Open Letter To The “Occupiers”

To:  “Occupy…” in all your various and seemingly indistinguishable forms.
From: Mitch Berg – one of the 53%
Re: You Blew It.

Dear Occupant:

I’m Mitch Berg.  Most of you who are huddled down at Government Center – sorry, I just can’t call it “People’s Plaza” – right now probably think of me as “the enemy”, on one level or another.  But I’m a guy who works for a living, and pays taxes (oh, lord) and is not “too big to fail” and who reacted to the bailouts on Wall Street with the same anger – albeit not the same response – that you folks had.

And a call from my old friend Tom Swift on my show a week or so ago got me to thinking.

Tom pointed out that the “Occupy” movement had the potential to be every bit as big a deal as the Tea Party – if they had stuck with themes that really resonate with actual Americans; the revulsion with government (of whichever party) picking winners and losers, pouring public money into bailing out banks that then sat on the money (for whatever reason), and the roots of the foreclosure crisis, which is hurting the responsible just as much as the wanton these days.

But y’all blew it.  As Dave Ramsey notes, rather than protest around and about a clear message – like the Tea Party, which for a movement with no cohesive leadership is very “on-message”, as they say – the “Occupy” movement, says Ramsey, is…well, just a big fuzzy cloud:

The beauty of being vague is that anyone who has any emotion can get caught up in the excitement and join your crusade. They’ll just get mad at something and assume that you’re both mad about the same thing. Put a few hundred of these people together, and boom. You’ve got a crowd, a headline and a lot of attention … but no message.

And Ramsey isn’t one of those people telling you Occupiers to take a shower and get a job, necessarily:

A lot of people on Twitter are saying I totally agree with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demands and goals. The only problem is that I have no idea what their demands and goals are. And neither does anyone else. If all you ever do is stomp around, yell and hold up signs protesting a million different things, sure you’ll get some attention, but over time, you’ll just look foolish. You end up coming across like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum.

This is what’s happening to the OWS movement. They’re being discredited because no one has stepped forward and really stated what it is they’re after. The whole group is just coming across like a bunch of jacked-up, jobless, wannabe hippies. That’s not going to change anything in this country. You’ve got to state your goals clearly if you want to accomplish something.

And that’s the big difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy party; the Tea Party got angry about something and seized on protest (and lots and lots of action) in response. Seriously, everybody can sum up in one sentence why the Tea Party exists, even some of its less-dim detractors.

But the Occupiers seemed to protest first, and try to figure out why later.  At a General Assembly meeting.

26 thoughts on “Open Letter To The “Occupiers”

  1. #Iamthe53

    The message is simple: You lose your right to complain about anything when you contribute nothing. The government doesn’t owe you anything, and given the relative luxury American bums enjoy, there isn’t anything for them to complain about anyway.

    Short version: STFU; drop that splif; get a job; pay your taxes like the 53% do.

  2. The vagueness is by design rather than ignorance. The groups organizing and pushing these events know that if they really flew their collectivist or anarchist flags they’d be rejected just as they’ve always been. Their desire is to get attention but not scrutiny (ably abetted by the MSM) in the hopes of creating the appearance of a popular movement (or Popular Front, if you will) that’s all about what they’re against and not what they’re for. Hey, it worked in Libya.

  3. Most of you who are huddled down at Government Center – sorry, I just can’t call it “People’s Plaza”

    I believe the term for that encampment is “Obamaville.”

  4. Our brainwaves must be in tune today, Mitch. I couldn’t resist posting about OWS, either. In retrospect, maybe I should have done so in limerick form. . .

  5. “Most of them are just there for the chicks.”

    And directions to the Free Clinic. Judging from the Occupy “chicks” I’ve seen on the news someone who would hook-up with any will probably need a clinic visit.

  6. Kermit may have been trying to be funny. Yes, a 2 hour animal rights protest does bring out hot vegatarian babes (not the just the bony Vegan ones). Certain short protests sometimes bring out other fine look’n ladies who are out for something trendy to do with their friends.

    But you should walk around the government building in Minneapolis. Personal hygeine is not on their agenda. It appears to be almost all older white men who look like the kind of guys who can’t leave within 1000 feet of a school or playground.

  7. Mitch, I too can agree that we share the same anger. And I can agree with most of your criticisms of the Occupy movment. But where we’ll differ is your attempt to distingiush them from the Tea Party. The Tea Party was almost as unfocused and was every bit as ignorant about solutions to their complaints as those down at the Gov’t Center. Different ages and different issues, but in the end, the same jumbled mess.

  8. The “unfocused” message of “stop spending so much money”? Yeah, that must be really hard to wrap your head around, Earsall Mackbee.

  9. The TEA Party name comes from “Taxed Enough Already”.

    The Occupy name? Maybe it should be “OCC” for “Oppositional Conceit Citizens”. I always thought, however, that an Occupier was a hostile force inhabiting a country.

  10. “Dear Occupant:”
    That was a nice touch. I’m sure it would go over their pointy little heads.

    Kermit may have been trying to be funny.
    When has that ever happened?

  11. They may be unfocused, but what they want is jobs.
    Does anyone really think that if the unemployment rate was 5% there would be any OWS “movement”?

  12. The Tea Party was almost as unfocused and was every bit as ignorant about solutions to their complaints as those down at the Gov’t Center.
    For the life of me I cannot figure out how Earsall came to this conclusion.
    The teapartiers are anti-tax and ant-bailout. They initiated challengers to congressmen who voted for Bush’s bail outs. They are so feared by the GOP establishment that they have held the line on tax increases by congress. They have been a tightly focused and highly effective force in American politics.
    And the OWS can’t even come up with a single agenda item because the minute they do they know will lose followers.

  13. Terry, they may want jobs, but their jobs come with very specific requirements (free trade coffee, living wages for janitors, etc) that turn off most employers.

  14. Unemployed, paying a thousand bucks a month to pay for a useless degree? Living in a tent? I think that if you offered them the chance to get a job that would pay the bills their concern about living wages and the environment would vanish very quickly.

  15. It’s a good thing Obama is working on a bailout for those student loans. That way YOU can pay for the useless degree. Call it the College Professor Full Employment Act.

  16. Troy and Terry, of course it’s obvious to you because you’re so ingrained in Tea Party dogma you can’t see the forest thru the trees. So let me give you one example of the obvious disconnect within your Tea Party. so you’re ant-tax, anti-bailout and anti-gov’t. Given that a significant portion of your membership are retirees or other recipients of SSI and other “entitlements”, show me where in their laser-like focus they demand gov’t discontinue these benefits. Otherwise, they’re just frauds.

  17. Earsall,

    That’s a bit of a strawman; the Tea Party (for the most part) isn’t calling for the repeal of, well, government. The idea that every Tea Partier must support the most purist big-L Libertarian principles or be labeled “Fraud” is a bit of an overreach.

  18. Berg, you don’t collect Social Security or SSI, therefore you are not qualified to comment on it.
    (How did I do?)

  19. The Government Plaza group in Mpls stretched their legs and staged a ragamuffin march down Nicollet Mall yesterday evening. By my rough count, it was about 3 dozen people, trailed by a hobo strumming a guitar in the position where the manure sweepers have traditionally walked. You may have to take my word on this because they held their march at 7:00 p.m. when all the corporate interests are closed and their employees have gone home. About the only witnesses in my vicinity were a handful of us waiting at the LRT station.

    Perhaps it wasn’t a march, but merely some exercise to build up body heat. It had to have been warmer than crouching on the pavement, trying to fan revolutionary sparks.

  20. “I think that if you offered them the chance to get a job that would pay the bills their concern about living wages and the environment would vanish very quickly.”

    Yeah, people just don’t value those English Lit, Poly-Sci type Liberal Arts degrees anymore.

    Even science majors are having trouble…..

    I know of a biology Prof that has to supplement his income by scientifically proving, beyond all question that drowning Zebra fish embryos in rubbing alcohol harms their development.

    It’s tough out there for a pinhead.

  21. so you’re ant-tax, anti-bailout and anti-gov’t.
    The strawmen are getting thick in here . . .
    I’m not anti-tax, I’m pro reasonable tax rates and pro reasonable tax base. I think everybody should pay taxes.
    I’m anti-bailout. There is intense anti-bailout feeling on the Right, but since the media (and leftists) usually refer to them as the “Bush bailouts”, the ignorant (that would be you, earsall), think that conservatives are hypocritical on the subject. Look at the roll call votes for TARP I & II. See a pattern? The Democrats are the party of Wall Street bail outs & crony capitalism.
    As for anti-government, I believe in government, but in a government with bounds. The Federal government of the United States is a beast. Keep it on its leash or it will devour the wealth of generations . . . oh, wait, it already has.
    If you want a corporate dictatorship, you want a huge federal government with regulatory reach into every aspect of economic life. You can’t have one without the other.

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