The Portland City Council’s decision to deny a permit for Lincoln Park came as no surprise. Plans are now under way to pursue justice using different strategies.

This is a positive response to the City Council’s action.

The combination of political timidity and the perils of winter call for this. It underscores that choosing alternative strategies toward the same goal is a mark of wisdom, not surrender. This is not a defeat but a call to wise and determined adaptability.

What distresses me most is the inability of the 1 percent to understand that the momentum of Occupy is not a seasonal fling put on by people with nothing better to do. It is a current manifestation of precisely what the prophets of Scripture (Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, etc.) were up to – speaking truth in the cause of justice.

Looking at Occupy from the shores of history will show the Occupy movement to be a radical (which means “going to the roots”) response to human need, not a temporary phenomenon of the disenchanted. If you pay attention to the diversity represented in Occupy, you see a mix of Republicans, Democrats and independents, young people and senior citizens, people of different races and levels of education, people who find common ground and community in their commitment to restore integrity in the way our nation deals with its citizens.

Voices will not be silenced. Committed people will not fade into oblivion. Down the road somewhere, positive change will occur and continue.

Spring will come, and somewhere, somehow, the tents of good people will again return. What is broken (our economic system) will be transformed, and the 1 percent will know the 99 percent are not their enemies, people neither to be ignored nor feared. The integrity of our country is on the line.

Robert P. Patterson is a resident of Topsham.