Occupy Raleigh

At 11AM on October 15th Raleigh became an “occupied” city (honestly I thought we had people here before then) and since the Historic State Capitol Building has had the menagerie you see to the right in front of it.  I am not entirely sure what to make of this group so I decided to tool around the resources they’ve made available and see if any of it would help put the puzzle pieces together. I was hoping one of these items would better define their war cry of 99% and what that means to those of us that they clearly wouldn’t consider in the top 1%.

I read the description and “demands” and saw a lot of things that made sense on the surface and others that didn’t match what I had heard on TV and around the internet (here, here and here) from the Occupy Wall Street group with which Occupy Raleigh claims solidarity. To this end it appears the top-level organization of this campaign is asking for something different than the ground level participation. None of those people “wish to raise awareness and demonstrate before the Capitol in support of economic justice and against corporate influence over our elections and political process” (at least not in what I could interpret from what they said). Granted these are people from Occupy Wall Street and not Occupy Raleigh but solidarity means you pick these guys up in your cause too.

No I am not picking on these guys – I’ll even post a positive article from the Independent to prove it. (And this video from that article – which is worth a watch.) Again from a high altitude this appears to all be reasonable goals that most of us would agree with. So I guess my question is – why be so off putting to the other 98% of us? I know you think the top 1% did you wrong and that is fine but you (whoever is setting the agenda) are being diminished by your representatives the other 1% that are being loud and asking for a free education or just basically sounding uninformed. Protest for cause is a great American freedom. Protest because you want so badly to be accepted and be a part of something regardless of direction makes a lot of us turn away.

You could argue that without the eyesore I would have never looked for the message. That could be true. Then again I can appreciate a good well-thought out argument when I find one and in today’s age of technology and social media getting a message out should be easier than ever. Seems a bit antiquated to hang out on the corner with signs.

All that being said – and being terribly neutral on everything in the process I’d love to see where you stand on Occupy both the message and the messengers. Or you can watch this. It makes as much sense as the protestors on tape above. Bored? Check out the Occupy Raleigh IRC Chat here.