I have two New Year's Resolutions this year.  The first involves shaving every day and I know for a fact that I'm going to break it.  If you had as much hair as I do, you'd break it too.  The second involves me actually getting back into blogging.  I'm at a job where I get a lunch hour in front of a computer every day.  It seems like an easy thing to write a blog on my lunch Tuesday and upload it on Wednesday.  Let's see if I get past day one.

My topic for today is the Occupy protests.  I've been trying to figure out for a while where I stand on the subject.  It is a complicated one, riddled with free speech issues and public property issues.  Both sides have points.  Both sides have merit.  Which side will I fall on?  Oh, that is the question.

To start off, let's take an intimate look into what exactly the Occupy protests are (or were).  There is a wage gap in this country and in others.  The rich keep getting richer; the poor keep getting poorer.  Job satisfaction is low.  Unemployment is high.  More importantly, the rate of people getting jobs in the fields in which they have degrees is abysmally low.  Times, as they say, are grim.  Of course, they're not as grim as, say, the "dirty" thirties.  After all, no one is living in tent cities...well, at least not due to lack of other places to go.

The Occupy protests were not particularly well publicised.  Well, they were in the papers every day but what wasn't in the papers was the point.  I'm sure there are some people out there who read the above paragraph and thought "Oh, that's what they were about.  Wage gap".  It's boiling it down into a pretty thing soup to say that they were just about wage gap but sure.  Let's go with that.  They were about different things as well and there were as many points as there were leaders instigating the protests in each city but for our purposes the wage gap is a major issue.  At least we can say for certain that no one protesting would have said the wage gap was a good thing.

Most of the negative comments I've heard about Occupy were legitimate concerns.  I say most because there was also the odd "I have a job, why should you be protesting?" and "it could be worse".  These comments are invalid.  We live in a country which acknowledges free speech and peaceful protest.  Yes, the situation could be worse.  It could be Hooverville.  The reason your argument is invalid is because it's better to protest the way things are heading before they get there. 

As I said, the majority of negative comments were legitimate.  The park is a public space that many people use for jogging, walking their dogs or (in my case) lying on the grass reading a good book (or chatting with a good friend).  The protesters were using space that I myself would likely not have been using, but I still understand where people are coming from.  If the park I usually go to when I want to read (in the warmer months, anyway) was suddenly filled with protesters, I would be angry.  Another major complaint was over the noise.  Again, legitimate.  I like my sleep and my girlfriend certainly cannot sleep if there's any noise anywhere.  I cannot imagine how bad it would be for protestors to be up all night singing Phish songs outside my window.

The positive comments were equally legitimate.  Public protest is legal in Canada.  Free speech is important.  What they were protesting was something I'm not particularly happy about.  There was a lack of violence and drug use at our local Occupy (the leader of the protest had kicked people out when they found drug use and at one point escorted the police through the crowd to evict someone [source needed]).  This was a textbook, legal, peaceful, ideal protest.

There was, of course, one major problem that ruined the whole thing for me.  It didn't end.

After a week, I thought, "hm, this is going on quite a while."  After two weeks I was perplexed.  People need their parks back.  People need their sleep.  Then the thought hit me:  "obviously this is not just a protest (like the many I have been in).  Obviously this is a sit in."  You may think me dim for not registering this sooner with a name like Occupy but the facts are what they are.  So they had a sit in protest and refused to move from that spot.  I've seen it before.  A teacher's strike in my elementary years had the teachers picketing outside the school and they would not move day after day.  I was almost part of a strike against a store I was working at a few years back in which they set up a rotation schedule so that there would always be someone there stopping trucks.  Sit ins and strike are common enough, so it made sense.  Except for one little thing:

What was their end game?

To this day I do not know.  A strike's end game is when they get what they want.  The teachers get more wages or less students or something.  The workers get more hours.  The politician who did something bad gets kicked out of office.  Some event is set up as the thing that will make it so the protest is over. 

I still don't know what Occupy's end game was.  Did they think someone would announce that the wage gap would just end?  The government would fall?  They would get a nice plaque?  The banks would all collapse?  Honestly, I'm not sure.

I'm all for protesting the wage gap, or anything else I don't like.  Organise a march!  Write a blog!  Better, write to your MP!  Get educated on the issue, form a plan and put it into action.  Sitting in a tent in a park, however, did not seem to accomplish anything.

So, in conclusion, Occupy did something but it could have done so much more.  The protesters are to be congratulated in using their rights but maybe slightly scorned for not thinking it through.  Your thoughts?