Hello Occupiers.
You make me happy. You really do. I love your passion, I love your growing numbers. I even kinda like your incessant honking and refusal to wear deodorant. Most of all I love that you are doing SOMETHING. Action in democracy is vital, and boy howdy. You are acting.
But seriously. Let’s sit a minute and take a look at what is going down. You’re against the inequality in America, yeah? How 1% have it all and the rest of us poor shmucks are the remaining 99% who have to work for whatever levels of success we have? You want the rich to be taxed, and corporations to be held to the same levels of financial responsibility as the rest of us. I get that. In part I strongly agree with you.
But if that is what you want to change, this is not the way to do it.
The more I hear from, and read about, and speak to you, the more I’m convinced that you are very much like a group of peasants from the middle ages who are declaring a castle to be under siege by grouping in the middle of said castle. Commerce is swirling around you and you are stopping nothing.
Try this:
Step 1: Take your 99%, and boycott a single company that you feel most exemplifies the oppressive policies that you despise. Make a short but plain list of demands (health care for their workers, a percentage of their profits given back to communities and/or charities, a commitment to hire X number of fresh college graduates or those who have been unemployed by X date, whatever you feel would be most beneficial). Boycott their stores, shame their biggest buyers, inflict a financial hurt on the machine.
Step 2: Once your demands have been met, move on to a different company and start a new boycott. But not until you have compliance from Company #1. Don’t spin your wheels.
Step 3: Educate yourself regarding the mentalities of your current politicians, and the policies of your Federal, State and Local governments. Vote your butts off.
Money and votes are what will affect change. Chants and signs will not. You are not using your voice, you are making a statement. Statements are easily ignorable. Ask the fashion industry.
But you’re on the right track, I think. You have people standing up, and that is a very big and exciting thing. Now get them moving in the right direction and you will change the world.
Mel.
P.S. Comparing yourselves to people in Egypt or Libya or the like is just insulting. Please stop that.
