Is mathbabe a terrorist or a lazy hippy? (#OWS)

Cathy O'Neil asks if Is mathbabe a terrorist or a lazy hippy? (#OWS).

O'Neil contends that the Occupy Movement is “scary” because;

It’s our ideas that threaten, not our violence. We ignore the rules, when they oppress and when they make no sense and when they serve to entrench an already entrenched elite. And ignoring rules is sometimes more threatening than breaking them.

This setting aside of rules was part the ethos of the Occupy Movement which O'Neil says were:

• that we must overcome or even ignore structured and rigid rules to help one another at a human level,
• that we must connect directly with suffering and organically respond to it as we each know how to, depending on circumstances, and
• that moral and ethical responsibilities are just plain more important than rules.

It is interesting that the State had to respond with violence against the Occupy Movement. The system had run out of ideas to counter the movement. And, yet, this is not the first time the State has done this:

• The Civil Rights Movement (see Deacons for Defense).
• The Anti-War Movement of the 1960's and 1970's
• Rachel Corrie

In 2005, I had posted a table about four (4) non-violent protests with their outcomes in Trucker Blockades - One Day On. The interesting one for me has always been the Rosenstrasse protests which succeeded against the Nazi regime. But that protest was not a clash of ideas. The regime could live with the outcome.

The ideas raised by the Occupy Movement threaten the Capitalist system. Other ideas in the past did the same when the social conservatives sought to maintain the status quo. The Unhappy Marriage of Capitalism and Conservatism reflected on the tension between the political and economic forces within the Capitalist elite. In many times in the past, Capitalism has successfully absorbed these new progressive forces after trying to violently supress them.