Spontaneous Musings

Finished watching Hugh Laurie's New Orleans special on PBS, which was disappointing. He's a better piano player than singer, I think.

In other news, am rather amused by sudden postings on lj regarding Occupy Wall Street - I'm guessing they finally made the international news? Certainly took them long enough.

This has been going on for about three to four weeks now (or about a month - that's a long time to be camping out in a park, those mattresses are getting soggy.). The first two weeks? They had no clue what their message should be - everyone just camped out in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan with their lap-tops, iphones and ipads, and air mattresses, and painted on cardboard signs a variety of messages. Two weekends ago, long-time social activist Susan Sarandon visited them and said - "guys, this is great and all, but it would help everyone greatly if we knew what you were protesting. You need a specific goal or message. And clear demands." Very true. To aid them in this endeavor - TWU (Transit Workers Union) got involved and lended their support - so far that support amounts to telling the MTA that it shouldn't allow the police to use public buses and subways to transport protesters to and from prison - disrupting regular customers commutes . Not entirely sure if this helps or hurts the protesters. But the TWU isn't known for being either logical or organized either, even within the MTA. (The MTA has over 300 unions, the TWU is just the strongest and biggest - so they get all the attention.) The message did become a bit clearer after that happened - which was this weekend, when they decided to do an "unauthorized" protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge. See, here's the thing about NYC - you have to get permits to do protest marches on busy city streets and bridges...because otherwise you become a public safety hazard and prevent ambulances and emergency traffic from getting through and cause all sorts of chaos. But it does certainly get you a lot of attention. Hence the reason for doing it. The whole point is to get arrested!

And here's why:

Slutwalk - Protest Against Victim Blaming in Rape Cases took place in Union Square. They walked to the park and protested. No one got arrested.
Most likely because no one was disrupting traffic and being a safety hazard. It was also better organized and had a clear message - although they also didn't get on the National or International News. No one on Facebook or LJ is posting about them, did anyone even know about it? It got buried under the Occupy Wall Street Protest March.

Say what you will about that march on the Brooklyn Bridge on Sat - it certainly got International attention, up until Sat, no one seemed to know or care that much about it, except those of us in NYC who keep reading about it and seeing it on NY1 or the people who had to pass it on their way to work. Which I think was the whole point of that march - they had to do something major to get that type of attention. And it worked. Up until that point, the city was more or less tolerating them. (Outside of a few isolated incidents, such as the cop who pepper sprayed four-five twenty something women in the park and got death threats, as did his kids as a result of this action. I don't know why people feel the need to kill him or his kids. It was just pepper spray, painful yes, but people, seriously - it's not his kids fault. The hacker group "Anynomous" leaked the cops name and his kids names and whereabouts on the internet. ) The city still appears to be tolerating their presence in Zuccotti Park - how long that will last most likely has to do with weather and public safety issues.

On Sat - 700 arrested for disrupting one lane of traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. It should be noted they walked across the "traffic lanes or car/truck/bus lane" not the pedestrian overpass above, specifically designed for people to walk and bike across the Bridge. Because what would be the point in that? Also if they got a permit first - hard to do in any event - they wouldn't have gotten international attention - they would have been ignored like Slutwalk was. After all lots of people protest and lead protests in NYC.

Can't say I'm surprised by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Been waiting for it to happen for quite some time now. Took longer than I thought it would, to be honest. And the people protesting - are not the homeless or the working class/working poor. (How do I know this? Because they have iphones, ipads, lap-tops, and mattresses, also bunsen burners - which there is some controversy over, because hello, fire hazard. They allegedly got arrested the first weekend for putting up illegal tents in the park in order to protect the lap-tops.) They are the disenfranchized and dissatisfied middle and upper middle class. Just like the people in Egypt were the disenfranchized middle class. Mostly in their 20s and 30s. Unemployed. Up to their eyeballs in student debt from expensive schools. And wondering where are those entry-level or mid-level jobs? They can't get ahead.
They can't get a job. (And unlike when I was in this situation way back in the 1980s and first half of the 1990s - I wasn't in a major urban area and the vast majority of people weren't in it with me. And school was cheaper back then. I went to law school for about $3K a year, possibly less. Now? It's closer to 30K. My undergrad when I went? 15K, now? 52K. That's a big change. And there's higher unemployment and no one's salary has gone up, well except for the big guys on Wall Street and in the Entertainment Industry.)

If you look at history - all the major upheavals were due to a disenfranchized or dissatisfied middle class, often upper middle class. Marx had it all wrong - it wasn't the rise of the proletariat, it was the fury of the bourgeoisie who suddenly found themselves down in the dumps with the proletariat - homeless, unemployed, and no chance of a future - while the rich tyrants got to have luxury lifestyles. Historically? The Revolutionary War in the US was started by middle class landowners, the merchant class. The French Revolution? Middle class or merchant class who got pissed with the aristocrats. The Bolshevik Revolution? Middle Class. Nazi Germany? Middle Class. Arab Spring? Young Educated Middle Class.

NYC? We have a 150,000 homeless population. 9% unemployment rate. Rents are going up. The gap between the rich and poor is huge. The middle class is diminishing. We can't get ahead. And it's very clear in NYC that 20% of the population is sharing 85% of the Gross National Product. People are furious. And the easy scape-goat is the rich, Wall Street, the CEOs, the bankers...which from my perspective is far less scary response and far more reasonable one than some other possibilities.
Also in a way, the big corporations are to blame. Their continuous gobbling up of smaller companies, spreading out, and taking on more than they could chew. AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wellpoint, EBSCO, etc...all are to blame. The mergers and acquisitions, the laizzez faire economic measures, the Capitalism gone insane...has resulted in unemployment, homelessness, and suffering. Inevitable. That's why regulations were put in place back in the 1930s to try and prevent another great depression. Striping those away over time...has lead us here. We only have ourselves to blame.

Do I think the Occupy Wall Street Movement will have an effect? Not sure. It feels like a counter-response to the whiny Baby Boomers Tea Party strategy, which annoyed me to no end. I have a lot more sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street Group - at least they are educated and not racist and targeting the correct culprits. Also, they have a reason to be furious, not so sure the Tea Party does.

Part of the problem is, and I've been seeing this coming for a while now: We have the Baby Boomer generation unable to retire in the style they envisioned due to the crash of the stock market and housing crisis (I'm working with most of these people and they are all annoyed that they can't retire like they planned), and we have the young generation, the grandkids or kids of the Baby Boomers - unemployed and furious. Something's got to give.

I see a class war on the horizon. Have for quite some time now. Just was sort of hoping it would wait until I left NYC (which with my luck will be the epi-center of it) or I died. Really don't want to be around for it.



[Dear Charitable organization...while I do support your cause (in this case Breast Cancer), the way to get me to contribute funds to it is not by bullying me over the phone with a guilt trip after I've politely requested that you take me off your list. It is none of your business what charities I choose to support or why. How would you feel if I called you and bullied you to send money to Alzthemiers or Food Bank?]