As much as I admire him, my relationship with Leonard Pitts is…complex.

Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist whose syndicated column appears regularly in the Trib, is a master of the short essay and a champion of many righteous causes.

That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he writes, of course. Our relationship–if you call forking over money to hear him speak at UPS a relationship–has more to do with craft and less to do with ideology.

In last Sunday’s column (11/27), Pitts denounced the infamous police pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis. Others, including myself, have likewise nibbled at …

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A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. But a thousand words would be woefully insufficient to contain the outrage against the campus cops depicted here in the now infamous UC Davis pepper spraying incident.

Last Friday afternoon UC Davis students staged a protest an Occupy Wall Street protest, specifically targeting the sharp increase in tuition. During their sit-in police in riot gear responded to their protests. In response, the students linked arms and refused to move. One of the officers in the viral Youtube video (585,727 views and growing) produced a riot-sized canister of …

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On any given weekend, anywhere in the country, there is a wild teenage party. When the roof starts to shake and glass starts to break, the cops show up.

“It wasn’t my fault – I didn’t invite them!”

This is the typical explanation that the anxious and naïve teenager gives in reference to the few party crashers whose outrageous behavior has ruined everybody’s good time.

It’s an immature and lame response, but understandable with teenagers. It does not, however, excuse adults who provide a similar venue for all-comers. The  Occupy Wall Street protest’s peaceful protesters made numerous similar comments, none of …

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The answer: 415 million

The question: What are the number of hits when you google “Occupy Wall Street”?

The national frenzy, which physically occupies both Main Street’s city halls and Wall Street itself, has our collective attention. This amorphous phenomenon has resonated in the consciousness of millions of people in our country and throughout the world.

Not a bad effort for six weeks.

Now that the honeymoon is over there are many wondering where Occupy Wall Street is heading. I wondered that myself in my last column (“OWS: Throwing Rocks and Losing Relevance”), a piece in which I was sharply …

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On September 17, 2011, Americans first occupied Wall St. and nobody cared.

But in the days and weeks since then the protest has fanned out through the U.S., capturing headline news as well as the innately rebellious imagination of this country. Despite the knee jerk “outrage” against this movement by some right-leaning media (okay, I”m talking about Fox), Occupy Wall Street has distilled the sentiments of those leaning left, right and, most importantly, those of us in the middle.

The Occupy movement is a powerful representation of the collective frustration many people now harbor for the political process which …

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