A Recently Graduated Student with a Bachelor's Degree Writes About Occupy Wall Street

So there's this little event going on that you may have heard of called Occupy Wall Street.

Most of you reading this have just brought up some kind of connotation just by reading those words.  A lot of you, my friends who recently graduated or are still in college, have strong feelings supporting the protests (which extend much farther than just Wall Street).  Some of you may frown upon the protests, if my Facebook home page is to be believed, with all of the cannon fire about the protesters being entitled brats that demand the world be handed to them.

Both sides are pretty militant, and I've really tried my hardest to stay out of that battlefield because I don't like talking about subjects that I have no personal impact on.  I have never been to any Occupy Wherever protests, but that has more to do with the kind of person I am than how I feel about them.  As with most complex issues, I can really relate to both sides of this debate which so many people see as a completely one-sided issue, one way or the other.

I won't dance around the issue here: I do support the efforts of Occupy Wall Street Etc.  I too think the system that we live in has changed a lot faster than we have, and it really shows in the way the world is now.  My generation, these whiny college students who demand a better way of life, has kind of been doomed from the start.  For many of us, our parents fought for us to have a better life (mine included), and encouraged, if not demanded, us to go to college.  I wrote about this a while back in a previous blog post, written in the dark dark days of my unemployment.  If you don't have the time to read the whole post (and I don't blame you), here's the summary: I was (and still am) mad because after being promised that college would lead us to a life of a great career, many of us are left with minimum wage jobs which make no use of the degrees we worked so hard for.  And that's if we are lucky enough to be employed at all.  So many of us have gone to college that the market is flooded with intelligent students like me who aren't really needed; the job market really doesn't have room for us.

This comic is relevant again.  Credit goes to The Trenches. (Click for full size)

Obviously, this is producing a lot of anger with those of us who have had the futures we worked so hard for gone.  We have been told one thing all our life only to find that it was a lie: a college degree means practically nothing when everyone else has them.  To paraphrase from the movie The Incredibles: "When everyone's special, no one is."  We (and by we I mean dissatisfied college students, whether we are protesting or not), have worked incredibly hard for pieces of paper that are not doing what they were supposed to.

HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT.  I was asked by a good friend a few weeks ago if I wanted to go to Occupy LA.  He asked my the very week I got a job (after five extremely frustrating months of looking), so I said no.  As you may know of me, going to a protest is not my style anyways, and I may have declined even if I could go.

You read earlier that I support the movement of Occupy Wall Street Etc.  The things I have trouble supporting, I think, are the people of Occupy Wall Street Etc., and their methods.  Now that is far from a universal statement.  There are a lot of very strong-minded and opinionated people at Occupy Wall Street Etc., and I'm sure the movement would not be where it is without some level-headedness.  However, there are most definitely people in all of these protests that really do not know what is going on.  People protesting just to protest because they are mad.  And while that may be valid on a small scale, it really just hurts the chances that something good could get done.  This article does a great job of highlighting the people I'm talking about.

What also gets me irritated about the movement is that it is very hard to take seriously sometimes.  I understand that there is a desire to get everybody's voices heard.  That is a very noble desire, indeed.  But how much can you get away with doing that is a question that I'm not sure anyone is looking for an answer to.  This Youtube video shows the main way that Occupy Wherever protests take a crowd consensus: through hand signals.  There's no way to say this without looking like a douche, so I'll just say it: you look like you have very little idea of what is going on when you do that.  It looks ridiculous, it is very (I think overly) politically correct, and you know what you just look like a class of kindergartners when you do that. It brings out the worst in what I see as a movement that I really could respect.


But my biggest problem might be that the lack of organization is really starting to show.  The lack of any kind of date of departure is only going to leave a bad mark on your protests.  A quote from an Occupy LA press release: "As for a time stamp on our departure, there is none. We are resolved to continue our peaceful occupation. As occupiers across America are bravely and against great odds and obstacles exercising the right to have their voices heard in a public forum, we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters around this nation and around the globe."


That's very valiant, but hardly realistic.  And hardly a way to earn respect from the people you are trying to get it from.  Because you aren't trying to please the people who support you; we already do.  You need to gain the respect of people that don't or are on the fence.  That's really the only way that you are going to take the momentum you have and turn it into what you're looking for, which is some kind of change.  What kind of change that is, we don't know, because there is no real goal for the protests.  That about sums up the reason you will never see me at one of these things: No goal and no departure date.  There's force there, but it has no direction.  I can't really get behind that.


HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT.  You know the really, really annoying people are in all of this?  Anybody who is on their high horse about this protest.  The smug people who sit on either side (and believe me, both sides have them) and caricaturize the opposition.

This is funny. Humor. Comedy.  This OBVIOUSLY does not represent all of the 1%, but some people have a hard time understanding that.

I have defiled my hard drive by saving these pictures to share them with you.

Some people call this bullshit, some inspiring.  I call it, "Get this crap off my Facebook page."

I think the worst case is when somebody posts one of these pictures with a caption, "Food for thought?" or "Hmmmmm..." as if this is just something that they are casually posting.  If you're going to make your statement, make it without being smug.  Be respectful of your opponent (if you even want to call them that).  99%  of the time, you didn't even think if the slogans or take the pictures you're sharing so much.  The egos on either side of this debate are astounding.

I'm sorry you had to see this.

Occupy Everywhere protesters: Not every business owner is a cartoon supervillain that takes pride in how much you suffer.  Yes, that even includes the big ones.  God, I hate having to type those words.

To those that think all the protesters are whining about nothing: well, if you haven't figured out why that's false, no amount of explaining from me is going to change your mind.  But it is a load of crap.

This isn't about being liberal or a conservative.  This is about ending this "Us vs Them" attitude about an incredibly complex problem that we should be looking for answers to.

If you've stuck it out this far, thank you for reading this.  This is an article written by someone from the generation ahead of mine which discusses the horrible emotions that brought on this whole debacle.  I recommend reading it.  It inspired this blog.