photo: Mat McDermott
This post slightly piggy backs Jake’s last post, in which he quotes a friend’s thoughts on the current goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement. As I read it I really understood, and agreed with, what Bill was saying. But after taking a step back, I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure that’s what Occupy Wall Street was all about.
The more I read, be it in mainstream media, small blogs like ours, leftist or conservative, it dawns on me that there is no one goal or focus of the movement. This is something I think will ultimately hurt it. As a computer programmer, I recognized this potential for failure from my own experiences. Many technical teams have been assembled with a litany of great concepts placed in front of them and backed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in budgets. But, with no focus or goal, the same result is inevitable. Failure.
For the record, I’m not exactly pleased with large corporations getting billions of taxpayer dollars to hand out as bonuses to officers. Nor am I happy with how closely wound industry lobbies are with our governing politicians. But perhaps the reason I’m not prepared to don a Guy Fawkes mask and hit the streets is simply because, well I’m not sure what the hell the movement is trying to accomplish.
And then I came by an article that eloquently stated all of the above. Entitled Dear Occupy Wall Street …, finance author and radio personality Dave Ramsey gives some advice to the folks participating in the protests. From the article:
A lot of people on Twitter are saying I totally agree with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demands and goals. The only problem is that I have no idea what their demands and goals are. And neither does anyone else. If all you ever do is stomp around, yell and hold up signs protesting a million different things, sure you’ll get some attention, but over time, you’ll just look foolish. You end up coming across like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum.
His proposed goals are well thought out and I’d recommend you read the entire article.
As an experiment, feel free to explain exactly what Occupy Wall Street is trying to accomplish. We’ll see if all of our readers agree.