If I were occupying this is what I would be “fighting” for:
- equal access to affordable health care
- student loan forgiveness programs
- gay rights
- energy independence and investment in innovative alternative energy solutions
I am 100% behind the “99%” standing up for these types of things and…
This isn’t even a direct response to you, but one of the things I find frustrating about the Occupy Wall Street backlash is that we’re expecting something from them that is unlikely, unfair, and unrealistic — a unified message.
Every one in Occupy Wall Street has a reason to be there. They’re not all the same. Some people are there for universal health care, some are there because they feel the wealth gap is astronomically large and creates an unfair system, some are tired of feeling like their votes, their citizenry, doesn’t mean anything because lobbyists have created a government in which health, safety, the environment and science are powerless in the face of profits. Some are there because they have lost their jobs. Even look at your own reasons for “occupying” and you’ll see that they are vastly different from each other.
So to ask them to unify their message is impossible, unless their message was, “Something is broken and we need to fix it.” But that’s not a satisfactory message for most people although it is the most honest and true. And the problem is, they don’t want just one thing fixed, and maybe that’s not a problem at all. Maybe that’s a fundamental understanding that no issue evolves in a vacuum. They are all connected and they all need to be addressed.
The other problem is that it’s easy to complain. What do we want this to look like? We’re only okay with it when it’s convenient, quiet, easy to ignore. It takes a lot for someone to protest for a single day, for a single hour. It takes an immense amount of anger and feelings of helplessness. Now imagine doing it for a week. Months.
We praise this sort of behavior in other countries, women going on sex-strikes, refusing to leave national buildings, but when we see it in our country we think, “Gee, can’t you just play the game a little better? Just suck it up and let the rest of us go on with our lives?” I’m sure these women didn’t hold their signs for twelve hours a day and stop only to sleep. The Occupy Wall Street protestors don’t always know what they’re doing, but they don’t need to. They’re there. They showed up. That’s half the battle. They can continue to figure out what they’re doing as they go along.
It’s not perfect. There are lots of dirty things going down in these Occupations even outside of the police brutality, like sexual assault and rape. But until someone gets another movement going that is just as strong and is more effective, I say we support their cause. Even if we don’t agree with everything they say all of the time. Part of the movement, part of life, is understanding that we don’t always have all the answers, but the only way to find them is to try.
//soapbox of the day
