The Love-Hate relationship of the Occupiers
It has been a few months now since the OWS crowd has descended upon our cities. At first, my preconceptions of them were "dirty, stinky hippies" since I could not fathom anyone with a job being able to hang out in parks all day and all night. Boy was I wrong.
After caring enough to dig a little deeper into the movement I found that most of them in fact do have jobs. Granted there are only a few polls but perhaps there is more to these people than meets the eye. The Week reports high numbers of job holding, educated and high earning people who went online to complete the survey. The first quesiton that came to mind while reading the survey result is if the 1639 participants an indicative sample of the OWS crowd. Most news agencies do not portray the 13% making over $75k a year or even the 1% that report making >$300k.
Why don't the media cover the people that make up this minority? Only 1/3 have no job or are making minimum wage, but we only see or hear of the yet smaller minority who are portrayed as loons. The gentleman who handed Obama a note during a speech in New Hampshire seemed like an intelligent person and whose note was well written. If more of these ambassadors came to the camera then perhaps the movement would gain more traction.
Instead, we have people like this Huffington Post commentor who admonished the American citizen to avoid boycotting Wal-Mart until after the Black Friday rush because these are hard times and people need to buy cheap presents. Instead, he claims we should boyvott Starbucks because they should be paying their employees more and he shouldn't have to pay so much for a cup of coffee. I could not let this one go- here is my reply:
I still wonder why the media outlets have not sought out a reputable mouth piece for the Occupiers to find out exactly what they want. Jon Stewart can't even find material to support them. There was a failed attempt by media and officials to do so in Toronto. The talks failed mainly because the social architecture of the Occupiers is unsustainable. How can things get done effectively and efficiently if no one is in charge? Short answer: they can't. This is a repeatable outcome for most of the OWS sites. Officials cannot get anything accomplished and inevitabley the Occupiers wear out their welcome. The City of LA has actually been the most tolerant towards them, but that is coming to a halt tonight at midnight.
Leave it to foreign reporting to actually get to the bottom of a major story in the US. A UK ournalist wrote an impressive and though provoking piece about the movement and why it has gained so much resistance from elected leaders. Naomi Wolf writes,
I would invite you to research this Occupy Wall Street crowd and not rely on conventional media reporting to give you the full truth. Hell, I would recommend this for anything.
After caring enough to dig a little deeper into the movement I found that most of them in fact do have jobs. Granted there are only a few polls but perhaps there is more to these people than meets the eye. The Week reports high numbers of job holding, educated and high earning people who went online to complete the survey. The first quesiton that came to mind while reading the survey result is if the 1639 participants an indicative sample of the OWS crowd. Most news agencies do not portray the 13% making over $75k a year or even the 1% that report making >$300k.
Why don't the media cover the people that make up this minority? Only 1/3 have no job or are making minimum wage, but we only see or hear of the yet smaller minority who are portrayed as loons. The gentleman who handed Obama a note during a speech in New Hampshire seemed like an intelligent person and whose note was well written. If more of these ambassadors came to the camera then perhaps the movement would gain more traction.
Instead, we have people like this Huffington Post commentor who admonished the American citizen to avoid boycotting Wal-Mart until after the Black Friday rush because these are hard times and people need to buy cheap presents. Instead, he claims we should boyvott Starbucks because they should be paying their employees more and he shouldn't have to pay so much for a cup of coffee. I could not let this one go- here is my reply:
“Class warfare- the entitlemenThe whole thread is a very telling revelation of the poisonous, entitlement mentality that the majority of this nation has.t mentality of "You have more than me, and I want what you have." It is wrong.
While the 1% of this country have the money, it is the top .1% that maintains their wealth through fraud. The Federal Reserve and the big banks are part of the same cancerous symbiotic relationship which people should be fighting against.
Starbucks and similar companies are exercising the oldest staple of capitalism - supply and demand. If someone, who has the money from working a good job, can afford to pay $4.25 for a grande vanilla mocha while someone on minimum wage cannot fit that indulgence into their budget, why should the business owner be forced to lower their prices?
Let's apply your premise to an extreme siuation to see if it passes: Would you boycott a Mercedes dealership so that the person making $25k a year could afford a brand new SLS AMG?
If you want to read a fact concerning taxes, the top 1% of this country earned 18.3% of the total income of the United States but paid 28.3% of all taxes. But that is not good enough for people like you who are stuck in the trenches of class warfare.
To wrap this up, I do not believe raising taxes even more on the rich will solve our economic woes, to which someone of your mind set will say something dopey like, "Well, it will be a good start." Good luck.”
I still wonder why the media outlets have not sought out a reputable mouth piece for the Occupiers to find out exactly what they want. Jon Stewart can't even find material to support them. There was a failed attempt by media and officials to do so in Toronto. The talks failed mainly because the social architecture of the Occupiers is unsustainable. How can things get done effectively and efficiently if no one is in charge? Short answer: they can't. This is a repeatable outcome for most of the OWS sites. Officials cannot get anything accomplished and inevitabley the Occupiers wear out their welcome. The City of LA has actually been the most tolerant towards them, but that is coming to a halt tonight at midnight.
Leave it to foreign reporting to actually get to the bottom of a major story in the US. A UK ournalist wrote an impressive and though provoking piece about the movement and why it has gained so much resistance from elected leaders. Naomi Wolf writes,
The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality.Very bluntly, she states the heavy handed resistance is wielded by the elected officials in Washington who are protecting their own profit streams. Throw George Soros in the mix and it lends a lot of credibility, especially since Soros, an extremely radical billionaire liberal, has many tracks leading to his involvement in the OWS. Interstingly, but not surprisingly, mostly bloggers seem to be reporting this- not the MSM.
I would invite you to research this Occupy Wall Street crowd and not rely on conventional media reporting to give you the full truth. Hell, I would recommend this for anything.
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