But I’d bet that Pioneer Park was actually a safer place during the Occupy protest than it is on a typical winter’s night.
With winter coming, it might make sense for the Occupiers to graciously accept the police pressure to move indoors at night. They have captured the national attention and changed the conversation. A change in tactics that puts them hard at work on their computers, setting up one-day protests here and there, and continuing to pressure the policy makers might be more effective than frostbite anyway. It’s a safe bet that they aren’t just going to fade away.
Various commentators have been trying to distill a consistent message from the protests. They want a list of demands, which they aren’t going to get. But it’s really not that complicated. Over the last 30 years or so, the political apparatus of the country has been purchased by the big corporations and wealthiest individuals. They have used that position of control to aggressively bend policy in their direction, primarily through the tax code, but not exclusively there. The end result is a tilt of national and state policy that continues to favor that group’s interests at the expense of everybody else.
The middle class has seen its share of the proverbial pie shrink. A generation ago, one middle-class income would support a family in reasonably comfortable and secure conditions. Now, two middle-class incomes often leave families clinging to the edge.
Generational comparisons are not always easy to make. Cable television, cell phones and Internet service didn’t exist when I was a kid; now they are seen as fundamental necessities of life. What counted as suburban bliss in 1960 would be seen as a grim existence by today’s heightened expectations. But participation in the technological progress of society is a completely reasonable expectation. The majority of Americans have seen their economic conditions flat-line for 30 years, while the gang that captured Congress is enjoying a 275% increase. The protest is really pretty simple. It’s the plutocracy, stupid.
On other notes, the great Summit County Water War has ended with a whimper. As happens so often, when both parties came to the conclusion that the insurance proceeds are about dissipated, reason broke out. The county’s insurance company paid out the policy limit, and the feud between Mountain Regional and Summit Water was put to rest. All the crazy conspiracy theories vanished. In the end, the two big water utilities will now be where they should have been in the beginning a unified effort to develop water resources for the Snyderville Basin. Park City and the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District (to which we have all been paying taxes for years with little benefit) are all on the same page.
Weber Basin brings some big financial muscle to the table. Importation of water from other drainages is expensive, and competing and duplicative efforts never made sense. This is a big and important deal for anybody who drinks water. It’s just too bad that it has taken 10 years of litigation to get here.
PCMR is open and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. It’s game-on around here now. It seems like every year I’m enjoying the off-seasons more and more. At least the fall. Those times of year when the traffic slows and parking is easy are getting more precious every year. I’m ready for skiing, but there’s no getting around the fact that the entire pace of things will be different a month from now. Remember the calm of October when you are in full battle formation to get through Kimball Junction next month.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column for 25 years.