After my neighbour called me out for being
at home doing a crossword on my front porch instead of joining the protestors
downtown, I decided to head for the subway. She never attends such marches and
rallies herself, but knows that I’m a demonstration junky. I joke that my favourite
part is getting to walk in the streets shouting my head off. It feels
great yelling chants like, “Hey
Mister, Mister! Get your hands off my sister!” or the favorite call and reply
chant, “Whose streets?” “Our
streets!”
In truth, I am always interested in what
issues motivate people, and often they hit the streets for reasons that matter
to me, too. However, I hadn’t been moved by this new “occupy” action immediately, probably because economics makes my head spin. I’m allergic to numbers,
spreadsheets and anything else that reminds me of Grade 10 math, the last year I
took that lousy subject. Apparently fate thinks it funny to watch those of us
who snobbishly scorned the highschool courses in typing, scrambling desperately, decades later, to learn keyboarding. Likewise with math. I was chagrined to hear a leading feminist preach that if we wanted to change the world for girls and
women in particular, we had to learn how the world economies work. Doggone it.
So I have learned about micro-businesses and made myself listen to some of the
reports on Bernie Madoff and his evil colleagues. I’ve watched documentaries explaining how the mortgage mess
happened in the U.S. and others that tell sad
stories about clueless home buyers who are now homeless. Once in a while I even open the Business Section of the newspaper.
Lately there’s been enough broadcasting about occupying Wall St. that despite the appearance of disorganization
and lack of clear goals among the protestors, I do recognize values in common. I suspect that the Spirit of
God has provoked many to take a stand, even without offering solutions, against the unfair distribution of
resources and profit. They are protesting a capitalist system and unionism that are both unchecked by any concern about their abuse
of power and endless greed.
Yes, the ‘occupiers’ are a ragtag bunch, unable to identify exactly what they want or exactly how fundamental changes to our economic norms can happen (don't ask me). But the movement may be, at least partly, an expression of a God-given insight that we are living in a deeply unhealthy culture, where some among us need reality TV shows to rescue us from buying more stuff, and others rob and murder as a twisted response to hopeless poverty.
My own story of occupying to follow.
Yes, the ‘occupiers’ are a ragtag bunch, unable to identify exactly what they want or exactly how fundamental changes to our economic norms can happen (don't ask me). But the movement may be, at least partly, an expression of a God-given insight that we are living in a deeply unhealthy culture, where some among us need reality TV shows to rescue us from buying more stuff, and others rob and murder as a twisted response to hopeless poverty.
My own story of occupying to follow.
