Occupy Is Not Exclusively The 99%

I was delayed picking Maggie up after work today because traffic was abysmal. This is not unusual although traffic has been moving fairly well in recent weeks now that the construction season is coming to a close. There is always that little window in the fall and spring between winter and the summer construction season that gives us back our roads and allows us a few days of not sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. You have to count your blessings where you find them and those days are some of life's little blessings.

Unfortunately one of those days was taken from Maggie and I tonight, not by bad weather, not by construction, not even by an accident. Nope! It was Occupy Ottawa who decided that occupying to make a statement would not be as much fun as marching in the middle of rush hour on the city's busiest main street.

What made it all the more frustrating is that Maggie had an appointment and this protest march interfered with getting there on time.

Here's the thing. Maggie and I have been somewhat supportive of the Occupy Movement. I've written about it and posted what I have written on Facebook and various other sites to help spread awareness. But even if we weren't sympathetic to the movement, the fact is that Maggie and I, like most of the other people sitting in their cars because of the protesters, are part of the 99%. We're supposed to be on the same bloody side!

We're not part of the 1% that Occupy is protesting, we're part of the rest of us, part of the larger group that are lied to and over-taxed. Disrupting our lives isn't a very productive strategy. It attacks the wrong people. Nobody in the 1% was affected by this little demonstration, just fellow 99%ers. Because of that stupidity, it begins to undermine support for the purpose of the movement by using the same disruptive tactics of other self-indulgent groups who feel they have the right to impose themselves into the lives of every day people.

Up to now, Occupy has given me reason to admire them for their commitment and their approach. I have defended the movement on various social media sites from those who claimed Occupy was nothing more than a bunch of lazy, unemployed radicals and students. Tactics like this will cause me and countless others to start rethinking if maybe it was us, not the people who originally attacked Occupy, who got it wrong.

Isn't it amazing how only a small, stupid group of people can so negatively impact something so large and with so much potential to affect change?

I wrote yesterday warning Occupy that reading its own press clippings could lead to its downfall. This is an example of what I meant. When a group gets a bit of momentum and begins to believe that they can do whatever they want to whomever they want, they are no better than those they protest. I wrote about the fact that Occupy was going to have decide if it had the will and the discipline to bring itself together into something better organized and with a more defined purpose. If it didn't, it would lose the support of the very people it was trying to rally.

If it doesn't find that discipline and focus, the 1% will win because Occupy will lose credibility with most of the rest of the 99%. It lost some credibility with Maggie and I tonight.

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