I am going to do my best to treat this post as a dinner table and try to keep politics off of it. No one likes to mix discussions on tax reform and banking excesses with their meatloaf. At the same time, I realize that in trying to write-up my experiences yesterday it will be rather impossible not to allow politics to leak in even just a little bit, so fair warning to all you conservatives out there: I'm very likely to piss you off. Either move on, or if you like to have the bile raised in your throat (and I know most of you do), keep reading and curse at me to your heart and gall bladder's content. I'm not apologizing to you. At the same time, I do not intend this post as a means to proselytize; there is nothing that pisses me off more than someone telling me how to think and I'm not about to do it to anyone else. My beliefs are going to come out here, but you can take them or leave them. I do not need you to agree with me - just to respect what I am trying to do.
I am working under the assumption that at this point that all of you have heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement. I first read about it when it was first starting to coalesce at Zuccotti Park (now referred to as Liberty Park by its occupiers), though at the time it was all in relation to naked performance art and body painting. Naked ladies are pretty threatening to a country full of prudes. But in the weeks since I have been keeping an eye on the NY bloggers, and I was outraged as anyone when the police started penning the protesters and raining down on tthem indiscriminately with pepper spray. And though I don't agree with everything they have to say (I'm getting to that), and there is a frustrating lack of purpose (I don't even know what it will take to get the protesters to go home. My inner wise ass says: the first blast of a New York winter), I completely sympathize with what they are trying to do. As the great George Carlin once declared: scratch any cynic, and you'll find a disappointed idealist."
And one of the changes I have noticed in myself that has alarmed me quite a bit is my growing apathy. Apathy can be a great weapon since there isn't a single person on this planet who likes to be told that they matter so little that the best reaction they can hope for is a half-hearted shrug. Anger doesn't work the way it used to; any strong reaction at all - whether approving or negative - is still acknowledgment that they've gotten to you. But what seems to get to people the most in this age of who-can-yell-the-loudest rhetoric is when they've ranted and raved until their face turns blue only to find their supposed audience has turned around and started talking to someone else. In most cases it seems like the person wonders if perhaps they aren't yelling loud enough, but that still indicates they know they're doing something wrong.
But at the same time, apathy is self-corrosive. An apathetic person doesn't have a leg to stand on. And for someone like me who used to believe in something, you're kind of disgusted with yourself for remaining on the sidelines, passively accepting whatever bullshit decision comes down the pipeline due to your own cynicism. It's not like me to do anything passively, but I have grown so disenchanted with the political system that I'd rather save my breath and take a nap than jump into the melee. For lack of a non-gendered metaphor, it's like cutting the other person off at the knees and slicing off your own balls at the same time.
So even without a cogent message, tangible demands, a fairly high concentration of people who just enjoy complaining, the Occupy Wall Street movement has some real appeal for me. I just need to get out there and do something than justifying my laziness with cynicism. No one else is getting out there and saying anything about the giant wage gap in this country, about the prohibitive cost of a college degree that still doesn't guarantee you a job, or the fact the elusive idea of the American dream has become no more than a bottom line written in black ink. Sure, people say stuff about it on the internet, but everyone bitches and moans on the internet about everything; it's time to take this shit out to the streets.
I have thought about joining the protests for a week or so now, and I'll admit to some cowardice about getting pepper sprayed or even arrested. But the more I thought about it, the more I grew to like the idea. I'm generally of the opinion that if you wake-up in the morning still agreeing with a thought you had the night before that you're in the clear. I feel it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I don't often act on impulse; I need a little time to digest and mull my thoughts over before I'll make a move. And it so happened that a friend invited me out to Brooklyn yesterday evening, and I figured I may as well head into the city and check-out the demonstrations in the afternoon. I was hearing rumblings earlier in the week that the Occupy Wall Street-ers were thinking of moving the protest up to Washington Square Park on Saturday, and once I saw final confirmation of a "general assembly" as they're calling it at 3pm, I made plans to head down.
And if they were looking to attract further participants (particularly young people), they couldn't have picked a better place than Washington Square. Check out this map:
All of those purple buildings? They are affiliated with NYU, many of them dormitories for undergrads. And young people were out in full force yesterday. Washington Square is also a pretty cool place, and also the setting of a really adorable video of people helping a little lost robot as it wandered around the grounds. Unfortunately the links I can find for that video are all down; you know I would've embedded it here if I could find it.
Just one short thing before I get to the protests; I went running before I caught the train to Manhattan, and I was stopped dead in my tracks by one house's Halloween decorations. They had a pretty standard graveyard going in their front yard with the addition of actual names on the headstones. I'll list a few here; just a heads up, one is not like the others.
Adolf Hitler
Josef Stalin
Osama bin-Laden
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
Johnnie Cochran
I think you know that it was the last one that stopped me in my tracks. Whether or not you agree with the clients he has represented, Johnnie Cochran never actually killed anyone let alone en masse. What the hell kind of message is this supposed to send? I wanted to go back and get a picture with my phone, but the house is way up in the hills and a fair distance from my apartment. Once I can get a hold of a car, I'll probably do just that. But seriously, WTF.
So on that note, I finished my run, showered, cleaned-up and then headed into the city. I could bore you with the fun times I had on the subway yesterday (the 7 wasn't running, and the 6 wasn't going in or out of Union Square), but I'll spare you the annoying details. I got to Washington Square Park just after 3:15, perfectly aligned with the arrival of the marchers coming out of the home base in Liberty/Zuccotti Park. I grabbed a few photos, and then hopped into their ranks.
The NYPD was ready and waiting.
Marchers enter Washington Square Park
Into the fold
There was a turn around the large fountain located in the center of the park, and eventually the "leaders" (I'm not sure they would refer to themselves that way, but they're the ones that are trying to keep things organized) called us all to order. They started calling for "MIKE CHECK," and it wasn't immediately obvious to me why it was being said as the words "MIKE CHECK" reverberated among all those in attendance. This was repeated a few times, and finally it occurred to me that the protesters do not have a sound system; they rely on their own voices to carry the message through the crowd. The device was born out of necessity since - as it was later explained - the NYPD will not allow them to use actual microphones or bull horns, but it's become a very effective method of getting everyone involved. Everyone repeats the words of the speaker so that the message carries all the way to the people in the back; the act of recitation also makes you much more likely to remember what is being said. It also leads to some moments of accidental hilarity as someone mishears a word; there was one speaker who was up talking about the environment and mentioned the negative effect of PCBs. The girl in front of me said PCP (you know, angel dust?) and I wasn't the only one who snickered a little. Honestly, there was a lot said during the GA that wasn't really worth repeating (a lot of truisms and empty rhetoric about revolution and change), but when you're in such a large group, it's hard not to start aping the behaviors of the people around you.
The GA speakers all gathered by the flags and asked us to sit down
There isn't much to note in what was said at the GA itself; they introduced all the working groups (i.e. the people working 'round the clock to spread information, communicate with the media, handle incoming donations or are just generally looking out for the protesters' comfort and well-being), and gave a quick run-down of the symbols the crowd should use as a means of communication. Holding your hand upright and wiggling your fingers means you agree with what's being said; holding your hand out palm-down and waving it means you're iffy; and finger-tips to the floor shows displeasure. I mean, they're pretty basic and on the verge of parody, but I understand the reason for them. Too much applause and booing disrupts the flow of the rally, and these gestures allow people to express themselves without getting too rowdy and disruptive. There were also a couple of guest speakers invited up, including one - Mohammad - who had traveled from Egypt as an ambassador of the Arab Spring to show his support for shared values of equality, democracy and revolution. There was a contingent of others from the Arab Spring present, and they demonstrated later on with signs and flags. Their picture is buried in with the others; it'll show-up later.
They closed the GA by saying they invited everyone to go out and mingle, and that the area where they were currently standing was going to be reserved for soapboxing since everyone deserves to have their say. I stuck around to listen to some of them, and man there were some characters present yesterday. Most people were pretty sane, but of course it's the nut jobs that stick out the most. Exhibit A:
They closed the GA by saying they invited everyone to go out and mingle, and that the area where they were currently standing was going to be reserved for soapboxing since everyone deserves to have their say. I stuck around to listen to some of them, and man there were some characters present yesterday. Most people were pretty sane, but of course it's the nut jobs that stick out the most. Exhibit A:
The guy you see in the red baseball cap in the center of the photo was clearly high on something and wasn't willing to wait for others to have their turn at the soapbox. Since the soapboxers relied on the same method of acoustics as the GA speakers, all it took was for someone to start speaking over you for the message to get lost on the crowd because they can't hear you to repeat it. Red-hat dude interrupted a number of people and those around him kept shushing him, presumably telling him to wait his turn. When he finally got it, he started ranting and raving about how he's tired of paying so much for rent. All I could think of was this guy:
Someone else obviously thought this too since they yelled out "RENT'S TOO DAMN HIGH" while that red-hat guy was talking. He was fucking ridiculous. Look at his sign!
It said "RENT FIXING" in uneven bold letters with a black squiggle in the middle for no apparent reason. All of this is just to give you an idea that yes, I do like a populist movement, but when you have a large group of people in the mix, you're going to get a commensurate number of idiots to come along with you. There was also someone else railing about globalization and how the way to regulate the global market is to empower the UN (???? seriously dude? Watch last week's Community for more on what the UN is actually about), and your standard crackpots around saying we need to legalize weed.
And there was a dude also dressed up as a masked superhero in a motorboard and graduation gown who referred to himself as the Master of Degrees. The thing he's holding is a ball and chain that says "STUDENT LOANS." I honestly expected him to be a nutjob too, but he was actually very coherent and clever, and is probably just another starving grad student regretting all the money he spent on a Master's degree that does nothing.
My guess is that there were several hundred people actively participating in the rally, and even more on the sidelines observing. Once the GA disbanded, people scattered around to perform their own demonstrations and attract attention to themselves; some were more effective than others.
Someone had also made a puppet Statue of Liberty, and the posing of this photo with the Washington Square arch and also the Empire State Building in the background (hard to see, but it's peaking out from over the trees) made me think of the ridiculous Statue of Liberty scene from the end of Ghostbusters II. And yes, I already made this joke on Facebook, but whatever. I also can't embed the video, so click on the hyperlink above if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
There was also a marching band playing renditions of popular songs. Here's their take on Twisted Sister:
I'm a shitty cameraman, sorry.
There was also your standard issue Glee club, LEGALIZE HEMP dude, and someone trying to dress like Uncle Sam if Uncle Sam taped American flags to his body and yelled "IF ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER CAN BE GOVERNOR, THEN I'M THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES." I still don't know what he was going for with that.
Someone had also laid out some really intricate sand art. I'm sure it's long destroyed.
The Arab Spring marchers
At 5:30 they called us all to attention, as they had told us during the GA we would be marching back to Liberty Park. For the New York navigationally impaired, here's a map:
Google Maps says the distance is about 1.5-2 miles depending on the route you take, and I honestly can't tell you which way we went. But we walked straight through Soho (I did a lot of window shopping... I'm not very good at being anti-consumerist), passed City Hall and into the Financial district. The streets were lined with people along the way either cheering us on, cursing us off or filming. Since the movement is so well documented on social media sites, basically everyone in and around it turns into their own amateur photographer/filmmaker. I'm assuming a lot of the people who kept their cameras trained on us were expecting another NYPD shitshow from last week and weeks previous so they could get more hits on Youtube, but that was not to be. People must have a ton of footage of people walking and chanting that bores them to tears. I took a 30-second video, so just multiply that x10 several times in your head and you'll get the idea.
The NYPD walked with us the entire way (and hilariously, one of the cops started whining "are we there yet??" about 2/3 of the way through the march), but there is no way they are going to descend on the protesters in the way they did due to all the really bad press they're receiving. Though the guy who fucking defecated on a cop car deserves his fair share of punishment (ohhh there are links out there, but I am not hyperlinking, sorry).
That was the other thing I noticed about the protests; the demonstrators are overwhelmingly peaceful and just want their voices heard, but there always those bad apples who just want to cause chaos and now have found a means to do it. I'd say they are wannabe nihilists, but I doubt very much they are smart enough to have thought it through that far. Makes me think of the chapter "Meow" from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle; since the chapter itself is rather short and since it also serves the dual purpose of illustrating my point much better than my paraphrase ever could while making me sound all pretentious, I have included the chapter in its entirety below. Feel free to skip.
During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond - a two-week expedition bridging on Christmas - I let a poor poet named Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.
Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blond Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War. He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it happened that I had some.
When I returned to my apartment, still twanging with the puzzling spiritual implications of the unclaimed stone angel in Ilium, I found my apartment wrecked by a nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but, before leaving he had run up three-hundred-dollars' worth of long-distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet.
He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:
I have a kitchen.
But it is not a completely kitchen.
I will not be truly gay
Until I have a
Dispose-all.
There was another message, written in lipstick in a feminine hand on the wallpaper over my bed. It said: "No, no, no, said Chicken-licken."
There was a sign hung around my dead cat's neck. It said, "Meow."
I have not seen Krebbs since. Nonetheless, I sense he was my karass [described by the Bokonist narrator as "humanity... organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing"]. If he was, he served it as a wrang-wrang. A wrang-wrang, according to Bokonon, is a person who steers people away from a line of speculations by reducing that line, with example of the wrang-wrang's own life, to an absurdity.
I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular what he done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me.
Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebb's mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.
Anyway, these assholes are always the ones who ruin the party.
I've only been down to the financial district a handful of times in my life and I can't navigate it for shit. But hey, here's another map for you:
Sorry, I told you I'm a terrible cameraman.
The NYPD walked with us the entire way (and hilariously, one of the cops started whining "are we there yet??" about 2/3 of the way through the march), but there is no way they are going to descend on the protesters in the way they did due to all the really bad press they're receiving. Though the guy who fucking defecated on a cop car deserves his fair share of punishment (ohhh there are links out there, but I am not hyperlinking, sorry).
That was the other thing I noticed about the protests; the demonstrators are overwhelmingly peaceful and just want their voices heard, but there always those bad apples who just want to cause chaos and now have found a means to do it. I'd say they are wannabe nihilists, but I doubt very much they are smart enough to have thought it through that far. Makes me think of the chapter "Meow" from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle; since the chapter itself is rather short and since it also serves the dual purpose of illustrating my point much better than my paraphrase ever could while making me sound all pretentious, I have included the chapter in its entirety below. Feel free to skip.
During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond - a two-week expedition bridging on Christmas - I let a poor poet named Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.
Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blond Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War. He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it happened that I had some.
When I returned to my apartment, still twanging with the puzzling spiritual implications of the unclaimed stone angel in Ilium, I found my apartment wrecked by a nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but, before leaving he had run up three-hundred-dollars' worth of long-distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet.
He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:
I have a kitchen.
But it is not a completely kitchen.
I will not be truly gay
Until I have a
Dispose-all.
There was another message, written in lipstick in a feminine hand on the wallpaper over my bed. It said: "No, no, no, said Chicken-licken."
There was a sign hung around my dead cat's neck. It said, "Meow."
I have not seen Krebbs since. Nonetheless, I sense he was my karass [described by the Bokonist narrator as "humanity... organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing"]. If he was, he served it as a wrang-wrang. A wrang-wrang, according to Bokonon, is a person who steers people away from a line of speculations by reducing that line, with example of the wrang-wrang's own life, to an absurdity.
I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular what he done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me.
Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebb's mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.
Anyway, these assholes are always the ones who ruin the party.
I've only been down to the financial district a handful of times in my life and I can't navigate it for shit. But hey, here's another map for you:
And yes, I totally did meet Bryan Ferry at the J&R Music World near City Hall in 2007 and it was AMAZING. I relived it a little bit as I walked by last night. I will thank you not to laugh.
We didn't arrive to Liberty/Zuccotti Park until after about 7:30, so the walk from Washington Square took nearly 2 hours. I've never walked so slowly in New York in my life, and instinct would kick in every once in awhile when I saw an opening in our ranks and I'd rush forward. There was also this really annoying kid wheeling a suitcase behind him that I kept tripping on. Seriously dude, why do you need that thing? It was dark by the time we got to the park, and I wandered around a little bit to get a feel for the place. It was hard to get a sense of anything, though, since there are so many people crowded into a tiny little space. Most if it is covered with blue tarp for people to sleep on, and it actually didn't smell as bad as I had anticipated. But walking around was a pain in the ass since people were gathered in groups, talking, or taking pictures, and at one point I tripped over someone's dog. I still feel bad about scaring the poor pookie.
There was a drum band playing, so people were gathered around chanting and dancing
Hard to see, but this is meant to be a photo of all the cops lined up across from the park. You can't see them since it's dark and they're wearing navy uniforms, but there were a lot of them waiting around. I can't imagine how much it costs the city to monitor the protesters.
I had also arranged to meet Josh from IUC down near the protest site. A pop art exhibit opened in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street movement at 23 Wall Street, and it is right across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. I took this picture from right outside the exhibit's from doors:
It is prime real estate and it's amazing how the protesters got the space. Josh was also curious about it and after asking around, found out that a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend is currently renovating the space and was willing to open it up to artists to display their work. As for the exhibit itself, let it suffice to say modern art is modern art. Some is more effective than others.
This guy was reading a monologue in a British accent. Everything sounds better with an accent.
From there Josh and I journeyed to Brooklyn to play some games with his grad school friends. I was out in Brooklyn pretty late and ended up missing the 1:06 train out of Grand Central by a couple of minutes (AARRGGHHHH), so I had to wait for the very last train at 1:56. Now, the last train out to Westchester is always a shitshow. The drunkest people white people you've ever seen. They're loud, they're rude, and typically smell kind of funny. I was barely awake at this point, and once they finally opened the train up after 1:30, I put my headphones on to drown out all the drunktalk around me; still didn't prevent me from hearing someone pounding on the train bathroom and yelling at the person in there to get out. And this was still 10-15 minutes before the train was scheduled to depart. JUST USE THE BATHROOMS IN THE STATION, THEY ARE SO MUCH NICER. GOD.
And the last train out is a local on the Harlem line, which means it makes extra stops before I get to Hawthorne. I hunkered down and ended up falling asleep from about Fordham to White Plains, which is probably more than a half-hour. I'm an old lady; give me a break. I stayed awake after White Plains (3 stops to Hawthorne, so about 10 minutes or so), and notice that people were acting kind of funny toward the front end of the car. One guy walked by with his jacket covering his nose and mouth. I soon discovered why: when I got up at Hawthorne, I noticed that some asshole had vomited all over the seats. Said asshole was nowhere to be found. Lovely. I'm sure that makes the conductor's job extra pleasant when they finally roll into the last station at 3:30 or 4 in the morning.
So my final thoughts? I'd go back again if that's an indication. I'm certainly going to keep tabs on the movement and see what they're up to and show support as I can. As I have tried to make clear, the movement is far from perfect, but it has heart. I know I have a fair number of conservative friends out there - hell, I come from a Republican family - and I've taken a little bit of heat for aligning with the left. And that's fine. But what I am trying to say is that no matter how conservatives, Fox News and whatever else is out there tries to paint the movement as just a bunch of hippies that want an excuse not to shower and smoke pot all day (and I will have you know I saw absolutely no drug use the entire day. I was expecting there to be a little bit of pot, but then I remembered just how many cops are keeping an eye on the protesters), it just isn't true. No, we don't have all the answers. It's hard to come up with a solution for a system created by and for rich white people, particularly rich, white old men. The EEOC released a special report about women and minorities in the finance sector (oh yeah, baby, that's an entire PDF report) and the results are pretty much as you would expect. Women fared better than I had anticipated, but you're pretty much fucked as a minority (let alone a minority female) in the finance sector.
The point that we're trying to make is that the system we have does not work. It may have worked at a time, but everything changes and systems need to adapt to the evolving times. And we are kidding ourselves if we think the banks learned anything after the bail-out; it's like telling a frat boy he drinks too much and then giving him a keg with a shaking finger not to down it all at once. And I think of the white boys they pick to staff these giant trading firms and remind myself that these are not the types of people who are rewarded for taking cautious, measured steps. A little slap on the wrist from Uncle Sam and a couple more rules aren't going to fundamentally change the way they think. If anything, they'll just get sneakier about it and hire a couple more high-priced lawyers to defend their behavior. And you know what? For all that money they make, the people I do know in the finance sector (and no, I am not talking to you Speed; I'm talking about people I know do not have access to this blog, c'mon now) are not happy people. For all that money they make, you can tell that there is something hollow in the way they live. One guy is clinically depressed, has threatened suicide on a number of occasions, and wishes he never got started with Goldman Sachs in the first place. You know how much he makes per year? $250,000. And he used to make more money before he switched from one division to another (I forget which).
All of this is to say that the status quo doesn't cut it any more. Unemployment hovers around 9%; students are wallowing in loans without job prospects. I can't tell you how many times in the last 2 months I have said, "I am just happy to have a job." Do you realize how wrong that sounds? A job is about as basic as it gets - how are you supposed to make a living without one? - and right now we are living in a society where that isn't guaranteed. And I don't even work for an American company! There were plenty of young people at the rally, but there were also a surprising number of aging baby boomers (many grumbled when the GA leaders asked us all to sit since they wouldn't be able to get back up off the ground). You have to wonder how many of them lost a good part if not all of their retirement savings and now have no choice but to pick-up work on the side to try and supplement their finances. But who cares so long as that upper crust makes money and doesn't give two shits about anyone else. Taxes? Why should they have to pay taxes? They don't use roads, health care, the education system, utilities, courts, police and fire protection, and everything else tax dollars go to because their farts generate power and they vomit public services. GOD it just makes me so angry. I am just going to stop here.
Suffice it to say, this is just the beginning. Even if Occupy Wall Street dies down - and it's not showing any signs of it since it has spread to over 70 other cities worldwide - the frustration and unrest does not go away. Sticking our heads in the sand and kidding ourselves into believing that staying the course is really the right policy does not make this sentiment just dissipate into the air. It only becomes more real and more hungry for change.
As depressing as the situation is, this is also an exciting time to be alive.
And the last train out is a local on the Harlem line, which means it makes extra stops before I get to Hawthorne. I hunkered down and ended up falling asleep from about Fordham to White Plains, which is probably more than a half-hour. I'm an old lady; give me a break. I stayed awake after White Plains (3 stops to Hawthorne, so about 10 minutes or so), and notice that people were acting kind of funny toward the front end of the car. One guy walked by with his jacket covering his nose and mouth. I soon discovered why: when I got up at Hawthorne, I noticed that some asshole had vomited all over the seats. Said asshole was nowhere to be found. Lovely. I'm sure that makes the conductor's job extra pleasant when they finally roll into the last station at 3:30 or 4 in the morning.
So my final thoughts? I'd go back again if that's an indication. I'm certainly going to keep tabs on the movement and see what they're up to and show support as I can. As I have tried to make clear, the movement is far from perfect, but it has heart. I know I have a fair number of conservative friends out there - hell, I come from a Republican family - and I've taken a little bit of heat for aligning with the left. And that's fine. But what I am trying to say is that no matter how conservatives, Fox News and whatever else is out there tries to paint the movement as just a bunch of hippies that want an excuse not to shower and smoke pot all day (and I will have you know I saw absolutely no drug use the entire day. I was expecting there to be a little bit of pot, but then I remembered just how many cops are keeping an eye on the protesters), it just isn't true. No, we don't have all the answers. It's hard to come up with a solution for a system created by and for rich white people, particularly rich, white old men. The EEOC released a special report about women and minorities in the finance sector (oh yeah, baby, that's an entire PDF report) and the results are pretty much as you would expect. Women fared better than I had anticipated, but you're pretty much fucked as a minority (let alone a minority female) in the finance sector.
The point that we're trying to make is that the system we have does not work. It may have worked at a time, but everything changes and systems need to adapt to the evolving times. And we are kidding ourselves if we think the banks learned anything after the bail-out; it's like telling a frat boy he drinks too much and then giving him a keg with a shaking finger not to down it all at once. And I think of the white boys they pick to staff these giant trading firms and remind myself that these are not the types of people who are rewarded for taking cautious, measured steps. A little slap on the wrist from Uncle Sam and a couple more rules aren't going to fundamentally change the way they think. If anything, they'll just get sneakier about it and hire a couple more high-priced lawyers to defend their behavior. And you know what? For all that money they make, the people I do know in the finance sector (and no, I am not talking to you Speed; I'm talking about people I know do not have access to this blog, c'mon now) are not happy people. For all that money they make, you can tell that there is something hollow in the way they live. One guy is clinically depressed, has threatened suicide on a number of occasions, and wishes he never got started with Goldman Sachs in the first place. You know how much he makes per year? $250,000. And he used to make more money before he switched from one division to another (I forget which).
All of this is to say that the status quo doesn't cut it any more. Unemployment hovers around 9%; students are wallowing in loans without job prospects. I can't tell you how many times in the last 2 months I have said, "I am just happy to have a job." Do you realize how wrong that sounds? A job is about as basic as it gets - how are you supposed to make a living without one? - and right now we are living in a society where that isn't guaranteed. And I don't even work for an American company! There were plenty of young people at the rally, but there were also a surprising number of aging baby boomers (many grumbled when the GA leaders asked us all to sit since they wouldn't be able to get back up off the ground). You have to wonder how many of them lost a good part if not all of their retirement savings and now have no choice but to pick-up work on the side to try and supplement their finances. But who cares so long as that upper crust makes money and doesn't give two shits about anyone else. Taxes? Why should they have to pay taxes? They don't use roads, health care, the education system, utilities, courts, police and fire protection, and everything else tax dollars go to because their farts generate power and they vomit public services. GOD it just makes me so angry. I am just going to stop here.
Suffice it to say, this is just the beginning. Even if Occupy Wall Street dies down - and it's not showing any signs of it since it has spread to over 70 other cities worldwide - the frustration and unrest does not go away. Sticking our heads in the sand and kidding ourselves into believing that staying the course is really the right policy does not make this sentiment just dissipate into the air. It only becomes more real and more hungry for change.
As depressing as the situation is, this is also an exciting time to be alive.
Gotta be honest... Didn't finish this one. You've outdone yourself チュロイヤさん.
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