One of the things I find fascinating is this whole “Occupy Wall Street” event. It’s been going on for a few weeks; they claimed at the outset that they were going to be there for ‘several months’ and now it seems as though the protesters and their benefactors have achieved some kind of a stasis. Every couple of days the protesters do some kind of disobedience and get arrested in droves; there are still many more who are able to take their place; and the protesting has secured anonymous benefactors with deep pockets. The idea that these protesters can just blindly protest “the system” or “the man” or “the way things are” seems to be missing the point. The fact is that these protesters are where they are because of “the way things are.” Where else could such organized, informed, and well funded protesting happen?
Protesters Get Hotel Rooms: It has been widely reported that the Occupy Wall Street protesters work in shifts. That is, every couple of days, several of these protesters go to a hotel to clean up and get some rest. How else could this have happened then in but a capitalist society? Moreover it’s through the generous donation of their agitator benefactors that these people are even able to stay anywhere at all.
Protesters Have Organization: Without the benefit of the inter-connectedness which we are all afforded in this modern era, the Occupy Wall Street group never would have been able to assemble. While the protesters may not be protesting the Internet in general, it’s still through the benefit of a free and open society that we are able to share this information.
Protesters Get Fed: Another benefit of these anonymous calls by donors in to local restaurants, pizzerias, and delis is that the protesters from Occupy Wall Street are able to eat. Of course they are out there doing the work of some unnamed higher power, but where else could such a thing even be accomplished? Red China? Niger? Vietnam? Zimbabwe? Cuba?
This Occupy Wall Street thing was something I may have really been behind in my younger, more idealistic years. Still, we should not take for granted all the freedoms we have in the United States. There are ways to protest and there are ways to elicit change by taking proactive steps and working for longer term goals. Setting up camp on New York City streets and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t do anything and isn’t going to change anything; now or later.