Across the nation currently, there are “occupy” protests that I have no idea what the point of which is. What dont they like about wall street? what is it they’re protesting? people with jobs making money? I assume it’s something more sinister but I have no way of easily knowing. There’s a general sloganeering among the crowds of Corporate Greed and White Collar Crime but no clear point.
If those two things ARE the entire point though, then why isnt it called the “prosecute economic criminals” protest or something? whats the point of “occupying wall street” as a way to rally against individuals within wall street that are breaking laws? this makes even less sense to me now. Maybe it’s all a prank to make hippies look silly? Idk…
As you may be able to tell, im not terribly interested in it (after all, I *am* aware of Google’s existence and could spend more time reading if I really wanted) and the more i see the less respect i have for it. for the amount of video coverage, news items, blogs, facebook statuses and pictures about this event i’ve seen there is no reason for someone like me to still know so little about wtf it is.
The Tea Partiers, I get. You see a tea party protest and its obvious: bunch of people dressed up like george washington, pro capitalism, desire for smaller government and more freedom. fine. I can agree or disagree with that mission statement and can search for more from there if i want. but this… wtf IS this?
The “about” page on occupywallst.org illustrated exactly the awkward mysteriousness that i’m talking about. It’s 3 paragraphs that rephrases the sentence “this is a protest where people protest wall street”. I got that part. now what?
Wtf is going on here?
I found this on their website: A specific demand of action list – and thats great, but it’s not officially endorsed by the occupy-protest organizers. It’s just a related topic chain letter posted by a random member named GandhiKingMindsetResist in the forum section. Other forum posts include one asking “should we boycott Apple products?“, a call for a 60% tax rate and finally a list of videos explaining why this protest happened even though I watched half of them and still don’t know why this protest happened.
If this is what the protests are all about then this should be front page stuff and encapsulated on signs and banners the protestors are carrying. C’mon people…
Then theres this other list of demands which is wtf-y enough to merit reposting here:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
I had things to say about each one, but unfortunately I stumbled across this post that already said some of them, so i’ll just link that instead of repeating:
Basically they want to pass Smoot-HawleyII because that worked well last time, create trillions and trillions of new debt get paid for a job whether or not they do any work (I actually joked about this before I saw the list. Parody is dead). In general…repeal reality and destroy the economy.
I especially love the demand for an amendment demanding racial equality. Why didn’t someone think of that sooner?
Demand list via Adam Baldwin.
BTW- These people are demanding jobs? If you’re unemployed, how extensive is your job search if you have time to spend days at a time camping out in lower Manhattan?
I would love for someone from a Wall St firm or two come out and start passing out job applications just to see the reactions of the “protesters”.
Amanda Carpenter notes that the “protesters” are looking for help in doing their laundry. An interest in hygiene is certainly a step forward in the world of hippies.
This whole thing is slowly coming together in my mind… I’m assuming the idea for this went something like “lets form a protest with no clear objective other than ‘corporate greed’. not greed. we’re down with greed. we’re greedy as fuck for instance when it comes to other peoples money. but greed by people and businesses selling products and services that we all use and love? fuck that! TAKE TO THE STREETS MY FELLOW PATRIOTS!!”
You don’t understand it because you are looking at it with an outdated mindset. This isn’t a political revolution, it’s a consciousness evolution. You will understand sooner or later.