The police are hired to serve and protect their communities.
Often, they fail to do this job in an exemplary fashion, either going to far or not going far enough to enforce the law. Because safety officer are human, they are liable to lapses in judgment, prejudice, or in some cases malevolence.
Nevertheless, I command the peace officers of Oakland, CA, who have taken on the anarchists in the midst of the Movement occupying the port city.
I wonder what Governor Jerry Brown is thinking right now. He did not leave Oakland in good standing when he was elected Attorney General. A divided city of extreme wealth and poverty, the City of Oakland is typical of urban communities who have endured the aftermath of statist policies which inevitably broaden corruption, limit freedom, and entrench unnecessary disparities of opportunity.
"Social justice" is an empty epithet which has inadvertently justified more injustice in the misguided spirit of helping the downtrodden. Any state action which benefits one group at the expense of the other is bound to lengthen fluidity and frequency of one's economic station in life. Yet such categories as income level are hardly fixed, but transient over time.
Occupy Everywhere cannot rush into demands because there is no one clear source of conflict. Raging against the "1%" is not a political platform, since the "1%" is still so ill-defined. If protesters want justice, they ought to begin by respecting the rights of LA City street vendors and traffic, which has been stymied and thwarted by this amorphous group's ongoing abuse of the First Amendment. Peaceable demonstration is a protected right. Shanty-town disruptions at the expense of law and order enjoy no such protection.