Occupy Boston was given orders to clear out tonight or else.  On the one hand it may be a good thing since winter is coming and it’s unclear how well the protest would handle cold weather safely.  There’s a new effort to help people in foreclosed homes that could use help too.  Still it pisses me off that the police will once again be well-armored and armed and march in to forcibly prevent people from their constitutional right to assemble.  Some of you may disagree with the encampments but I think they were genius.  In the 50s & 60s and earlier, mass protests and marches were very effective at influencing opinion and bringing about positive social change.  In my lifetime however there are countless marches on Washington (almost weekly events) that just seem to be par for the course, easily ignored by politicians and the news media (unless organized by a media figure like Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart).  In 2004 I walked around Boston during the Democratic National Convention and was horrified that demonstrators were contained in a “free-speech zone” which was a pen under an elevated railway and surrounded by a 12-foot chainlink fence, completely invisible to the delegates and news media.  How then can anyone assemble peacefully for protest when the powers that be have made it so easy to contain and sweep under the rug?  The Occupy movement’s genius is bringing the protests to the doorsteps of corporations who have gained an unfair level of power in our nation’s government.  The camps were not just a one day “March on [Insert Corporation Here]” that could be easily contained and ignored.  You’ll remember that Occupy Wall Street was in place for more than two weeks before the mainstream media gave it any attention at all. And they were able to get their message out.  For the first time in my life, topics that were verboten in political discourse in the US were being discussed widely - wealth inequality, corporate personhood, corporate welfare, workers’ rights and holding to the true ideals of democracy among them.  And no, they did not come preaching solutions to all the problems but worked instead to allow many voices to be heard and discuss the options.  In a way OWS may have already succeeded by getting the message out and with the public discourse reoriented I feel more optimistic about the political state of our nation than I have in years.  Still, the fascistic responses of police armed like soldiers coming down to brutalize peaceful demonstrators terrifies me and makes me fear for the future as well.