Category Archives: Occupy

Occupy the garden shed

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If you do, make sure you don’t pay anyone for the privilege because, if you do, he will be fined and you will be kicked out.

From here:

A B.C. woman has been fined $500 for renting out a garden shed to a homeless couple and their three dogs.

A power cord that ran from the woman’s house in Kelowna, B.C., supplied electricity to the small metal building, for which she was charging rent of $200 per month.

It’s not clear how long the people and pets had been living in the shed. Bylaw officers warned the owner two weeks ago it was not suitable accommodation, but the advice was ignored, said city spokesman Stephen Fleming.

The mistake the homeless couple and their dogs made was they weren’t making a political statement. Had they been occupying the shed illegally and put up a sign to the effect that they were the 99%, no-one would have touched them, Anglican clergy would have preached sermons about them and celebrities would have paid them a visit for a photo-op.

Lacking that foresight, they are now not only homeless but shedless – although the Kelowna Gospel Mission has generously offered them a place at its shelter.

Occupy Cuba

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Thirteen Cuban dissidents have occupied a catholic church in Havana to protest the Cuban government’s inhumane treatment of political prisoners (read Armando Valladares’ unforgettable, if harrowing, account in Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag), and repression of its population.

Naturally, since the protest is not against capitalism, we will not hear a peep from any of the bishops or clerics who lent their support to the other occupy movements. Why is this? Because the mainline ecclesiastical hierarchy is more interested in ideology, money and the distribution of money than it is in people.

From here:

Thirteen Cuban dissidents have occupied a Catholic church in Havana, demanding an audience with Pope Benedict when he visits Cuba later this month.

The dissidents want the Pope to press Cuba’s communist government on issues such as the release of political prisoners and an end to repression.

The Catholic Church in Cuba condemned the protest, saying places of worship should not be used for political demonstrations.

The Pope is due in Cuba on 26 March.

Dissident William Cepera said the eight women and five men had entered the Church of Charity of Cobre in central Havana on Tuesday night.

 

 

Occupy Christians removed from the steps of St. Paul’s

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From here:

A group of Anglican clerics have called on St Paul’s Cathedral to fully explain why praying Christians were dragged by police from the steps of the famous landmark during the eviction of the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp.

Five praying Christians were forcibly removed from the cathedral steps during the operation, despite the fact that an eviction order had only been granted for the land opposite St Paul’s which is owned by the City of London Corporation.

To some degree the Occupy protesters can be excused their incoherent protest against capitalism; the poor benighted souls, brains addled with Marxism and marijuana, could scarcely be expected to know better.

Christians, though, should. Praying on the steps of St. Paul’s was an act of asinine vane posturing; did they think that God wouldn’t be able to hear them from inside?

They should have been the first to be arrested.

Occupiers urinate on a cross

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Presumably, this is an attempt by the Occupy movement to further ingratiate itself with The Episcopal Church.

Oddly enough, even though any minute I’m expecting to read a statement from an Occupy admiring bishop explaining how this furthers the church’s mission in some obscure way, it hasn’t worked.

The Occupiers have been asked to leave within two weeks. This gives them plenty of time to come up with new mischief with which to tax the limits of the gracious pastoral response that benighted clerics feel compelled to extend to anyone muttering the incantation “poor and marginalised”.

The Occupiers also stole part of a baptismal font; still, what more could they do in two weeks?

Arson.

From here:

There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.

When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.

In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”

The pastor of the church did not return calls.

At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.

[….]

The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.

Occupy St. Paul’s invited into a school

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From here:

The group behind the anti-capitalist protests outside St Paul’s Cathedral is to be invited into schools to teach pupils how to start their own campaigns.

Teenagers will learn about the Occupy movement, which has for months blighted London with its ‘Tent City’ protest, as part of their citizenship lessons.

Critics have attacked the move, warning head teachers it is ‘dangerous’.
It is feared that protesters could use the opportunity to indoctrinate youngsters and gain fresh recruits.

[….]

Mr Kelsey-Fry insisted that pupils will not be indoctrinated with Occupy’s beliefs, adding: ‘We want them to further their own ways of engagement. It’s not a recruiting situation.’

That’s a relief; for a moment I thought that the only reason the tent brigade could possibly have for going into schools was to convince children that they, too, should pick up their tents and Occupy.

What I had forgotten is that they would probably not be allowed to do what must be done for an effective recruitment drive: urinate on someone. Not on the first visit, anyway.

A vestige of Occupy Toronto lives on

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From here:

TORONTO – A dozen Occupy Toronto members set up a small tent city adjacent to City Hall Tuesday to protest the cuts in the city’s 2012 budget.

Late Wednesday, they were still there and determined to have their voices heard.

Why do you need a tent to make your voice heard? Are they talking tents?

This ragtag assortment is protesting the Toronto budget cuts. Except, that is, for Wes Trotman who seems to be on a camping vacation and has just lost his way:

Wes Trotman is camping out, but admits he doesn’t know anything about the budget.

St Paul's occupiers to be evicted

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The Occupy St. Paul’s protesters have lost their court battle and will be evicted.

Reaction from the church was predictable:

The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, commenting on the ruling, said: ‘Whatever now happens as a result of today’s judgment, the protest has brought a number of vital themes to prominence.

‘These are themes that the St Paul’s Institute remains committed to exploring and, now through London Connection, we want to ensure they continue to have a voice.

‘Bishops cannot have all the answers to what are complex economic problems. What we can do, however, is broker communications and make sure that a proper connection between finance and its ethical and moral context is found.’

It will be a profound relief to the clergy of St. Paul’s to return to the main mission of the Church of England: criticising capitalism from comfy armchairs, sherry in hand, without the tedious inconvenience of having to wade through a tide of smelly protesters first.

 

Bishop Philip Poole illustrates the essence of the Occupy Movement

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From here (Page 12):

The Occupy movement began as—and, fundamentally, continues to be—a protest against the growing gap between rich and poor, the increasingly appalling concentration of wealth in the hands of a few at the expense of many.

And here is Bishop Philip Poole giving his pictorial illustration to the occupiers in St. James Park on the increasingly appalling concentration of wealth in the hands of bishops who earn over $100,000 per year. While the poor soul puffing on – well, whatever he is puffing on – can’t even afford a chair to sit on.

A permanent tent may be erected in St. Paul’s

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From here:

He [Richard Chartres] said the encampment, that is currently fighting eviction orders, should leave some kind of tribute to the anti-capitalist message the protesters have been trying to get across.

It has been suggested a tent could be erected in the church itself where people can come together to discuss a more fair way to distribute income from the banks and work with companies to improve corporate responsibility.

The Rt Rev Chartres has called for the protesters to move on but he has also talked about the importance of listening to the powerless and looking after the poor, especially during a recession and at Christmas.

It’s taken 20 centuries to progress from the money changers to the money redistributors, so it’s high time the church which has made a religion of socialism installed an idol to its god.