Albertinho

bighearts replied to your post: There is a very high chance that I won’t be called into work on Monday

So realise the inequality & quit complaining? Yes, the occupiers aren’t the worst off - those who are don’t have time to protest. How else can we push major social reform in a country where the wealthiest 20% account 62% of national household income?

Firstly, I made it clear in a previous post that they timed this so that most people, especially those with secure jobs, could attend the protests.

I’ve been getting a lot of “realise” and “recognise” posts of late and I think I need to clear something up. There is very clear difference between recognition, action and experience.

Occupy Wall Street is an action drawing recognition to a direct experience. Many of the protesters have, over the past 5-10 years lost their livelihoods in every sense of the word due to the continuing corporate greed that pervade American society, politics and culture. These people say “they’re the 99%” because fuck, that’s their last port of call. Sure there are many college students there, but most, if not all of them aren’t guaranteed a job when they leave college, or even two years down the track when they have to start paying back their debts. Meanwhile, corporate America continues to use the government elected by the people against them in more ways than I care to list.

OWS is a protest driven by experience and the need for action. Most of America has experienced what they have also, whether they choose to recognise it or not, and there is a link there. As are many major protests that have caused change the world over.

The problem with any Occupy Australia movement is the link isn’t there from “recognition” to experience, or even “recognition” to “action”. Or rather, the way that this is being presented to the masses destroys that link. And a lot of that is based on how this is all laid out. As I mentioned, this is on during a weekend, so they’re sending their primary push for a message, with the majority of protesters on a non-trading day for the RBA. In fact, they are putting unnecessary pressure on labourers who are working within the area; RBA security, the staff who do other duties in the area, and just about anyone who works at Martin Place on the weekend, which are mostly hospitality and retail staff.

Secondly, mere days have past since we just passed a bill, that many of the people in that protest would have celebrated, that will tax corporations for their unethical practices. Whether it will work is another matter, but to protest corporate greed just days after our elected government voted in a tax reform to tax corporations heavily is a bit confusing.

Thirdly, there seems to be even more of a scatter-shot approach to these protests then where the protests are actually happening. Everyone is throwing different sets of facts and keywords to support their case, especially when I say that our energies could be much better used protesting other issues, but there’s no consistency out side of “occupy X” and “We are the XX%” (all of which like in very comfortable privilege, despite XX being any variable number in this case).

Can we give up the charade and recognise that Occupy Australia, in its current form, is a really bad attempt at protesting created by people who just want to feel apart of the protests in the US? There are very real and very wrong sociopolitical issues in Australia, but the Occupy X movement either addresses them merely as a footnote to detract naysayers or doesn’t address them whatsoever. This was organised by white, middle-class, privileged people who, despite being the primary benefactors from the success and privilege offered to the middle class of Australia, want to feel part of a trendy cause and just like the Project Chanology example, the second this goes away from the public eye no-one will give a crap and return to their own lives of excess.

It’s humiliating to the people I know who protest, lobby and take action against real issues, to the left-wing, to young people who are actually socially conscious. Hell, it’s just plan humiliating.