This is a tough post to write, but I have to say it. I’d rather see fewer people at these protests who know why they’re here than more people who don’t know jack shit.
Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s what I do.
Yesterday, a group of around 30 of us went to our congressman’s office – in our case, it was Allen West. All in the group came from his district, Florida’s 22nd. Most of them came from Occupy West Palm Beach.
As we were walking the mile or so from the People’s Camp to the Longworth office building (along with others who were paying a visit to 98 other congressional offices), some began chanting “What do we want ? JOBS. When do we want them? NOW”.
One young man who couldn’t have been older than 20 said “I really don’t want a job.”
Of course, I engaged him… It turns out this young man wants to just be, in an existential sense I suppose. He wants to live in a Utopian society where everyone just strives to reach a “higher spiritual plane” and takes care of one another.
When I explained to him that one needs to work in order to pay taxes and contribute to the common good he said that “we’re working to change that.” Uh, no we’re not. I hope he doesn’t try to speak for me.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it… One guy, purporting to be an “independent journalist” was sitting with us in Congressman Vern Buchanan’s office (we went there after most of our group was denied a meeting with Allen West). This self-anointed “journalist” proclaimed that “all these congressmen have their own private jets and buses.”
I quickly told him how very wrong he was, and he then asked “Well, then how do they get back and forth from DC ?” I’m not kidding.
And then there was the older gentleman who rode up on a bus from Occupy West Palm Beach. While heading over to West’s office, he asked, “He’s a senator?” I explained that no, he was a House member, a representative. He then asked, “What do they do?” Again, I’m not kidding.
He also continually referred to West as a senator. And, while waiting in the office where Fox was playing – as they seemed to be in all Republican offices – a commercial for something having to do with allowing Jews to celebrate Hanukkah (!?!), he asked what Hanukkah is. No, I’m not kidding.
Thankfully, those people seem to be in a very small minority. I spoke with another young woman from the same West Palm Beach group who I learned is 18 years old and a senior in high school. She looked at me and almost apologized for the previously mentioned members of the group, explaining that they don’t speak for her either! I asked if her parents were supportive of her actions. She laughed and explained that they’re right wing evangelicals, and are mortified by her activism.
She told them she was going on an educational trip to DC.
And that it is! Hopefully the others in her group in need of the education will get some!
Too bad. I’m also bothered by the ones who don’t want to sully themselves by voting when the only way things will change is to vote out idiots like Allen West and Eric Cantor.
And when I was marching on the treasury dept. recently we started out at freedom plaza and went by McPherson to gather up more people and it was loaded with homeless people who wouldn’t leave their tents.
And lastly, DC is one of the few large encampments left. We will lose it if they don’t stop the stupid.
Ummm… unspeakable, monumental ignorance. Truly. I can’t even blame Fox noose for THOSE displays of ignorance. Some of them clearly never even learned what, in halcyon days of pre-anti-education yore, was called CIVICS.