Occupying Wall Street, Briefly

The entire Smucker clan went to Zuccotti Park last Sunday.

Sure, we enjoyed ourselves -- the atmosphere was festive, there was a drum circle, lots of organized centers for distributing food, clothes, paint -- but it was humbling, too. It was an organized mess full of angry people, young and old, yelling and marching with no one listening but their compatriots. The policemen looked jaded; tourists watched blindly from the tops of double-decker buses (as they passed by, we screamed, "Welcome to New York!" and shook our signs above our heads). I would chance it to say that every single person in that park had something important to say, and I'm not sure if anyone was really paying attention.

Understandably, though -- it's hard to listen to a group of people with 101 demands, ideas, and complaints. Though that might be the defining characteristic of our generation, plagued with options and opportunity as we are; the Internet has allowed us to say whatever we want to say, when we want to say it, and find a group, however small, that wishes to participate in our same conversation. We've also been subject to a dizzying array of decisions that have been made -- or felt like it, anyway -- generally without our consent (i.e., George W. Bush was not an elected president). Sure, we don't have a draft, but the cost of higher education and the threat of poverty make joining the Army something just short of mandatory for a lot of people. We're living in an age of upside-down reason and backwards judgment, where some of the brightest people of our generation end up at Starbucks, and soapbox preachers can pretend to be politicians. (There was a great cartoon in the New Yorker a few weeks ago: a mama polar bear and her baby were perched on a tiny iceberg, and the baby polar bear asks, "Is Rick Perry real?")

There is so much awry that I understand the sometimes cacophonous chorus of voices screaming until they are hoarse from Zucotti Park. There is no clear to way to define what's wrong, or how to fix it. It's like getting to the end of an awful math problem and checking your math and finding your answer completely off and trying to figure out if it was your original math or the checking math that was off and the process itself is so convoluted that you just have to start the whole thing over from scratch. Except in this case, I'm not sure if there is a scratch, so that complicates things. (The people who do believe there is a scratch point -- usually somewhere in the 80s -- are typically male, and white.)

All of which makes my own stance in regards to the Occupy Wall Street protests a little interesting.
I have a great job, and I want to keep it. I work for a non-profit company that treats its employees well, whose proceeds improve the quality of higher education, and whose products help people around the world communicate with one another. I'm a straight-up, New York City yuppie who lives comfortably in a decent one-bedroom apartment with a loved one and a cat. I couldn't ask for more, or a different or better life.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I don't exactly feel like I've got any clout when it comes to complaints. But does that matter? I want to stick with the protesters because of my sentiment, not because of what I do (or what I don't do -- believe me, if I were unemployed I'd be down there a lot more often). I want more people to have jobs like mine. I want more companies to be more like the one I work for. And just because I'm fortunate enough to have it doesn't mean I should be resting on my laurels -- I need to be working (harder, if anything) than the rest of the protesters because of where I'm coming from.

The curious part about this Occupy stuff is how broad the movement is. Hell, even my dad was there, and he's been working for the Man for more than 20 years! I'm sure we could all jump ship for one reason or another, including the 1% themselves. But if we all jump, who's steering the boat? Who is in charge here?