What's Constitutional About OWS?

As I continue to read about Occupy Wall Street, I continue to wonder if this nation has any democratic future at all. The supporters of OWS write that in disbanding these groups the mayors are denying them their right to assemble and to “petition the government for redress of grievances.” Meanwhile the court says they have a right to assemble, but not to camp permanently in public spaces, which is what the mayors are breaking up, and Matt Taibbi wrote of them last week,

“People don’t know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: (Bleep) this (bleep)! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.”

That hardly sounds like a petition to government, it sounds more like the flower children of the sixties only, probably, without the drugs. Not to mention the following, written by one of the protestors, which hardly sounds like someone dealing with matters of national governance,

We declare “victory” and throw a party… a festival… a potlatch… a jubilee… a grand gesture to celebrate, commemorate, rejoice in how far we’ve come, the comrades we’ve made, the glorious days ahead. Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement’s three month anniversary on December 17, in every #OCCUPY in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry.

We dance like we’ve never danced before and invite the world to join us.

Some have even had the poor grace to compare OWS to Tarhir Square. Those Egyptians were very focused and knew precisely what they wanted. They wanted Mubarek out. They gathered in numbers which made it impossible to remove them, and they were not holding some sort of party with group conscience discussions where everyone has a chance to talk about anything he has on his mind. There was one topic in that square; they wanted Mubarek out.

If you want to protest something, and have a real issue about which to do it, then by all means do so, but a group campout with your collective kitchens and libraries, with your tent cities and your donated blankets and making yourself at home is not a protest.