By Bob Boldt

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The iron boot of law and order has finally come to rest on the face of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It looks like the occupation and the protests that have captured the imagination of peace loving, democratic people worldwide is being exterminated as the locations in New York, Oakland and other cities are being cleared by jackbooted storm troopers under the direction of mayors bowing to the very interests the movement opposes.

We are now forced to revisit a terrible axiom: What shall be done when the avenues of peaceful, non-violent revolution are no longer available? Are we expected to fold our tents and go home? I have tried to emphasize that I am not an advocate of violence, yet with every violent act of the President, both political parties and city officials, the irrelevance of non-violence continues to be driven home.

With every drone strike, every act of torture we commit and with every caving to corporate power, our government asks us with a Bush-like smirk. What are you going to do about it? The union of government authority and corporate power (that Mussolini first labeled fascism) is on the march. None of the 99% are safe from this runaway perversion that has now become the next great step in the mad rush of civilization to destroy humanity and our life-sustaining planet.

I was quite frankly surprised by the amount of nearly universal enthusiasm the Occupy Wall Street movement produced. I expected it to see it either degenerate into the internecine strategic squabbles the left seems traditionally heir to or to wither with the first gusts of impending winter. Neither seemed to occur.

The occupations drew a constant stream of celebrities, journalists, and progressive politicians eager to lend support. I was beginning to change my mind about the possibility of non-violent protest as OWS linked up with McKibben’s opposition to the X-L Pipeline.

That is history now. Democracy (which has almost always been an illusion in this damned country) now resides as garbage in a New York landfill. The burning question for us is what’s next?