If you haven’t heard about all of the rallies going on across the country – started by Occupy Wall Street, which is still going strong – that’s probably not your fault. The major news media kept the protests under wraps as long as they possibly could. Today though, flip on CNN, open your laptop, cruise your Facebook feed and there you have it: hundreds of thousands of people joining together to peacefully protest the bureaucracy, greed, and selfishness keeping most Americans down. Usually I’m a cynic about any 1960s-ish hippy-type protests (maybe I lived in San Francisco too long) but the images of NYC streets teeming with bodies really is a beautiful sight to see. It’s about time.
Hit the Jump to continue reading about the ongoings of Occupy Wall Street…
As a chick who has been writing about that beast known as Bureaucracy for awhile now, the fact that our generation wasn’t speaking out in an organized way about what the greed of companies like Bank of America, Blue Shield, and my own personal fave Sallie Mae are doing to keep us down and their Board of Directors up has been a little puzzling. Part of it is our cynicism about the 60s and 70s era images of stoned, muddy, ratty haired protesters named Moonchild marching against the Vietnam War or racism while popping tabs of acid. Worthy causes, obviously, but today’s protester is more likely to have been laid off from a corporate job than to have tuned out and dropped out to smoke hash and read poetry in the park. We’re also not fighting an obvious enemy — even good old CNN put the words “corporate greed” in quotes when writing about the protests going on right now on Wall Street. Those quotes feel condescending to me. CNN also calls the rally “leaderless” and says there is a “lack of coherent message.” Huh. Corporate greed may be a shadowy beast, but it’s hardly “incoherent”. How is protesting against banks, student loan companies and corrupt institutions incoherent? Makes perfect sense to me.
So let’s forget the image of protesters past in their patchouli and purple velvet pants. Let’s find out where the next Occupy Together rally is and go there. Let’s show Rick Perry it ain’t gonna be so easy for him to glide into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Let’s stop being cynical.
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Image below of police ticketing hundreds of protesters taken from CNN
