An open letter to the Occupy movement.

Dear Occupiers,

While I have several friends who are involved in the Occupy movement I have kept my distance. It isn't that I don't agree with the overall aims and goals of the movement. Anyone who has read my blog with any regularity can see that I am very much in favor of addressing income inequality in our society and taking the control of our government out of the hands of the 1% and putting it back into the hands of the 100%. No, I have stayed away because the Occupy movement has failed to express a cohesive plan on how to achieve these goals which allows individuals to claim or appear they are speaking for the movement when their primary goals and aims differ greatly from mine or even from a majority of the occupiers. I do not support anarchy nor violence nor libertarianism and since all three of these concepts are quite common in the Occupy movement I have not been able to support the movement itself.

I have, however, been amazed at how effective the movement has been at maintaining itself and a constant stream of activities which have allowed it to stay relevant in the minds of many Americans. This steady building of relevancy is a difficult thing to do, especially when opposing groups are so willing to fight you on every front using every method they can. Many of these attacks on the occupy movement have in fact backfired on the attackers. No one will ever forget the brave US Marine who was injured during a police raid on Occupy Oakland or the image of a police officer nonchalantly spraying pepper spray in the faces of his fellow citizens. But last night an episode occurred that might not work as well for the movement's PR.

A group of Occupiers from San Diego were in route to Washington DC on a Greyhound Bus. In Amarillo Texas a bus driver, who apparently isn't a fan of the Occupy movement, forced the Occupiers off the bus and left them stranded. This was a horrendous thing for the driver to do and I can only hope that Greyhound takes some sort of action against the driver. That being said I was a bit shocked last night to see my twitter feed explode with tweets from Occupiers listing the drivers name and the bus number and Greyhound's phone number asking people to call and complain about this particular driver. A mass of calls of this sort would, understandably, lead most companies to fire the individual who was receiving the complaints and this is where I think a lack of thoughtful leadership within the Occupy movement created a problem.

You see, what this person did was horrible, but at the same time who this person is should matter more to the movement than what he did. Glassdoor.com lists the average annual salary for a Greyhound Bus driver at $38,700.00 per year. So while this person strongly disagrees with the Occupy movement he is also very much a part of the 99%. Your movement welcomes all sorts of contradictory ideals into its ranks and yet last night I saw tweet after tweet calling for action that would probably get a member of the 99% fired from his job at a time when jobs are far from easy to come by.

I know you had a limited number of characters to express your dismay with the driver's actions on twitter, but if the tweets going out had said specifically that you, as a movement, did not want this man fired, that you recognized he was part of who you are and is one of the people you are hoping to help by changing the system I think it would have shown the world, and people like this driver, that your movement is worthy of support. Instead it seems, to me at least, that you are willing to harm one of the people you claim to be standing up for if he gets in your way.

Just something to think about,
George Oeser