TO OCCUPY IS HUMAN TO FORGIVE DIVINE

I asked a good friend of mine Mae, a wise worldly woman and a bit older then myself, if what’s going on now with OCCUPY WALL STREET, is anything like it was in the 60’s. I’m too young to remember much about the 60’s but always felt like I’d missed the most exciting era of human rights history.

“It’s a lot like that honey, but they were more organized in the 60’s. They had leaders and an agenda. They got it done.”

When I heard a little while back that OCCUPY WALL STREET was going to Union Square park, I went for a few hours. I’m not much of a rough and tumble type, so went on a not so chilly afternoon for a few hours. All of the speakers that day were talking about police brutality and at first I began to wonder if that’s what the movement had become. But then a speaker explained that this was the October 22nd anti-police brutality rally and OCCUPY WALL STREET had joined them in solidarity. While I was there someone held up a sign about the 99%, someone invited me to become a communist and several people invited me to become a socialist.

One of the speakers instructed the crowd as to the difference between a frisk and a search.

“A search is a light pat down. They cannot go into your pockets, look under your hoody, ask you to remove your hat. That is a search. If they do this, you must say the following loudly and for witnesses to hear.”

“I DO NOT CONSENT TO THIS SEARCH!”

The crowd shouted loudly back, “I DO NOT CONSENT TO THIS SEARCH!”

I did not join the parade that marched down the street but instead took a moment to survey the booths and crowd left behind. So many causes, so many agendas, it was like a festival of human rights issues.

From the beginning I have had a mixed feeling about OCCUPY WALL STREET. How can a movement with no leaders and no particular agenda really work? But the other part of me loves the revolutionary passion that screams out against this often very very wrong world.

After- all, it really did take the stonewall riots to launch the gay rights movement.

So maybe it really will take OCCUPY WALL STREET to even out the playing field a little bit more between the 1% and the 99% between the big banks and the small businesses.

I am a small business owner and one that has certainly felt the pressure of trying to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the world, with a local government that speaks publicly about supporting the small business but privately sends in every imaginable task master to charge, penalize, tax and fine us. We will never know how many small businesses close due to this un-ending harassment and this means loss of jobs, loss of income, loss of what makes NY great. It’s called short sighted!!

I know that the small business must be one of the causes OCCUPY WALL STREET fights for and so it is extra sad when local joints in the area of Zuccotti park are hurt, like the Panini Café which had been overwhelmed with protestors using the bathroom and not buying anything and ultimately breaking the sink causing loads of money in damages and the business to have to install a lock.

I’d like to think that the money brought in by the hoards of tourists coming to see the protests might soften the blow. I hope so, but for many local businesses it’s been a hard haul that’s not ending anytime soon enough.

Alas all revolutions do have casualties even if they are friendly fire.

I’d like to see OCCUPY WALL STREET make a mission to support the local businesses, after-all they are some of the very people they are protesting to protect.

I like it best when the protests take on specific causes and fight for them, like getting the big banks to stop with the @&&@**@( ATM charges. I heard a cry one day about letting the un-employed ride the subway for free. I think that’s a great idea. If going on un-employment would produce a free ride card for public transportation, maybe folks would have an easier time searching for jobs and surviving until they get one.

The over-all message of OCCUPY WALL STREET, to stop corporate greed and corruption, to make the big banks be held accountable, to stop this country from being one of such extremes that if can often feel hope-less and fruit-less is a good one. It is a timely and just message. The very fact that it’s still going on and hasn’t lost steam and has spread around the country means regardless of its confusing state, it really is working.

It’s a mixed bag, with a lot wrong and a lot messy but over-all, to me, OCCUPY WALL STREET, still the good guys.