Yesterday I bought lunch at one of my favorite sandwich shops in
downtown Oakland. If you didn't know, I work in downtown Oakland,
California. The very same Oakland which has been home to the Occupy
Oakland movement, and, more recently, the protests (which are growing
more and more violent) in Oakland. The action is all happening literally
one block from my building.
Yesterday at the lunch counter I happened on a flyer being distributed
there, calling for a city-wide strike to bring about these things (among
others):
-Free Healthcare
-Free Education
-Redistribution of all wealth (equally)
I was positively FLOORED. And not in a good way.
I happen to agree that, yes, America is spiraling out of control and
that things are going very, very wrong politically, economically and
socially. I'll be doing what I can to end this ridiculousness by voting
in the next election. That's how our system works.
Today, a Wednesday, I sit at home, not because I don't have a job. Not because I'm uneducated or incapable of holding a job.
Today
I can't go to work and make a living for myself because an Angry Mob
has threatened violence against businesses who dare to open their doors
for business. I for one do NOT support angry mobs that prevent businesses from functioning with a lynch-mob communist agenda.
The "Occupy" movement, in my humble opinion, is officially out of
control.
I found this fantastically penned article via a friend:
Some Belated Parental Advice to Protesters
by Marybeth Hicks
Columnist, Townhall
October 20, 2011
Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall
Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”
As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political
ramifications of the “movement” - now known as “OWS” - whose fairyland
agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for
everybody.”
Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear
there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in
America who are using the protesters like bed springs in a brothel.
Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting
question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and
young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’
moms clearly have not passed along.
Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:
• Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be
treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which
our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the
same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”
No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have
better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better
places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them,
others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in
hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and
eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.
• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college
degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because
colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is
no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers
and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans
owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.
While I’m
pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not
free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash
hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the
food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest
kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic
temper tantrum.
• Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate
to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack
of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn
promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free
to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek
technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and
your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college
student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions
of young people around the globe would die for - literally.
• A
protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad
dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t
evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are
doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit
of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like
attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross,
you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you
are people who deem you irrelevant.
• There are reasons you
haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gouged ears, facial
piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the
sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of
college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find
a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.
Photos from: http://www.good.is/post/photos-at-occupy-oakland-a-night-of-protests-and-tear-gas/
With three women in the house, the poor boy didn't have a chance. We played dress-up and bundled him in hat, gloves and coat... 
