dear Occupier -
okay, so i may be outing myself as out-of-touch or crustily approaching my midlife point or encountering the new viewpoints that can't help but come along with a baby, and further my opinon may be influenced by the fact that the building i work in for my day job is directly across from where the occupy gaggle at chapman and lownsdale parks sat tarp-covered for several weeks, where i was afforded a close-up view of all the day-to-day dealings, watching as admirable idealism was joined by gathering streams of wanderers, miscreants and drug-using hirsute bandana-faces and this further pains me since at core i've felt mostly liberal my whole life but recent events force me to this moment in time so I'll just be blunt and say it: the occupy movement has reached the height of ridiculousness.
the disconnect between ideals and impact is staggering. hundreds and thousands of City dollars spent to police and/or clean and/or monitor their movements as you rally your venom fists in the air to protest...what exactly? no rights are being violated. no peoples or races or creeds are being oppressed or at least they aren't being oppressed by the police or by the citizens of portland trying to cross the steel bridge on trimet or the max to get to work. the political-banking-one-percent stranglehold on everyday life is undeniable but you - occupier - are not doing anything to dilute or neutralize it. you are not being watched by banks or wall street or the political-industrial complex. you are not changing peoples minds for the positive. instead you've squandered a fair amount of justifiable rage and alienated a shit-ton of people who may have initially agreed with you. You are acting like petulant, entitled children. Disperse, re-gather, politicize. The only way to change the game is to play it.
over it
love
b
3 comments:
The blocking of traffic, especially for mass transit like the Max is infuriating and seemingly counterproductive to any group's message that partakes in those activities.
That said, I keep telling myself that: a) the OWS 'movement' has changed the national discourse on financial / economic policy in the U.S. and this only in and of itself has been greatly beneficial b) the individual occupy sites have all taken in homeless / vagrants that were not part of the original intent; however, it would have been highly disingenuous of them to ostracize these folks (as, let's face it, the teabaggers would have), so you do have to recognize this as a necessary evil.
Hopefully they'll realize that 24/7 occupation of parks and street blockages are not the optimum ways to continue to get their message out though.
agreed a) the focus nationally appears currently to be on the antics of occupiers or police in response to occupiers instead of the bank-rage that kicked this whole thing off. a message, a statement, a leader, anything could have gone a long way to mainstream the movement or at least not dismiss it. Many wanted to dismiss it from the start and - my opinion - recent events make it easily dismissible and forgettable. b) yes
Daily Kos showed polling which indicated that national support for OWS has dwindled due to what you're referring to - it's a shame.
Also, don't know if you were following the local updates on the Mercury blog, but the commenters there... heck, even the journalists, were largely antagonistic towards the occupiers for the last few weeks.
Having said all that - what've I done? Zip. Consider me the 98% (one of the 99% who haven't really done anything even though they realize the system is broke).
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