Unoccupy Baltimore

Looks like the directionless Occupy Baltimore's free ride has come to an end. No more littering all over a public park. No more unsightly refugee camp sites. No more tent rapings. No more trash. No more unshaven college graduates living off of their parents' bank accounts.

If you've been hiding behind the mind-numbing fall schedule of network television programs, you probably don't know that Occupy Baltimore is our fair city's equivalent of the Occupy Wall Street movement. What is Occupy Wall Street? Most people think it's a move to protest the norms of our modern society - excessive corporate pay, the widening income gap between the working class of society and the privileged class of society, the growing mass of young people that cannot find work, and the throngs of people that do not have access to the latest 4G smart phones.

I've seen stories of these copycat protesters getting their messages out damning corporate America and all of the evils that it pervades. These messages, of course, are spread on Facebook and Twitter via iPads, iPhones, Macs, laptops, and other awesome technologies created by companies that are exempt from the ridicule.

But seriously, what are the demands of the Occupy movement? Will they 'decamp' when CNN can prove that executive pay has been decreased by 50%? When the jobless rates gets back to tolerable levels? When taxes on the rich get even higher? Or when all college graduates have their student loans repaid, a job handed to them, and a free iPad with the latest app showing them where the closest Starbucks is located? Or is this just a movement to utilize some downtime until something better comes along - like jobs?

I don't know what the answers are. I agree with most of the things they are saying, but there's seems to be no objective. It's not like the 1960's when our parents demanded that we withdrawal from Vietnam. It's not like the temperance movement when radical women demanded the prohibition of alcohol. When will the Occupy movement realize its goals? It's just not clear.

What we do know is that McKeldin Square in Baltimore, named after Theodore McKeldin, the last Republican Mayor of Baltimore, is clear of vagrants and is now clean. We can now walk through the park and enjoy it as citizens of Baltimore.