{"id":24011,"date":"2011-10-26T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T17:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24011"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:50:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:50:08","slug":"open-letter-to-the-occupiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24011","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter To The “Occupiers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

To: \u00a0“Occupy…” in all your various and seemingly indistinguishable forms.
\nFrom: Mitch Berg – one of the 53%
\nRe: You Blew It.<\/p>\n

Dear Occupant:<\/p>\n

I’m Mitch Berg. \u00a0Most 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. \u00a0But I’m a guy who works for a living, and pays taxes (oh, lord) and is not <\/em>“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.<\/p>\n

And a call from my old friend Tom Swift on my show a week or so ago got me to thinking.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But y’all blew it. \u00a0As\u00a0Dave Ramsey notes<\/a>, 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:<\/p>\n

The beauty of being vague is that anyone who has any emotion can get caught up in the excitement and join your crusade. They\u2019ll just get mad at something and assume that you\u2019re both mad about the same thing. Put a few hundred of these people together, and boom. You\u2019ve got a crowd, a headline and a lot of attention \u2026 but no message.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Ramsey isn’t one of those people telling you Occupiers to take a shower and get a job, necessarily:<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll get some attention, but over time, you\u2019ll just look foolish. You end up coming across like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum.<\/p>\n

This is what\u2019s happening to the OWS movement. They\u2019re being discredited because no one has stepped forward and really stated what it is they\u2019re after. The whole group is just coming across like a bunch of jacked-up, jobless, wannabe hippies. That\u2019s not going to change anything in this country. You\u2019ve got to state your goals clearly if you want to accomplish something.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s the big difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy party; the Tea Party got angry about something\u00a0and seized on protest (and lots and lots of action) in response. Seriously,\u00a0everybody\u00a0<\/em>can sum up in one sentence why the Tea Party exists, even some of its less-dim detractors.<\/p>\n

But the Occupiers seemed to protest first, and try to figure out why later. \u00a0At a General Assembly meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To: \u00a0“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. \u00a0Most 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327,1],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-24011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-activism","category-uncategorized","tag-open-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24011"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49782,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24011\/revisions\/49782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}