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I recently did a show on At This Time radio about why I believe these global protests won't work.  If you missed the show you can still listen.  Here is the link to What's making news At This Time -  we all have had enough.  Listen.  Regular contributor Caile has her own opinion and we somewhat agree that the occupy movement won't accomplish what we all would like to see happen.  What do you think about the occupy movement ?  Voice your opinion on the forum.

Occupy What 

from Caile

As a natural cynic, I looked at “Occupy Such-and-Such Location” skeptically. I thought that it was, to be brutally honest, stupid.  Apathy and disdain seems to be character traits of the times. People just don`t give a sh**.  And here I am, writing this, and guilty of it too.

I walked obliviously pass the old shirtless dude playing hacky sack in the square near City Hall; I walked pass some tents, a bunch of lawn chairs, a bunch of dogs and some kids, a makeshift kitchen where people were feeding other people…  And then I thought, “What is wrong with this exactly? Who the f*** cares if I think this is stupid?”

What’s more stupid than a small group of peaceful people sitting quietly in tents because they want all humans to be okay? Well, I’ll tell you it’s a small group of malicious, self-serving and non-peaceful people trying to break the spirits of all humans so that they might have more power.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about it.  “A hungry man is an angry man,” says Bob Marley.  Well, now we have a planet full of hungry and angry men, and there’s that small forementioned group sitting indifferently on a proverbial money pile chucking us a few pennies now and then to keep us quiet.

Now, here’s the one seed of thought that probably subconsciously contributed to me thinking “Occupy Wherever-the-hell-you-are” movements were futile and stupid:  human beings only change when forced into it.

Sitting around in your tents near City Hall is a nice sentiment, it really, really is. I read all of their painted signs propped up next to their tents; their messages were beautiful and very true. Kids were playing and painting, people were cooking food for other people, and people were making music and sitting together peacefully. There was a total vibe of calm community and a quiet strength there.

Now the Occupy movement I’m witnessing and writing about here is the one on Vancouver Island, in the little city of Victoria. It’s surprisingly not that idyllic here. Unemployment is raging all over the place, and the cost of living is absolutely absurd compared to the minimum wage. It’s almost comically illogical but the results aren’t funny at all; a whole small town’s worth of people are sleeping on the streets, giving up on ever having stability, comfort, warmth…these are things human beings deserve, right? Those aren’t frivolous demands. Our leaders and people in power have those things. And they have them with ease, without a fight.

The rest of us however we sacrifice our dreams for our day jobs. We break down our bodies for cheap garbage fast-food to feed our children. I’m not going to go on a rant here about the problems; everybody knows what our problems are. We live with them. We wake up to them and go to sleep to them, and see our problems in the empty cupboards and the miniscule numbers on our little pay-checks. These problems are ingrained into our very health, they follow us in our faces, and they echo through our human interactions with one another.

Now, I guess my point here is this: The Occupy movement is simply ahead of its time. They all have the right idea, that is in fact community and how we should be operating our societies, through the realness of human action, through simplicity, through calm outreach, not through raging steel machines and destructive monsters of corporate takeover. Our lives are not a game of Risk, you know?

But I say the movement is ahead of its time because this kind of movement is going to be needed afterward. Remember, human beings will only change under force.

You can peacefully protest in your tent all you want, but keep in mind who you’re actually protesting against. Your opposition, they’re not idealistic pacifists willing to talk rationally. They’re not looking at your tents and saying, “Hm, this is a really powerful movement, we’d better watch out!”

KNOW your enemy. They’re actually quite intelligent; they must be. Somehow they managed to dupe ALL of us into a crippled, blinded, mutated economy. They (‘they’ being the societal governments that dole out the rules) are manipulative, elusive, and they have most of the tangible tools, money, access to power, that we do not.

They do however underestimate us.

Mostly because we are already so psychologically dwarfed by their medications and altered foods, chemicals in the water, you know the whole spiel here.

But they’re not cowering at the tents and hippies playing hacky sack, making vegan chilli for a handful of people. They just send down the cops to mace a few people and watch as the bad weather and lack of sanitation and proper resources picks everyone off. They know how reliant we are on them. What, are you going to grow a fully sustainable vegetable garden right there on Wall Street? Unless you’re stealing, you’ll be doing the walk of shame down to their grocery stores and using their government issued money to get their food before returning to your tent to continue “protesting.”

Look into how Paris changed their economy in 1968. Let me put it this way: they weren’t sitting around in tents.

And now the readers of this article are probably going to start thinking, “Well, what are you doing about it then?”

I’ll tell you what I’m doing: Nothing. I’m not doing a god-damned thing. Humans only change when forced to, remember?

I am doing a lot of thinking. I mean, I’m not some rich capitalist sitting back in my condo with my feet up, laughing all the way to the bank. I’m actually, as it happens, unemployed and barely able to afford food, thanks. I’m thinking about all of us struggling under the heavy burden of an inhuman, monetary-based society.

I’m waiting for change. I’m not out on the frontlines. And neither are the people in the tents. The people in the tents are trying to create new forms of society in a society that cannot yet handle something like that.

We will need that soon, but for right now, actions speak louder than words. Mine included.

About the author:  Caile is a free-thinking nomad who is hopefully waiting for society to be restructured. She is currently working on her third novel and hopefully can get it published before the economy crashes.


** Editor's note:  The views expressed are solely that of the author of the article.  What do you think ?  Post your comments on the forum for Caile.




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