October 11, 2011
From streetbonersandtvcarnage.com
A reflection on #Occupywallstreet by a twenty-something hipster-ish business owner:
To make ends meet while my business grows, I work at a wine shop and that nets me a whopping $12.50 an hour. As a bonus for my ears, I am privy to humoring whatever bat-shit crazy political stance my customers offer up as they wait for me to ring up their booze. Lately, I’ve been getting customers buying hooch on their way to Occupy Wall Street. Funny, because I don’t recall seeing any of the Little Rock Nine being armed with flasks of Evan Williams. Anyhoo, today this British girl with legs that nearly scraped the ceiling strutted into the shop wearing a see-thru dress. She was particularly amped because she was on her way to the protest and asked if I would like to go. I said no thanks. Without skipping a beat she asks, “Why not? Don’t you hate the banks?”
And there my friends lies the problem with Occupy Wall Street. There is a considerable lack of education on what caused the economic crises and therefore we are playing the blame game. To make matters worse, there seems to be no clear resolution being offered by the protest’s organizers. And if you are reading this and saying, “Well, the giant corporations could just give us the money,” then you sir are a jackass. That mode of thought is reserved for friends of successful rappers who thought that they’d be getting a free ride out of the hood.
I don’t think people shouldn’t be angry, but this feels more like a mood than a movement.
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Did anyone hear the Planet Money piece where they posited that Occupy Wall Street is about simply wanting full engagement in decision-making processes, and that explains why people are there for many different reasons? I thought it was possibly a very good explanation of how the “mood” really is the movement. I am quite interested and open to supporting it, but it’s been really hard to figure out what it is except our generation’s general discontent, which so far we haven’t done much to do anything about. I too am concerned by the lack of cohesion, if only because it’s a problem for the perception of the movement.
Also, why didn’t he follow the British girl with the see-thru dress, again?
He probably still needed to pay rent.