An article about the Occupy movements was, I suppose inevitable. I'm going to do this a little differently than I have in the past. I'm not going to make a prolonged argument, but instead I'm going to make a series of points that everyone who watches the Occupy situation evolve should keep in mind. I think it does a disservice to the movement to over-analyze it at this point, so I'm just covering how to engage and think about the protests.
The Biology of a Protest
I hear a lot of complaining from outsiders about the lack of goals, focus, or consistency within the Occupy movement. Perhaps it's just been too long since the 60's for people to remember how this works or perhaps those who lived through the 60's have been infected with hindsight and can't clearly remember the reality of how a protest movement evolves.
Real grass roots protests never start out as terribly organized. They never have metrics or specific goals or clearly identified leaders. They start out as pure rage. Rage, to me, is a combination of anger and frustration and just a hint of depression, a cocktail of ingredients that when mixed just right produces a powerful and driving emotion. Rage filtered by thoughtful people becomes protest. Rage unfiltered by thoughtless people becomes riots. What we have to look at right now in the Occupy movement is that this rage is being thoughtfully expressed. It may not have any conclusions yet, and is rough around the edges with certain kinds of flare ups in places that are irrational or stupid, but such is the organic nature of democracy.
We need to stop holding the protests and protesters accountable to a retroactive understanding of what the movement 'means'. Our hunger for understanding is ahead of the movements growth. The rage they feel is a fire that is heating the impurities out of the metal of their members and forging something that will come to represent them, but that process is nowhere near done. Patience. Show respect for the fact that we have a movement growing and that it has, for the most part, been both peaceful and thoughtful even if we're not sure what it means yet. It's okay to be uncertain. We're watching the birth of something, and like all birth, it's messy.
Lazy Bums
I had the opportunity to protest Scott Walker's union stripping bill here in Wisconsin. If you think protesting is easy, I would invite you to go do it for a while. Sure there are fun parts, but you walk and march a lot. You shout a lot. You carry a lot. You eat very little. Anxiety can be high because police can get forceful and occasionally abusive. There is a lot of stress and effort involved in protesting and the fact is its neither comfortable nor easy. When I was protesting, I would come home exhausted and eventually I got sick from the damp and cold. Lazy people do not take to the streets and protest. Lazy people take to Facebook and comment on things they don't understand.
Entitlement v. Opportunity
Certain right wing media outlets keep trying to frame this as a robin hood movement: That the protesters feel entitled to jobs or money.
They are entirely missing the point.
The rage of the Occupy protesters is not that there are rich people making money on Wall Street. It is not that they want some kind of 'share' of that wealth. It is because the protesters believe that a few powerful interests on Wall Street now utterly own their futures: that the hard work and personal responsibility they WANT to take in building their own lives will not have a fair chance because the owners of the top few companies and interests keep moving the goal posts and changing the rules of the game.
These protests are about demanding a fair baseline from which all players, rich and poor, have the opportunity to move upwards based on their own merits. This is a very libertarian and conservative friendly concept. But these protesters have come to realize that the players in the game are cheating. They are not playing by the same rules; they hold huge double standards by which individuals are responsible for themselves but then pull an about face and beg the government to save them when their own decisions nearly destroy them, abdicating the very responsibility they chide the protestors for not having. The hypocrisy and overt corruption of government, the financial sector and therefore the economy has the protesters feeling like they have no chance to succeed. They are angry about the interference in their opportunities, not the fact that they are poor or that others are rich. They want a chance to become whatever they are capable of without that interference.
...But That Protester Said/Did/Wore
See my point about about organic growth of an angry movement. You will see some unpleasant, reactionary, and stupid things from the protestors. This isn't a company with a refined message and PR department, it is a wide swath of the population expressing diffuse rage.
Damn Liberals
And Libertarians. And Conservatives. And Independents. It's fun to call any group of angry people in the street hippies or liberals, but in this case it's also wrong. The anger against the corruption of our financial system crosses political borders. One reason the group has not been willing to identify with a party, despite the Democrat's announced support, is just for this reason. If Democrats think these people are working for them, they're gravely mistaken.
How To Be An American
Wall Street was bailed out to the tune of 700 billion dollars by a government that, in theory, works for the whole of the American people. Wall Street recovered and has been on an economic high ever since turning the highest level of profits in American history. Meanwhile these same interests have been lobbying and funding the Republican congress to slam the door on spending and cut the throats of local governments who had the opportunity to step in and promote job growth even in classically bipartisan areas such as infrastructure.
So when the 'job creators' don't, and the government is paid not to intervene, and unemployment and job termination rates skyrocket while the largest corporations turn record profits, is there any real surprise that the majority of the population negatively affected by this feels betrayed?
We can't know what Occupy will achieve. It may burn out, it may become violent, it may become the pawn of a political party or person. It also may completely change our world and be the catalyst for a new rise of American prosperity. We simply can't know. What we can do is show some respect to the genuine anger that is being reflected there and honor the democracy that our soldiers and forefathers fought for in a respectful way whether you agree or disagree with the tone and style of it.
Occupy is America. How you treat them is what you think of this country and what it stands for.
The Biology of a Protest
I hear a lot of complaining from outsiders about the lack of goals, focus, or consistency within the Occupy movement. Perhaps it's just been too long since the 60's for people to remember how this works or perhaps those who lived through the 60's have been infected with hindsight and can't clearly remember the reality of how a protest movement evolves.
Real grass roots protests never start out as terribly organized. They never have metrics or specific goals or clearly identified leaders. They start out as pure rage. Rage, to me, is a combination of anger and frustration and just a hint of depression, a cocktail of ingredients that when mixed just right produces a powerful and driving emotion. Rage filtered by thoughtful people becomes protest. Rage unfiltered by thoughtless people becomes riots. What we have to look at right now in the Occupy movement is that this rage is being thoughtfully expressed. It may not have any conclusions yet, and is rough around the edges with certain kinds of flare ups in places that are irrational or stupid, but such is the organic nature of democracy.
We need to stop holding the protests and protesters accountable to a retroactive understanding of what the movement 'means'. Our hunger for understanding is ahead of the movements growth. The rage they feel is a fire that is heating the impurities out of the metal of their members and forging something that will come to represent them, but that process is nowhere near done. Patience. Show respect for the fact that we have a movement growing and that it has, for the most part, been both peaceful and thoughtful even if we're not sure what it means yet. It's okay to be uncertain. We're watching the birth of something, and like all birth, it's messy.
Lazy Bums
I had the opportunity to protest Scott Walker's union stripping bill here in Wisconsin. If you think protesting is easy, I would invite you to go do it for a while. Sure there are fun parts, but you walk and march a lot. You shout a lot. You carry a lot. You eat very little. Anxiety can be high because police can get forceful and occasionally abusive. There is a lot of stress and effort involved in protesting and the fact is its neither comfortable nor easy. When I was protesting, I would come home exhausted and eventually I got sick from the damp and cold. Lazy people do not take to the streets and protest. Lazy people take to Facebook and comment on things they don't understand.
Entitlement v. Opportunity
Certain right wing media outlets keep trying to frame this as a robin hood movement: That the protesters feel entitled to jobs or money.
They are entirely missing the point.
The rage of the Occupy protesters is not that there are rich people making money on Wall Street. It is not that they want some kind of 'share' of that wealth. It is because the protesters believe that a few powerful interests on Wall Street now utterly own their futures: that the hard work and personal responsibility they WANT to take in building their own lives will not have a fair chance because the owners of the top few companies and interests keep moving the goal posts and changing the rules of the game.
These protests are about demanding a fair baseline from which all players, rich and poor, have the opportunity to move upwards based on their own merits. This is a very libertarian and conservative friendly concept. But these protesters have come to realize that the players in the game are cheating. They are not playing by the same rules; they hold huge double standards by which individuals are responsible for themselves but then pull an about face and beg the government to save them when their own decisions nearly destroy them, abdicating the very responsibility they chide the protestors for not having. The hypocrisy and overt corruption of government, the financial sector and therefore the economy has the protesters feeling like they have no chance to succeed. They are angry about the interference in their opportunities, not the fact that they are poor or that others are rich. They want a chance to become whatever they are capable of without that interference.
...But That Protester Said/Did/Wore
See my point about about organic growth of an angry movement. You will see some unpleasant, reactionary, and stupid things from the protestors. This isn't a company with a refined message and PR department, it is a wide swath of the population expressing diffuse rage.
Damn Liberals
And Libertarians. And Conservatives. And Independents. It's fun to call any group of angry people in the street hippies or liberals, but in this case it's also wrong. The anger against the corruption of our financial system crosses political borders. One reason the group has not been willing to identify with a party, despite the Democrat's announced support, is just for this reason. If Democrats think these people are working for them, they're gravely mistaken.
How To Be An American
Wall Street was bailed out to the tune of 700 billion dollars by a government that, in theory, works for the whole of the American people. Wall Street recovered and has been on an economic high ever since turning the highest level of profits in American history. Meanwhile these same interests have been lobbying and funding the Republican congress to slam the door on spending and cut the throats of local governments who had the opportunity to step in and promote job growth even in classically bipartisan areas such as infrastructure.
So when the 'job creators' don't, and the government is paid not to intervene, and unemployment and job termination rates skyrocket while the largest corporations turn record profits, is there any real surprise that the majority of the population negatively affected by this feels betrayed?
We can't know what Occupy will achieve. It may burn out, it may become violent, it may become the pawn of a political party or person. It also may completely change our world and be the catalyst for a new rise of American prosperity. We simply can't know. What we can do is show some respect to the genuine anger that is being reflected there and honor the democracy that our soldiers and forefathers fought for in a respectful way whether you agree or disagree with the tone and style of it.
Occupy is America. How you treat them is what you think of this country and what it stands for.
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