Occupy Oakland took over the City Council meeting again Wednesday night and railed at our local government, which was in the middle of grappling with a huge state take back that threatens many of our jobs and future economic development. Funny, I can still remember when the Occupy movement gave us all hope and breathed fresh air into our stagnant political environment.

Not so anymore, at least here in Oakland.

If you ask most city residents what OO is doing, they’ll say, don’t know, don’t care. If you ask Oakland’s progressive community with a long-time history of struggling for civil rights, civil liberties, economic justice and democracy with a small “d,” what would they say?

I say it’s time to stop besmirching our movement. It’s time to stop threatening our city. It’s time to stop having tantrums in or around our City Hall. For me, it’s also time to stop ignoring my democratic choice to pick my City Council and my mayor.

While we’re at it, can you really be encouraging and celebrating the - as another Oaklander put it - testosterone-fueled stalking of our first female mayor? Can you really be wreaking havoc, or hoping to - if you had the damned numbers, - in Chinatown every Saturday night-oh-especially during Lunar New Year celebrations?

Wait … I almost laughed when you valiantly challenged the City Council to call off the cops to save money during the "Fu-- the Police" marches. Really, isn’t that the point? You’re making the damn revolution playing tag with OPD every Saturday night, vandalizing businesses, encouraging arson and you want the city to call off the cops so you can do that unencumbered?! But I didn’t laugh cause I was just too pissed off.

Listening to our country's president the other night, I reminded myself that he probably wouldn’t have been able to issue a populist (to the extent he did) challenge to the Republicans without the burgeoning resistance that Occupy Wall Street represented. I will always be grateful to all the folks who took time out from their own private struggle, who unleashed their creativity to form flash mobs, paint signs, write skits and ultimately, to risk arrest and injury to bring us to our senses and out onto the streets.

But like first love, we were all on our best behavior then as we moved as one down the overpass to the port one glorious summer (California summer, that is, November) evening. Even then, we were deluding ourselves as young lovers often do.

What was the reason for shutting down our port? Was it the workers in Longview, the truckers without contracts, or a reaction to the horrendous police repression? Reaction only works for so long as motivation. Trying to make us believe that every interaction with the city and even OPD was brutal is like trying to convince us that our only love can never be wrong.

One quote I remember well as I stood with a group of peacekeepers the morning of the second eviction was an astonished, “I’ve never had such a positive interaction with the police.” So the brutal second eviction - just another lie we tell each other to keep the love from dying?

Have the police harassed protestors and arrested them for trivialities? I believe they have.

Sadly, we all will pay for that harassment, and we are sickened by our police force’s inability to see the need to change its relationship to our citizens (residents = citizens). Do we think these little hissy fits in our streets will fix that? Come on.

Before I fall out of love altogether with a movement that was supposed to represent all of us, please stop issuing threats to close down our port or our City Hall. Remember, threats can’t make me love you again. They can only make me flee your touch.