Yesterday's Suffolk Superior Court ruling denying Occupy Boston an injunction against eviction from Dewey Square brings Boston a step closer to doing what cities across the nation have been doing the last several weeks: trying to shut down the Occupy movement.

Mayor Menino has taken to offering Occupiers advice as a prelude to evicting them: "If they had one issue, they could be a very powerful operation.  They don’t have one issue; they have several issues.”

The Mayor also noted: "You know, mayors can’t do much about what they are talking about. It’s Congress and the US Senate that can make these decisions, but nobody is talking to them at all.”

Occupy Wall Street, he's saying, should go occupy Washington.

But the innovation and the power of Occupy Wall Street is in actually occupying Wall Street.  The Occupy meme is likewise powerful precisely because it is not a one-off march on Washington.  These days even a hundred thousand people on the mall elicits a big ol' been-there-done-that yawn.  As we saw in the Bush years some of the largest war protests in the nation's history were very easily ignored by the media and lawmakers alike.

And the Occupy Movement, lacking a media sponsor, was ignored at first, too.  Fox, sponsor of the Tea Party Movement, refused to cover it (even to mock it), and the other Cable networks, which generally follow Fox's lead in their bid for ratings, once again followed suit. 

If it had been a one-off protest in Washington — even a day of satellite protests nationwide, we would not even remember it, much less be talking about it today. The fact that, as Menino rightly points out, there isn't one single issue but a whole contellation of entrenched inequalities and encroaching injustices Occupiers want to talk about, would only make a march the more ineffectual.
 
A sustained presence is what was — is — called for.  Because, as goofy as the human mic and dancing fingers are (and they are), what the idealists of Occupy are doing is speaking complicated truths to an increasingly monolithic power, a  power that has become calcified and impervious to the will of the people.

The degree to which power has been consolidated over the past 25 years (and exponentially in the last ten) has shut down the possibility of serious discussion on — surprise! — precisely the issue of consolidation of power, which is manifest not only in the astromical wealth gap but in the degree to which our public discourse is now dictated by those on the other side of the Great Divide, who write the laws for a kept Congress and own and operate the media (even public broadcasting has a host of the vilest corporate sponsors imaginable — from Exxon Mobil and Monsanto to Bank of America and McDonald's — to whom they are in some manner accountable). 

In an environment of near-complete consolidation and control of politics and media, the ability of individuals to gather in public spaces to express discontent is more important than ever, regardless of inconvenience or cost (two of the most common reasons cities are giving to shut down Occupy encampments).  Virtual crowds can be ignored.  Real crowds, not so much.  Or only to a point.

And it has to do with being physically present.  When the disembodied discourse has become totally untethered from the reality of the daily life of ordinary people — our bodies become our last bastion.  When people go — physically — into the breach, it's a potent reminder of what is really at stake.

That's why the presence of individuals at Occupy sites speaks volumes.  Like the conscience of the nation they speak to the sense, sometimes explicit but mostly elusive to articulate, that there is something so wrong none of us any longer even pretends to believe the lies we use to cover it up.  Occupiers' willingness to literally embody that sense of outrage is what makes them a danger to the Powers That Be.

Make no mistake, the Powers That Be have been pushing the middle class to the brink to see just where the breaking point is.  And their contempt for the rest of us has grown palpable.  The fact that Occupy is pushing back, while an act of collective courage, is also an indication of the degree of desperation among a populace that finally grasps its political impotence. 

A favorite refrain of self-identified liberals during the Bush years was:  "where's the outrage???"  Occupy, though it came too late for Bush, answered this question, quite literally.  (One reason it came during Obama's term is that Obama didn't in the end acknowledge this question or answer it himself.  And when all his soaring rhetoric produced neither hope nor change, the impatience of those who had believed he would address the outrages finally boiled over.)

The point is: despite advice from well-meaning allies that suggest it may be time to move on, Occupation is the source of the Occupy Movement's power.  The physical presence of Occupiers is the source of any successes the movement has had and the only hope of success for the movement in the future. 

The media would love to find two or three "Occupy" personalities to co-opt (and, believe me, there are many Occupiers out there who would relish the celebrity), and incorporate their "views" into the mainstream monologue.  As the Occupiers disperse these personalities would represent cultural stereotypes, and political speech would be transformed by the magic of modern media into the anodyne entertainment we've come to expect and love.   

But it's the presence of bodies, as in warfare, that lends real heft to ideas and convictions.  And, because of the undeniability of bodies, elicits physical force in response.  The methods we've seen so far of physically removing Occupiers is the most powerful indictment of the power structure they seek to "out" that seeks to suppress them. 

Witnessing physical assaults of the sort we saw in Oakland, Berkeley, and UC Davis was a wake-up call.  Not only can we not NOT have a response, the nature of our response then requires real reflection.   

We fear nothing — not even tyranny — so much as physical violence to our persons.  Which is why organized violence is at the heart of the durability of all tyrannical regimes.  Violence — and the constant threat of violence — is the operating mode of tyranny.  When we see our government utilizing violence against nonviolent protesters, it exposes a truth about our freedoms in a way that is immediately comprehnsible and compelling. 

When we see violence (I won't use the redundant term "excessive force" which bespeaks the depth of doublethink in our current culture) as a response to political speech it exposes in a way nothing else can the organizing principle and priorities of power in society.  When people who look like you and me are beaten with batons or casually assaulted with pepper spray by anonymous stormtroopers, the symbolic reality that undergirds the order of society is suddenly made very real — it's given flesh.  Flesh that bruises, burns and breaks.

It will sound, uh, spectatorial (if that's a word) to say that the 99% needs to feel your pain, Occupiers, but they do.   

Mayor Menino's next move will be to evict you from Dewey Square.  That's clear.  The Mayor has never been a fan of Occupy Boston.  Recall his "I will not tolerate civil disobedience in the city of Boston" bluster after evicting early Occupiers from a parcel on the Greenway?  Well, now he's got a judge who agrees with him.  One who doesn't see the Occupation as an exercise in free speech.

But Judge McIntyre is wrong. Your presence speaks volumes. The proof is in the pudding. Try as they might, the Powers That Be obviously can't ignore you.