This is from a post on Womanist Musings that addresses the #Occupy movement:
I am so damn sick and tired of Occupy Wall Street. Every so called “progressive” I know of is riding the #OWS dick like it is going out of style. Me? I can’t stand the shit. For the most part, I see most of the protests that have been inspired by Occupy Wall Street to be strictly the work of some spoiled little (previously) rich brats who can’t handle the fact that the college education that mommy and daddy paid for did not get them the high paid cushy job that they truly believe they deserve. I would be willing to bet that almost all of those who are running around with signs about being the 99% would not give a FUCK about economic injustice if they were not directly impacted by it in the present moment. And I bet in five years, most of them will be sitting in some multinational corporation’s headquarters shaking their heads and chuckling about the days when they were “radicals”. . . So, no, I will not be joining in the mindless adulation shown in progressive circles towards Occupy Wall Street. I have better things to do with my time than join up with some folks who are upset because a tiny percentage of their privilege is slipping away.
I have to tell you, people, that even though I try hard to be open-minded about the protests and hope for the best, I honestly can’t help feeling the exact same way about them. I look at the footage of the protests and I don’t see my students from low-income blue-collar and farming families among the protesters. I don’t see my minority students. I don’t see immigrants such as myself represented at the protests. What I see (and what I’m trying as hard as I can to resist seeing) is what the blogger I quoted above sees.
I remember how when I was an undergrad a super-duper progressive acquaintance tried to berate me for not participating in the WTO protests. As the only child of a high-powered trial lawyer and a famous surgeon, he simply couldn’t envision a reality of a recent immigrant who had to work 3-4 part-time jobs at any given time to have at least a small portion of what his parents provided for him freely. The saddest thing about this discussion that this passionate defender of the rights of the dispossessed grew very petulant and snarky when I pointed out that I couldn’t even imagine affording a trip to Quebec City to participate in the protests and that being away from work for several days would create extreme economic hardship for me.
“It’s people like you who can’t see past their need to be efficient corporate robots who are making the world such an unfair place,” said this guy. Of course, his rich parents made it easy for him not to need to be an efficient corporate robot, which is something he conveniently preferred to forget whenever an opportunity to berate those who actually needed to work for their living arose.
I also remember trying to explain to fellow grad students why I couldn’t risk losing my student visa by participating in an anti-patriarchy civil disobedience protest. The only way I could describe these folks after that conversation is “spoiled rich brats.”
A reader of my blog wondered why my students don’t identify with the #Occupy protesters and only see them as an inspiration for Halloween costumes. I have to ask myself, though, who are those people who can stay at a protest for many days at a time, listening to beautiful speeches and waving slogans around. These are obviously not people who know that if they don’t work today they will not eat tomorrow. These are obviously not people who have family obligations. They definitely don’t have small children, younger siblings, or sick elderly people to take care of at home. So who are these folks, and how come they have so much free time and resources to be at the protests?
I’ve heard a suggestion that the participants of the #Occupy protests are unemployed. I find this explanation to be quite offensive to the unemployed, to be honest. I’ve been living with an unemployed person for a while now, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that unemployed people work extremely hard. They work for free a lot, trying to create opportunities for employment in the future, sometimes in a pretty distant future.
Something tells me, however, that this is a reality that many of the #Occupy protesters can neither understand nor feel any solidarity with.
Clarissa's Blog 
Good post, but it terms of the post you linked to I was offended by this comment and other similar comments;
“Can someone explain to me where the hell theses little towheaded recent college graduates were for all those years when there WAS no recession and it was only Black and Brown people who were getting the booty end of the stick when it came to economic justice?”
Those blue collar and farming families in the midwest that you mention have also been suffering for decades. Their recession started in the 1970’s.
It just bugs me when all whites are painted as upper-middle class. It takes away from her message and I stopped reading after a while…
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I completely agree that MY post is a lot more insightful and balanced than the one that inspired it.
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I was more than offended by a lot of what she had to say. I posted a comment, but I deleted a lot of what I wanted to say.
Where was this recent college grad ten years ago? A little occupied trying to figure out menstruation and trying to convince my parents to let me go more than two blocks away from my house like my younger brother could, I imagine. Oh yeah, and trying to keep my parents from killing each other. Whoops.
The most unbelievable part was using a disableist term to criticize racism/sexism/classism, but wevs. Don’t judge her righteous anger, dudes. All that cred is right in her intro paragraph.
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The last thing I wanted to do was to offend you, Brittany-Ann. I don’t know about the post I linked to but my own post was aimed at criticizing a bunch of very financially comfortable pseudo-radicals I’ve met in my life. Your personal activism is admirable by any standard.
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Clarissa, I was referring to the author of the post you linked to, not you! I suppose I wasn’t clear, I apologize.
Thanks for the compliment. 🙂
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“I have to ask myself, though, who are those people who can stay at a protest for many days at a time, listening to beautiful speeches and waving slogans around. These are obviously not people who know that if they don’t work today they will not eat tomorrow. These are obviously not people who have family obligations. They definitely don’t have small children, younger siblings, or sick elderly people to take care of at home. ”
My thought exactly – only better said.
Like I read in some article the other day, 99:1 is a pretty good ratio and you’re better advised to put your efforts into becoming a 1% member and then change the world from a position of (apparently) supreme power over everyone else.
Though I should say that I do think that some legitimate concerns are being raised by this (ancient) movement. Only I think that the spoiled whiners far outnumber those who genuinely want to make things better.
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@Adi
Is it even possible to become one of the infamous 1%? I always thought that most of them are not actual entrepreneurs anymore but some kind of capitalist nobility in which you can only be born.
@Clarissa
So you can only protest if you can afford it, but only have a reason to protest when you can not afford it? That’s a Catch 22 alright.
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You can also be honest and accept that you can afford it instead of trying to pass yourself off as a representative of the dispossessed.
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I know several people who were born into abject poverty and who now live in mansions, have airplanes, indoor swimming pools and diamond collections. These are extremely hard-working people who never exploited or harmed anybody. I know I’ll never work even 3% of the time they do because I want to enjoy life while I’m young. They made a different choice, though.
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Yes. Many millionaires are self-made. In developed countries, hard persistent work is the single most important ingredient for success. I don’t think I’ve ever met a hard working person who hasn’t accomplished a lot in their life.
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About 12 years ago, I was very, very thin — 49 kilos. I then returned to martial arts training and within a few months I was having a strange problem. I was busting out of all my clothes, quite literally. For instance, I would reach over to wind up the window or open the car door, and the seam down the center of my jacket at the back would literally tear apart.
Since those days, I have learned to wear only stretchy or forgiving fabric. If I were to weigh myself now, I suspect I’d be about 60 kilos.
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Sorry, my post above is in the wrong place. Not good with mornings; need time to awaken.
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I kind of interpreted it as you saying that you are in the 1% with your lack of weight issues. 🙂
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It was a Freudian slip — a beautiful one with pink lace.
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Now we really need to psychoanalyze this. 🙂
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Yes, the meanings are getting dense.
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As for the actual article, I’m not so sure there has to be an actual correlate between the level of consciousness of the protesters and the overall political outcome. Well, maybe I should correct that and say that a strong correlate would be extremely desirable, but perhaps only a weak correlate is necessary to get the job done. That’s the thing about large scale systems, they don’t respond sensitively to nuanced forms of critique.
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The problem is that the movement will not gain massive support while so many people see it as a romp of overpampered rich kids who tickle their sensibilities by going slumming before joining their parents on a world cruise.
I know people who move between anti-capitalist protests and yachts, chalets and cruises seamlessly. How likely are they to attract anybody to a massive movement?
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When have protesters, no matter what their actual situations, not been deemed to be lazy parasites of one sort or another? If the rhetoric that protesters are inevitably spongers of the system or decrepit or disturbed or retrogressive, or lazy, now finds concrete actualization in the sense that people under examination actually happen to be this way, I’m not sure what to make of that. Life has had even stranger moments.
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The protesters in Spain (the Indignados) movement are very different from the 99 vs 1 movement. If you read their slogans, you’ll see that they have an actual political statement. And it’s radically different from the Occupy movement.
There was also the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that had very concrete grievances. The Orange Revolution won, too.
So I can’t say I see any similarities between the Occupy and other recent progressive protests.
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Port of Oakland is shut down; Iraq veteran has fractured skull from tear gas canister;
teachers and city workers marching. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15568057
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“Iraq veteran has fractured skull from tear gas canister”
That video was shocking. Everyone ran from the tear gas until someone looked back and saw the injured man lying on the ground. About a dozen people ran back to try to help him. As they crowded round him an officer tossed another canister directly at the small group.
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I went to a pretty average college, and totally felt the same way about the entitled rich kids wearing blinders against anybody outside their world. Except my “rich” kids were more middle class. It’s amazing, though, how ignorant people can be of others’ realities.
I completely understand the point about these privileged (I know you don’t love that word, but you know what I mean!) kids not being the ones who should be complaining. I still think it’s good to air legitimate complaints, even when those too busy with their kids, jobs, school, and everything else must be represented by people who can’t understand them.
Finally, I like the 99 vs 1 % slogan, when not taken too seriously or literally. As I see it, it’s just a reminder that the vast, vast majority of America (not to mention the rest of the world) doesn’t enjoy financial security, while a handful of others can relate more to Scrooge McDuck and his pool of gold – and that this is owed not only to talent or work ethic, but often to pure and simple luck. I think that’s a worthwhile reminder, and the 99% slogan is best seen this simply and not an all-encompassing pervasive idea behind everything the movement is for.
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‘ As I see it, it’s just a reminder that the vast, vast majority of America (not to mention the rest of the world) doesn’t enjoy financial security”
-As I said before, “security” of any kind is simply not part of human experience. We don’t have “security” in our health, our relationships, our friendships, our endeavors of any kind. We don’t even have security of whether we are going to live or die tomorrow.
A political protest whose goal is “security” is yet again a protest that addresses the imperfections of human experience. Obviously, this is a philosophical issue that can’t be addressed politically. Nobody can legislate financial security. Just like nobody can legislate eternal life for all of us. What is the point of protesting then? Are the protests directed at God?
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The terms of debate here are too broad for me to process. “Security” does not only have a psychological meaning. There are all sorts of other ways that it has meaning. Personally, I find too much “security” stifling. I don’t especially conform to my role as a Victorian era lady, in this regard, whereas some aspire to do so.
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Well, this is true. Also I think that it is too much to hope for that the majority of Americans would not express themselves as disgruntled consumers of capitalism, since this is the cultural conditioning that has been imposed on them since birth. Sure, there is a lot of confusion as to what it means to poorly off. Categorical distinctions between different “identities” makes it impossible to compare anything by a common standard. The inability to accurately observe the broader world is also culturally conditioned.
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“Also I think that it is too much to hope for that the majority of Americans would not express themselves as disgruntled consumers of capitalism, since this is the cultural conditioning that has been imposed on them since birth. ”
Yes.
“Sure, there is a lot of confusion as to what it means to poorly off. Categorical distinctions between different “identities” makes it impossible to compare anything by a common standard. The inability to accurately observe the broader world is also culturally conditioned.”
I agree. it would really help a lot if people were a lot more aware of how the 1% lives, for example. It isn’t just a matter of fancy yachts and so on. People really don’t know who these people are, and how incredibly God-like their existences are over everyone else, and how their lives are far more intertwined with other rich people in other countries than their own countrymen. Numbers are abstractions. This is a service the top 15% could perform, rather than loudly promoting the idea that the average worker is an ignorant homophobic racist which is a rut they have been stuck in for far too long. And while they’re at it (they are the bulk of the writers, producers etc after all) they could more accurately, and more respectfully portray the frustrating lives of the bottom 60-70% so people could see themselves more clearly.
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That’s an interesting point.
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To continue……I think the drive for security is often a very conservative one, but it need not be always construed that way. Like the subject of my thesis, Marechera, my levels of adjustment to the world suit a very high degree of insecurity, which I prefer, whether or not that is a good thing for my health (it wasn’t so good for his health — he died at 35).
Anyway, must start work.
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I believe that a search for security outside of oneself is futile. Any security always lies within oneself and gets projected onto the outside world. And it’s the same with any insecurity.
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Ah, a delay with my situation at work…
I’ve actually studied the issue of security as it relates to psychology very closely. It was one of the main reasons for writing my thesis. My subject hated security so much, he slept on park benches at the risk of being mugged. He went everywhere with a small typewriter in a battered suitcase, writing in pubs and allowing anyone who would to buy him drinks. Sometimes he sold one of his books. This kind of lifestyle did nothing for his psychological stability. It made him paranoid.
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So, security doesn’t matter, which means Clarissa wouldn’t mind adjuncting – and not driving, wouldn’t mind not living with someone who could drive? How much of a pay cut are you really willing to take – how many days a month do you want to depend on the food bank – if you drop health insurance in favor of buying groceries, as one of my colleagues has already done, you won’t need it right because all security is psychological???? You can’t be serious.
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My dear friend, I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union when we experienced an inflation of 500% overnight. And then again. And again. I witnessed every single person losing all of their savings overnight. I witnessed everybody losing their state jobs within months. I’ve lived a situation where there is no food in the house, no money coming in from anywhere, and no banking system in existence to offer you credit.
Later on, I experienced losing everything I had worked for for years to an unscrupulous husband. I found myself in a strange country, with no education, no job, not even speaking the language of the country where I was. McDonald’s wouldn’t hire me.
All I had was 300 dollars and a teenager on my hands. And I was ecstatically happy. Ecstatically.
So I know what I’m talking about here and I really don’t deserve to be condescended to the way you did in this comment.
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“I witnessed everybody losing their state jobs within months. I’ve lived a situation where there is no food in the house, no money coming in from anywhere, and no banking system in existence to offer you credit. ”
How were people able to afford housing? Were they all turned out in the street?
“I found myself in a strange country, with no education, no job, not even speaking the language of the country where I was.”
Again, no disrespect intended, but how were you able to afford a roof over your head?
Working people in the US, renters for example, spend over half their income on rent (I do now and live in a tiny studio).
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People lived in their own apartments. Often 3-4 generations in the same room. The institution of apartment rental was non-existent. Rents are high here but it’s much better than a situation where you either buy your apartment or live with parents, grandparents, adult siblings, etc in perpetuity.
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I also wanted to add that my husband has been unemployed for 2 years. And he did drop health insurance in order to buy groceries. He says these have been the happiest 2 years of his life.
It really bugs me when people forget who I am and where I come from and start lecturing me on poverty and privations.
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As usual when I read your blog, I find myself left with feelings both ways.
In this particular post I’d like to point out to you that the young Iraq War vet, Scott Olsen, who had his skull fractured by the Oakland police WORKS (or did) during the day and attended the protests at night. I am sure he’s not the only one showing up under similar circumstances.
Now then, I am not naive. I am perfectly willing to believe that some of the protesters at OWS probably, almost certainly, fall within the description you assign to the group as a whole. How many? I don’t know.
I hear so many people (surprisingly) here in the Bay Area condemning the protesters and I’m struck by the level of immunity they possess. By that I mean I’m often in awe to see everyday people with everyday careers who believe and act as if they’re somehow immune from being the next in line for a layoff or a RIF or some other economic tragedy.
Anyway, you seem to have painted an entire group with one brush here and that’s not the sort of thinking I’ve come to expect from you. I find it surprising.
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A family friend of mine goes to the Texas protests on weekends. She’s just a few years younger than me, is a mother, lives in a depressed rural town, and works for an a/c and heating contractor. She’s genuinely angry, and I think has a right to be, about how fucked up Texas business and government are. So there are down here at least some people who are not just whiny privileged brats with too much technology and guilt begging for handouts. The South being progressive … shocking, I know.
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The Tea Partiers are plenty angry, too. The question is not whether people are angry but what they want to be done to feel less angry.
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Yeah I haven’t figured that part out yet. Yelling is fun, I guess.
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Oh and of course there’s all that stuff about greater taxation of the very wealthy, public works programs to create more jobs, less spending on foreign wars and more on domestic support, affordable health care and tuition, stricter rules on political lobbying, land of milk and honey, etc., etc. Though on the flip side I’ve heard here and elsewhere that some of the protesters don’t really care about goals other than promoting the message that incredibly rich people are assholes, which really bugs me.
P.S. yes I would personally weather a cut to my already meager paycheck if it meant my mom who is a highly-qualified publishing professional had health insurance and a job.
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I think it is highly reasonable to hope for universal free healthcare. But can we really strive for a system where everybody is guaranteed a job?
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Nah I doubt it, unless we all go to work on Maggie’s farm, and I ain’t gonna do that no more (in fact I have never worked on Maggie’s farm).
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I’ve lived in a system where “jobs” were guaranteed and it’s a bloody horror of a system. The only alternative, of course, is a state of permanent job insecurity. This is a price we pay for having a chance at professional realization. And also for having small things like food, toilet paper, and tampons.
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Well in my mom’s case she was layed off from her education agency job due to gross mismanagement of the state budget including “grants” to CEOs that supported Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns and his veto of all public school funding for the 2007-8 biennium. So I guess I’d like to see a little less of that going on.
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*laid.
fucking English major I am.
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I’m just a modest English minor. But twice. 🙂
Love The Wasteland, too. 🙂
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“April is the cruelest month.”
Apparently Eliot never got to slog through a Houston July.
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Good summary here by Bill Moyers on economic and political decisions of the 70s: http://www.truth-out.org/how-did-happen/1320278111
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“These are obviously not people who have family obligations. They definitely don’t have small children, younger siblings, or sick elderly people to take care of at home. So who are these folks, and how come they have so much free time and resources to be at the protests?”
Honestly. That’s false; you’re obviously not seeing the news. I am very sorry you had to go to McGill and Yale and meet the people you met; I wish the Canada and US could have done better by you and put you at more pleasant universities; but really.
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I think the idea that seems to come across in your (Clarissa’s) critiques of the protests, that there are some people who function according to psychology and others who function according to reason was shown to be wrong some time around the 50s, when it was discovered that everybody has a psychological breaking point. Before that time, it was assumed that some people were susceptible to breaking down (“shell shock” was considered a crime stemming from moral cowardice during world war 1) and some people who were above that.
This is not to say that some people do not have seemingly innate advantages over others in terms of being psychologically robust. I get the impression, if I’m free to say so, that the Soviet Union was beneficial to you (Clarissa) in furnishing you with a sense of absolute certainty that women and men are necessarily equal. Many women in the West and from other cultures face psychological battles in terms of how they’ve learned to see themselves.
Early cultural conditioning can really make or break us. I have lots of advantages (although a lot of disadvantages too) that stem from my early cultural upbringing. On the plus side, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to impose a judgment on me by looking down on me. I just can’t believe this order of judgment can be anything other than a sign of imbecility on the part of the one who presumes to do so. This is my direct reaction due to coming from an arrogant master-race culture. I’m very psychologically robust on that point.
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I like to look at it differently. Instead of whining about ‘privileged hippies’ who obviously don’t have anything better to do with their time, I’m glad that *somebody* is out there protesting. I wish I had the time and money to go to NYC but I can’t. I believe Goldman Sachs and other investment banks have stolen money from the american people (with the help of the government, of course) and are responsible for creating this financial crisis.
I also believed the bush administration lied to us about WMDs but, honestly, I was too lazy to go out on the streets to protest. I did appreciate the efforts of the millions who somehow find the time to do just that. Criticizing them for being ‘privileged’ to be able to spend their time in this fashion is childish. I think the article you linked to is garbage.
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Nobody’s disagreeing that Goldman Sachs stole money and that they are a bunch of vile crooks. But tell me, what’s the point of standing under a crook’s window with slogans and posters? What’s the hope here? That the crook will repent and give the stolen money back? These are not rhetorical questions. I’ve been trying to get some answers to them but nobody is willing to give any answers that don’t include the platitudes about symbolic gestures.
As for your statement that at least somebody is protesting, I’m sorry to say but I find this attitude nave. The way these protests are being handled can ruin the very idea of political activism for a long time to come.
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Well, what’s the point of anything? People were angry at the Iraq war so they protested. Who the fuck knows what effect it had on anything? How do you do the math on something like that?
“The way these protests are being handled can ruin the very idea of political activism for a long time to come.”
Could you be more specific?
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