Lately I have been watching the news and seeing the stories about the Occupy Wall Street protesters and I can’t seem to get a clear picture of what the protestors are trying to accomplish. There doesn’t seem to be a real clear picture of what the protestors want.
It seems that the protestors are protesting for different things depending on where they live. It seems that the campaign would be more effective if it had a definite goal that was clear to everyone else.
The news seems to only be reporting on what the protestors are doing. The only footage I’ve seen in New York is of protesters cleaning up the park so they can stay there and here in Salt Lake they pack up their stuff to be out of the way for the Farmers Market in the park on Saturdays. When the market is finished the protestors come back. These things are all the news has to report on because that is all there is to report.
These occupy protests need to be focused more on what they want to change. If that could happen maybe the media would be able to report accurately on what the occupy protesters wish to accomplish.
This kind of occupy protest has been tried before in the United States In the 1960’s Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay because of disagreements regarding property rights. They were eventually made to exit their protest occupation of the island with no change in policies.
In the 1930’s during the Great Depression the veterans of World War I were in demand of combat bonuses that the government had promised. The vets tried to occupy Washington D.C. and did for a while but President Roosevelt had the military drive them out with no bonuses given.
These occupy protesters of the past had one issue that they wanted action taken on and it didn’t work either time. Neither Washington nor Wall Street will ever do anything to meet these protesters’ demands until they are a lot more focused and narrowed down. This way all the protestors across the country can be protesting the same things. If they don’t, nothing will come of what they are doing.
Right now as I see it the occupy protesters are just wasting their time. Washington and Wall Street are just pretty much ignoring what is going on, which means that the protestors are having no effect at all on these places or the people that control them.
One positive I’m seeing is that a lot of diverse people are coming together and forming communities together. It seems that some good will come of Occupy Wall Street if different people can come together and learn that they can live together in a diverse but single society.
