9:45am | There’s no getting around it: the Occupy movement is based on discontent.

Whether this discontent is too general for the movement’s own good is another story. What we’re talking about here is simply whether shared discontent is a valid (i.e., constructive, as opposed to destructive) bonding experience.

If you’ve heard of the Occupy movement, you know that Occupiers across the country (and beyond) are basically discontent as hell with the politico-socio-economic system in which we’re all enmeshed — as OLBer Tammara Phillips put it last month at city council last month: “[W]e’ve awoken to the fact that our government in Washington, D.C., no longer represents us. Corporate money has vastly tipped the political scales, and individuals feel powerless to affect change through the normal paradigm” — and they’re not going to take it anymore. 

Or at least they’re going to hang out together and try to raise awareness. Whether that’s enough to change the world is another other story. But knowing that others share our concerns gives us a sense of validation, a belief that our concerns aren’t misguided. And being an active part of the Occupy movement means you’re having first-hand experience with such sharers. It’s not unrelated to group therapy. (And as Wittgenstein says, doing philosophy is therapeutic.)

An interesting sidecar attached to this rolling discussion is how the Occupy movement has attracted a homeless population. 

No doubt part of the explanation is simply pragmatic. If you’re homeless, being near or part of an Occupy encampment is an opportunity to get foodstuffs and to have the police leave you be.

Danny, who identifies himself as a veteran of the U.S. Army and homeless since 2008, told me he has been arrested nine times for sleeping in Lincoln Park, and that police arrest people every night for sleeping there. “They harass the homeless, every night, every day,” he said, claiming that police have long employed an interpretation of the City’s municipal code as prohibiting the use of blankets and sleeping bags as a means for that harassment. 

But now, with police having suspended that interpretation — as least as regards OLB — things are temporarily improved.

Pebbles, meanwhile, prefers the OLB encampment to the homeless shelter he usually occupies. “I’d rather be out here, [because there are] no rules, no curfew,” he told me last month. “And the food is good!” 

But for many, the appeal is much broader, and “misery loves company” takes on a different connotation. 

For starters, Occupiers are very sympathetic to the homeless population — clearly a subpopulation of the 99 percent. Moreover, these Occupiers, at least for the time they spend on the streets, are in a sort of literal solidarity with homeless folks. According to a homeless gentleman who identified himself as Enhancer Baptism, this alone forces the police to treat the homeless people on-site with more respect. 

“Because we’re homeless, we’re nobody,” he said. “[Police] do come and harass us wherever we are — take our sleeping bags and tell us, ‘Move on.’ … [But the OLB protest is] helping. See, [the police] don’t know if you’re homeless or a taxpayer; they don’t have a clue. Only because of this movement [is there a difference in treatment], knowing that y’all are protecting us because of the power and authority that the taxpayers have.” 

And there’s even more direct involvement between the homeless population and the OLBers. Members of the Occupy movement tend to be less observant of class distinctions than is the general population, and so eavesdrop on a discussion taking place at an Occupation and you’re plenty likely to hear homeless persons taking part. 

Not surprisingly, the discussions aren’t always upbeat. If you could quantify the various topics visited at Occupations around the nation, the general subject that would show up as the mode (to use a statistics term) would be disenfranchisement. And disenfranchisement — whether in the form of being homelessness or simply feeling that your democracy has been hijacked — is a form of misery.

While misery may love company, that desire can be productive. In this case perhaps it will produce a revolution. Or it may produce nothing more than a slight and temporary amelioration of the suffering for a few weary souls. 

In either case — or any in between — the Occupy movement is responsible for companionship that would not otherwise exist. How is that not a virtue?

Postscript:  For another angle on the reality on the ground at Occupy Long Beach, take a gander at this Daily 49er article by Julianne DiCaro.