Do You Live For The Summer or Spring?

jeffmiller:

shortformblog:

thegayrepublican:

The 53% is a group of responsible young people organizing across the country. However, this group is not camping out in parks around the country and demanding the entire capitalist system be destroyed. These men and women have jobs (most of them work at more than one job in order to make ends meet), but they are talking about attending the Minneapolis Occupy Wall St. protest scheduled for today – Friday, October 7th.

Is the message that cynical counter-protests should belittle the points being made by the original protest? Because this whole 53 percent thing doesn’t necessarily negate the point made by the 99 percent thing.

People demonstrating at Wall Street are holding up signs with slogans like, “Housing is a right,” and “College is a Right,” and “Health Care is a Right.”  To much of America, these signs read: ”You need to pay for my housing,” and “You need to pay for my college,” and “You need to pay for my health care.” These are demands I would never make upon my closest family and friends.  Would you (generic you)? Would you tell your best friend, “You need to pay for my housing.” Would you tell your parents that they need to pay for your college? Would you tell your children that they need to pay for your health care? If you wouldn’t express these as demands from those closest to you, can you understand how complete strangers might be put off by this? Those demonstrating at Wall Street don’t see this, and this is awful for their cause.  

If the Wall Street protesters confined their message to their displeasure with the special favors granted to monied and powerful interests, then most of [America] would be with them. They might actually be the 99%. But they haven’t simply asked that the Government stop favoring the rich and powerful; they’ve demanded that [one group] further subsidize [others] in this country. So it’s hard to see how you can blame the 53% folks from feeling targeted by their protests.

I don’t necessarily agree with occupy wall street… but it’s a bit different from asking people to pay for your education. I mean, I’m applying to colleges now, and I have a sister who just graduated college and now has to deal with her student loans. It’s not a fun prospective. I think it’s less of a “i want you to pay for my education” as a “can we stop spending billions of dollars on things that don’t really benefit us so I can go to school without going tens of thousands of dollars in debt before i’m even done?”

(via thedestroyerofworlds)