"Occupying" America

To my shame, I do not keep up very well with much current national and global news.  I know that it’s something I should do, but with time at a premium in my life these days, keeping up with the news is almost always lifted off of the “to do” list in favor of other things.  So when I first heard people talk about “Occupy Wall Street,” the movement had already been in swing for almost a month and had already spread to other places outside of Wall Street.

Photo by James Fassinger- featured on www.guardian.co.uk

Now I am trying to catch up.  Seeing and hearing the updates given by different media outlets regarding the protest, the tent cities, and the frays at times (for lack of a better term) has prompted me to look more into what the movement is about and what these protestors are wanting.  I get that they are upset at Wall Street, or probably more importantly, what Wall Street stands for to them, and also with a government that they see as feeding the problems with which they are concerned, but I wanted to know if there was more to it than that.

What I have found doesn’t really help to clarify a whole lot for me.  From what I have read on forums at a few different sites, it seems that the “Occupy” protestors are frustrated with media persons who claim that they don’t have a cohesive, unifying message, and I can understand their frustration.  But from what I’ve read in this article from Huffingtonpost.com, I also think that these media persons have a point.  This article points out that, when several people from three of the main “Occupy” sites were asked what one policy they would like to see enacted today to address America’s problems, the responses were basically all over the board, from campaign reform to tax restructuring to environmental issues to anti-war issues.  In looking at these responses, only one thing really seems to be clear to me:  these protestors think there’s a lot wrong with our country and want to see a lot of things changed.

I don’t agree with all of the concerns these protestors mention, but I can relate to some of them and am absolutely for their right to peaceful protest.  It just seems to me that their protest would be more successful if they could come together under some kind of organized message or aim, as right now they appear to me (as well as to others I know) to be a collection of people that are just disgruntled with the hand they’ve been dealt in life.  I know this is mainly untrue (although I’m sure there are some there that just like to protest… just to be contrary), but perception goes a long way, especially with our media-saturated culture.  I hate to admit this, but no matter how hard I try to be open-minded about this, I’m having a bit of a difficult time taking this as seriously as these protestors want to be taken.