Is it true that the reasons being given by the Establishment for Occupy Philly to move are kind of BS? Yes, absolutely true.
Is it true that the large amounts of public dollars going toward the skating rink construction project should probably be going toward, oh, helping the homeless, funding education, literally ANYTHING else? Yes, true.
It is also questionable how much job creation this project will create, and probably true that we could create more jobs for less money.
BUT, I SUPPORTED MOVING BECAUSE we need to appear that we are on the side of the unions beyond any conceivable doubt, beyond any media distortion. We have to remember that we are a broad movement of the 99%, and if we start focusing on our little campsite to the exclusion of the mass movement, we are truly lost.
All of the above points are true, but if we refuse to move from a park where union construction is about to take place, it is far too easy for the media to distort that. We can whine and cry that it's not fair that the media will distort our movement, but it will, and we have to know how to strategically operate at their level. The problem is not just the media, but the fact that the flow of information to rank-and-file union members about Occupy happens through the union leadership, which is more prone to conservatism and alliances with the Establishment than the union rank-and-file.
And also because switching spaces would have had virtually no cost on the movement.
I'm going to call a spade a spade. Most of the time I support the Radical Caucus, but in this case, it seems they decided to forgo nuance and instead acted as a Purist Caucus. It seems like everyone at Occupy wants to be a rebel, but doesn't necessarily have a sophisticated view of what that means, so when given a choice between a "Radical" option and a "Reasonable Solution," there was naturally a herd reaction to go with the first choice.
I also have issues with the consensus process which forced the decision about the move to go on until midnight, during which the decision was clearly left to the purism-biased hardcore elite, rather than the working population that has to wake up early the next morning.
However, this is for clarification. We have other important tasks ahead of us, rendering a continued focus on this debate less productive than it used to be.
