Don’t dismiss the Wall Street occupation
My take on the whole affair. What do you think? Are they worth our attention? Should more of us be joining and supporting them?
We have a pretty interesting interview with Chelsea Elliott, the girl who was maced on Saturday. She says the protestors “really just want to create some kind of dialogue. I feel like our government is being run by the people they are supposed to be regulating. They’re being careless with money. We have 7 hour [general assembly] meetings about why we’re here, what our demand is. It’s so much bigger than just a simple demand. It’s about the demise of the middle class…in every civilization, you’re only as healthy as your middle class, and our middle class is in trouble. People have not been held accountable, and companies that should be paying taxes are not paying taxes. Alan Greenspan used to work at Goldman Sachs! I’m here for my grandparents, who are too old to protest. I feel like this should have been done a long time ago.”
It’s nice to see coverage on what happened this weekend. The longer videos are actually pretty disturbing to see how the NYPD are treating the occupants. While a lot of the cops are standing around looking like they have no idea how to handle this, there are definitely a few that are being overly rough. I usually see no reason for pepper spray/mace to ever be used on crowds unless violence has already broken out.
On a personal note, I went to high school with Chelsea and it would be really great to see some good coming from her experience this weekend.
(via thebookmunkie)
