Get a Job!

[Uben]

Yeah, well, that's the problem! We wouldn't be out here protesting and disrupting your utopic world if we could find a job, asshole! Want us to go away? Hire us! If we had jobs, maybe we wouldn't have the time to spend out here in the cold in a tent getting pepper-sprayed by cowardly cops. If we had jobs that paid a living wage and had affordable insurance, maybe we wouldn't all be here. So, until the employment numbers improve dramatically, you can expect us to escalate the protests. Until the rich start giving up some of their riches they gained by cutting corners and off-shoring, we will be here, everyday, day after day after day, disrupting your world. You can't buy your way out and you cannot hide. We are the 99% and we are one!

[glowing]

1. Just had these old fuckers in breakfast blaming the "kids"

for buying homes, wanting things, and putting no money down on the calamities of today. You know, some days I'm all for taking their damn social security and medicare.. the world will be better off when some of these out of touch clueless and cruel assholes are called to their homes in hell.

[fasttense]

2. We were at an Occupy event in Knoxville and marching and chanting.

When we passed a rich group drinking their cocktails and beers, one big white guy starts yelling at us "Do you want a job? Do you want a job?" As if he would hire us. As if he had jobs to offer.

"I would get a job in a heartbeat if there was one around here that didn't involve wiping some rich man's ass." the guy behind me said. We all broke up in laughter. The drunk white guy had no come back.

But that's the truth, they want you to be so poor and destitute that you would wipe their asses for a buck.

Please sir, may have more.....

[lonestarnot]

3. Wipe his ass with a cucumber that fucker!

[Atman]

4. Chris Hayes had an excellent, intelligent analysis of this this morning.

There is a serious disconnect in the people yelling "getting a job." The most basic point is as you stated; if there were jobs, people would get them and not be camping in parks.

Then they call the protesters "lazy." But to call the protesters are lazy, you have to ask why there are suddenly so many more "lazy" people than there were just a few years ago. What are the structural problems within our society that has created so many new lazy people, and why aren't the powers that be doing anything to address it?

As for the feeling among the monied class that OWS protesters have no right to occupy the parks because "who is going to pay for it?" the answer is pretty straightforward -- WE ALREADY PAID FOR IT. These are our public spaces our tax dollars paid for. The police shields and masks and pepper spray was paid for by the people's tax dollars. The people have every right to utilize the services they've paid for; the parks and police are not special holdings of the wealthy.

It was a great discussion, with many more points than I can do justice to. Watch it if you can find a rerun.