COMMENTARY | Several members of Occupy L.A., after having been released from jail, spent some time complaining about what they regard as their ill-treatment at the hands of the police. Some have even suggested that they will need therapy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
None of these poor, oppressed people was subjected to the stereotypical horrors that prisoners of conscience are sometimes treated with. There were no phone book beatings in the interrogation room. There was no waterboarding, electric shock or any other form of torture. The worse seems to consist of being forced to urinate in bags while secured by handcuffs.
Indeed the attitude of some of these occupiers seems to come right out of a Monty Python skit, the one in which King Arthur comes across a ragged communist who cries out, "Help, help, I'm being repressed" as Arthur lays about him with his sword. It is, after all, the violence inherent in the system.
Still, the pleas for the help of mental health professionals should not go unheeded. It has to be understood, though, that the therapy should delve into the root causes of the occupiers' issues and not from trauma alleged to have been inflicted at the hands of law enforcement. Having marks on ones wrist from handcuffs would not even get into the memoirs of someone who has been really mistreated by the police, say a Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela.
For instance, what deep seated psychosis persuaded the occupiers that setting up crime and disease ridden tent cities in the middle of an urban landscape and turning them into toxic waste dumps could affect positive political change? Was it some trauma from childhood? Was it something they were taught in America's dysfunctional education system? Was it too much TV watching and video game playing?
Having found the root causes of the occupier's mental health issues, work can therefore proceed on making them into really productive political protestors. Perhaps the tea party , which has proven the ability to create political change, not to mention clean up after themselves, can lend a hand with classes and workshops.
At the end of that process, the occupiers will be granted a new appreciation for self worth and responsibility. It would be worth the expense to undertake such a project.
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