Friday, November 18, 2011

Occupy

OK, so the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Rochester and Occupy whatever-other-cities has been going on for several weeks. How does it ever end? Do you wonder if the protesters are sitting there in their little tents week after week saying "Oh crap, how do we get out of this one gracefully? I'm ready to go home to my nice warm bed."

The last time there were widespread protests (that I remember having this much impact) were about civil rights and the Vietnam war. Once those injustices were more or less rectified (I'm not here to debate the efficacy of the rectification, seriously), the protesters packed up and went home.

How does this end? Do the "rich" (those faceless dastardly Richie Richies) trot down to Wall Street, Main Street and other places to display their tax receipts, W-2s and 1040 forms to prove they're paying more tax now? While these protests are not victimless there's no way to resolve the protesters' issues and make them go away.

Someone also posted on Facebook today asking how are these protesters surviving? And where do they get the money to pay for 48 colors of Sharpie markers to make their fancy signs if they're so destitute? Do they work? If they don't work, wouldn't that be a good start (getting a job, I mean) to at least be part of the solution and not a big part of the problem? Hopefully they're reading excellent books such as Think and Grow Rich (by Napoleon Hill) or the myriad other books about how to amass wealth so they too can be the haves rather than the have nots. Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, I'm interested to see how this eventually resolves itself. I suspect the biting cold weather and upcoming *inter (rhymes with splinter) *now (rhymes with blow) will have a great deal to do with packing them up and sending them home.

Then both sides will claim victory. Huh.

1 comment:

Anna Lefler said...

I've wondered many of these same things myself...

In the meantime, a very happy, healthy and non-tented new year to you and yours!

:-) Anna