Quote:
Originally Posted by c.t.ner
I know you guys are focusing on the main topic and the reasoning behind the protests, but I just wanted to pop on and provide some first hand experience.
My wife and I went to check out #occupyDC/#occupyKst last night, which is situated in MacPherson Square on K Street (which is right in the heart of the lobbyist row in Washington). We hung around for about 2 hours just observing what was going on and listening to the nightly general assembly.
From an outside perspective there was a mixture of people. You had a handful of anarchists and a handful of what I would call professional protestors. You also had a few homeless people hanging around for a bit of free food. But on the most part of the 200 or so people there working within the group to establish a direction, it was mainly made up of disenfranchised youth. When I say youth, i mean between the 24-30 year old range. There was a big swatch of very professional minded people within the crowd working with the organizers to establish a direction (including an amazing IT brigade live streaming the entire process).
From my perspective, the #occupyDC group (which is separate from the #occupyFreedomplaza group which seams to be a more aggressive movement who subsequently stormed the Air & Space museum this weekend) seams to be a more subdued group. There are some leadership holes in the structure, but for the most part they are trying to establish a collective direction. Which is a pretty difficult task given the situation and the diversity of the stakeholders.
And while the most glaring observation is that the protests don't necessarily have a concrete objective or even an end goal, it easy to see why people are there and becoming involved.
Coming from Calgary and being a professional within the 25-30 year old range, I never felt like I was behind the eightball in career options. I honestly never felt like I was ever going to be pinned behind crushing health insurance debt, student loans or a lack of job opportunities - in Calgary at least those issues were never something that crossed my mind.
But in DC, when I chat with my wife's cohorts in her program, there is an underlying sense that this generation of Americans will never get an opportunity to really get a head in the world. Either crippled by the costs of health insurance, crushing student debt (3-4 times what the average Canadian takes on), stuck in the cycle of the unpaid intern culture, running two jobs (a professional job during the day and service job at night), or not being able to purchase property. There seams to be a disconnect with the success of previous generations.
From the time I spent watching and observing the #occupyDC group last night, it's pretty clear that their biggest challenge is changing the public opinion of their movement from a "disorganized bunch of hippies" to a focused generational movement against what seams like a hopeless system. But until these groups are able to specifically channel that idea, they're going to continue to face an uphill PR battle.
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we are definitely lucky to live in Canada, where there is still a general belief in social safety net, universal health care and making education (reasonably) affordable.
the anecdotal evidence from the DC visit is interesting, tho not unexpected. For the under 25s, it may be a time where upward mobility ends...until the demographic shift of course, but then we won't have any CPP to look forward to anyways.