Forum Post: Please, OWS, do not give up. Do not let them break you.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 27, 2011, 4:12 a.m. EST by Novanglus
(58)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
My dear Occupiers of Occupy Wall Street,
I have been a big supporter of this movement from the minute I found out about it: in fact, the only reason why I haven't joined you under the tarps is because I can't do it without taking medication for blood pressure & since NYC has no state healthcare it is impossible for me to stay for long. I am 29 years old. I have a degree in computer art. For a long time, I have tried everything I know how to find gainful employment, with no success. I have watched as my older sibling struggles to feed and keep a roof over the head of her daughter for almost two years. My mother is about to lose her status on payroll as she lost her job a year ago...with no prospects of replacing it. Because of this, the two of us are a hair's breadth away from going into a shelter.
I do not know what to do. I know there are millionaires warm as toast with money to burn sitting in those offices in the towers that surround Zuccotti Park, indifferent to the sufferings of people like me. They tell me that I am lazy and I have no work ethic, while at the same time when I go on job interviews they tell me that I do not have enough experience or am not what they are looking for (and some tell me that they are "expanding", which actually means they are moving jobs out of the country.) They tell my mother that she is asking for too much money when she is trying to help pay off my tuition from college and save money to retire, but apparently 30 years of experience in the business is not worth anything anymore. I won't even repeat what they tell my sister, whose only focus in life is that baby she has. I also know that this is a status quo that cannot be tolerated and the politicians should not ignore. If we, the people, do not strike back now, all may be lost. The bad guys, warm in their ivory towers, will be gloating that they crushed dissent and won...and people like me will have yet another reason to despair.
I would implore the de facto leaders, the protesters, the union members, do not give up!!! Even if they throw you out of Zuccotti Park, do not give up!!! UP. As hard as it might be to accept the risks of hypothermia and death, do not give up, do not let them win!! The politicians expect you to scatter like mice when the cold weather sets in, Republican and Democrat-you have to prove them wrong!! That is what they want more than anything in this world because it will bring back attention to the narrative they want, the one they can control, the deadlocked, status quo, unending culture wars battle that leads to nowhere and often ignores the needs and will of the people; it is the one that greatly resembles two parents fighting in a custody battle while not noticing that their child has just swallowed a lollipop and is turning blue. The country needs you to stay the course and keep repeating your message through the winter so that your creditability stays intact and a 2 month protest turns into a 7 month protest. Such a protest shows the whole world that you mean business. People are counting on you in Oakland, London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Boston to stay the course because everyone knows that Wall Street is the center of the entire apparatus-you go down, and the whole thing falls apart.
I would also implore you to consider, if Zuccotti Park cannot be camped out in, to use a building one of the Unions has as a base to warm up and a base of operations, or to ask a church to lend out its basement for meetings. I have heard that some people feel that this is not a good idea and it defeats the purpose of the protest if money is involved. I would ask they reconsider which is worse-giving the cops and Mayor Bloomberg an excuse to kick you out (health and safety) or operating from a base and protesting in the park in shifts, day and night, like the suffragettes did 100 yrs ago? Sometimes having plan B is not a bad idea, so long as the movement survives. Lord knows people like me need you not to break and scatter and stumble.
Soon I shall deliver a care package, but not before I get other people to help me bring in more stuff. I need to know now what people need to get through the winter. Please respond to this letter and I shall spread the word as best as I can.
Novanglus
I am sorry for your difficulties Novanglus.
I'm in support of the movement too, but I must admit that I am warm and cozy in the home of my Mother at 31 and still able to enjoy the freedom to think how to plan my life.
Life deals different hands...
I don't want it this way though. I believe everyone deserves a good life. Am I willing to freeze under tarps for it? ...no. I've slept outside before when I went through a bad year. My fingers still ache from almost getting hypothermia when it's cold outside. But...there are other ways.
Occupy Wall Street can switch to Occupy The Media.
Some people might say that change cannot occur without pain... I don't know that people being cold and hungry is the best way to promote change.
I say. Rest for the winter. Build up strength and ideas. Get back to it in the Spring for the Sequel! Me and my fingers will be there for that.
I am willing to do whatever it takes to get my country back, Promethean. When Congress no longer responds to the people who elected them, I consider it a national emergency. When I see Wall Street riding Main Street like a fat man whipping a skeletal pony, I consider it a crime. They have no reason to listen to us so long as they are insulated from any of the sufferings of the masses. The only way to get them to hear us is to keep repeating the message, silently standing there, even shaming them into listening, and be willing to take great risks to make the change you want to come happen-Dr. King knew that. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner knew it. So did Alice Paul, and she picketed President Wilson day and night so that I, a female, a hundred years later, could vote.
When I was just a very little girl, I used to get dandled on my great-grandmother's knee and she'd sing old Irish Republican songs to me (when she was a teenager she witnessed the Easter Rising and to her dying day hated the British soldiers for what they did to her father and her town.) She used to sing a song called Róisín Dubh...and as an adult, I finally understand what it means. ( Here is a translation of the last part)
O, the Erne shall run red, With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread, And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan-cry Wake many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, My Dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! The Judgement Hour must first be nigh, Ere you can fade, ere you can die, My Dark Rosaleen!
Certainly I do not advocate violence to get my country back and pray to God it never, never comes to that, but lately I have been thinking about that song and the poem. Both are too long for me to include in entirety here, but basically the words describe a man imploring Rosaleen not to cry for her sufferings and that someday she will be redeemed. To the people living in Ireland a century ago, this song had a lot of political meaning (Róisín Dubh in Gaelic means "little black rose," a very old symbol for Ireland) and surprisingly when I hear it now I can understand how they felt. I see a lot of pain in America in 2011. I know it has to stop. And I think sleeping under tents if you can might be the first step to pushing the fat man off the horse.