I will be in New York City on October 8 and 9 to join in the “Occupy Wall St.” movement.
I agree with the general message of the movement, but that is not what motivated me to leave my family behind and take this journey. Ten days into the Occupation of Wall St, I ran into an article about it online. The article was straightforward but in the comments sections people had sunk to a whole new low calling the protesters gutter punks and ravers with no raves to go to. Judging them by their appearance, they decided they could not possibly have anything important to say, even before they heard the message of this movement.
To those people I say, now I will also be part of this movement and I am a successful small business owner. You lose all credibility when you start off insulting people, regardless of whether or not the point you are making is valid. I would like to make a point. Anyone would look pretty rough after camping out on Wall Street for days no matter what their social-economic background is. That doesn’t make their point invalid.
There is much criticism that these “occupiers” don’t have any valid solutions. It is not their job to make solutions. Their job is to send a message. That message is: Corporate America contributes so much money to politics, how can we as individuals, expect our constituents to be loyal to us over them?
As far as solutions go, I have some opinions. Instead of giving big businesses billions of dollars the government should stop taking money away from small businesses. For example, If I hire a guy for $10 an hour, it ends up costing me $13-14 dollars per hour by the time I am done paying payroll taxes. There should be no such tax on a business that has less than a certain number of employees. If you want businesses to hire, you have to make it easy for them to do so. Just like my idea,many people in this movement have great ideas. But great ideas don’t get the attention of our government,lobbyists and fistfuls of dollars do.
What I have mentioned already was reason enough for me to go, but what I saw next made it impossible to remain idle. Yesterday I came across a video called “Step by Step : What happened on the Brooklyn Bridge”. In this video I saw what looked like police walking in front of the protesters to the bridge and then blocking them from behind once everyone was on the bridge. I noted that the crowd was listening to police instructions. I noticed that the cops in front were moving forward. Anyone who has been to a parade, rally or protest knows that police block off areas they do not want you to be. My point is that if they did not want them on the bridge,why did they lead them there? I noted in other videos that I watched that most everyone was extremely calm and even smiling at the time of arrest.
I will Occupy Wall Street simply because of that injustice. I am not anti-establishment, but I believe in an establishment that is just and fair to all.