What is Occupy trying to do? Occupy Wall Street began in September of last year and has grown into a national movement with several hundred groups participating to various degrees in cities all over the country. They have marched down streets, shut down ports, closed banks—and all to what end? Hostility will lead nowhere. Their methods have to change.
What is Occupy trying to do? Occupy Wall Street began in September of last year and has grown into a national movement with several hundred groups participating to various degrees in cities all over the country. They have marched down streets, shut down ports, closed banks—and all to what end? Hostility will lead nowhere. Their methods have to change.
It seems they are just another set of disjointed voices shouting among the many angry multitudes, using noise to hammer out an unclear message. It gives the impression that they aren’t sure what else to do, save yelling. It’s much like a toddler who is learning to talk.
Not that I oppose the Occupy movement directly. In many ways I respect them, as I respect anyone who has the courage to stand behind their convictions. These are men and women who put their bodies on the line to “fight” for their cause.
Unfortunately, it is the idea of “fighting” that does not sit well with me. Combined with the polarizing language, Occupy tends to blame large abstract entities for larger, real-world problems; the notion of “fighting” implies one thing: Occupy protestors are angry.
The apparent anger in the language associated with the Occupy movement cannot serve to ease the minds of the American public, which is already in a state of constant negative bombardment from various media factions, government leaders and other organizations. These messages influence people daily until their thoughts become fueled by violence, hate, anxiety and fear.
A movement such as Occupy should use its cultural influence to provide a means of overcoming such destructive forces as anger.
This is not to say that the initial anger of the Occupy movement was unjustified. The discovery that people were profiting off predatory loan practices and unapologetically committing fraud in the name of corporate greed was upsetting. The fact that it led to a national financial meltdown is infuriating.
However, stewing in resentment cannot breed positivity.
Marching in step with faces covered, holding signs that say “Eat the Rich” and chanting ominously does not inspire me to embrace the sort of change that some of the Occupy protestors seem to be promoting. Of course, they describe themselves as being committed to peaceful actions, but I wish some qualities of peacefulness were more prevalent in the demeanor of the protestors en masse.
By projecting the image of openness, joy and peace at all times, the Occupy movement could be that beacon of hope for many disenfranchised persons who need an alternative to the corporate-prescribed idea of America.
In order to do that, Occupy protestors should let go of their anger toward corporations and instead help create a framework which supports individuals who wish to live independently from corporate influence.
The Occupy movement has spawned a community. This community has an opportunity to demonstrate how life can be simplified, the mind soothed and personal peace obtained through the elimination of corporate greed.
To accomplish this, the Occupy movement should shift its focus from being an opposition group seeking to alter corporate influence to a humanistic collective which asserts itself outside the corporate market. They should move from strength in unity against the corporations to individual responsibility toward supporting local prosperity.
Rather than ask people to fight, Occupy should implore them to reject the notion that life should be a battle, because “fighting” for our freedom implies that these large abstract entities somehow determine our individual equity. The reality is that every person must take responsibility for his or her freedom.
To reshape the world into a positive and peaceful place, people should let daily actions be their means of protest. For the Occupy movement, an elimination of angry language from their revolutionary rhetoric would be a step out of the status quo of American negativism.
By focusing on positive tools of change such as voting, supporting only socially and economically responsible companies and turning off the television to enjoy public space with your neighbors, the Occupy movement would be rejecting the influence of corporate-media fear mongering.
We have enough hostility in this world. It is high time for an attitude adjustment.
I have news for Terry Gaskill-Barsness: large powerful entities do create much of the problems gripping American society, and do control our lives to a very large extent. Corporations, financial institutions, the media, political parties, and lobbying groups all have huge influence over daily life, over our life and death, and they’ve spent a lot of money over the last several decades to make it so. That’s the primary fact of American life he doesn’t seem to understand.
His prescription for change is one we typically see expressed in the media, including by the castrated American left, and usually the only one allowed within the limited parameters of modern American debate: whatever you do, DON’T MAKE PEOPLE FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE. We can’t have citizens thinking angry thoughts by actually confronting the grim reality of our situation head on, right? We can’t have citizens forcefully, angrily demanding their rights and taking whatever steps are necessary to reclaim their lives. We must have “positivity”. This kind of thinking is why we end up with empty figures like Obama in power.
Gaskill-Barsness’s solution to our problems is the tired refrain of consumer choice and “individual responsibility”. That’s the result of him, and many others, having been programmed by the capitalist elites. He wants to keep believing that the individual has much more power than it does, because not believing that is deeply unsettling and goes against our training.
He actually writes that people should move away from strength in unity. This betrays his ignorance about how important social change has actually happened in this country historically, and it’s an extremely disempowering, damaging message to send to fellow citizens.
I’m disgusted that these kinds of sentiments are what passes for political awareness in the PSU community. Gaskill-Barsness perhaps needs to experience a good dose of personal pain, personal confrontation with realities of American life in the economic or labor or healthcare arenas, to awaken him from his stupor. I can only attribute statements like his to political naivete, inexperience, and the strength of our social conditioning.
He needs to get angry and stay angry. We all need to stay angry, to take action to make this shitty system ruling our lives change.
Jim Miller,
unashamedly angry PSU student