OWS and N17

Wow, yesterday 30,000 people rallied in New York City as part of Occupy Wall Street -- that's not a fringe protest by any stretch of the imagination. In Portland protesters went around downtown targeting banks -- here's an image you don't see everyday (and here's more about that photo, and a video of the woman hit directly in the face with pepper spray). My old apartment in downtown Portland was right in the middle of the goings-on, and I wish I was there for that (except rents seem to be up by about 30% in the 3 years since I left), but probably not the late-night drumming in the park 2 blocks away (it was dismantled by police last Sunday).

Of course, those opposed to the protests are trying to paint the protesters as dirty hippies who mooch off society, but here are some interesting statistics:

Tea Party members currently employed: 56% (April 2010)

OWS protesters currently employed: 70%

You know, I think the world, and especially the future, must look very different to people under 30 than those over, say, 40. The former see (in the US) a huge debt being handed to them after the oldsters ran up bills without paying for them, a environment predicted to get much worse, a country clearly going downhill whose bickering politicians can't agree even on the simplest things and who are all completely corrupted by big money, and an economy where they and their friends can't get jobs and where, for the first time in American history they may well not do as well as their parents. That's got to be a heavy psychological weight looming somewhere over their heads. When I was in my 20s my biggest macroscopic worry was global nuclear war -- for a few years I woke up screaming in my sleep (apologies, again, to my girlfriends-at-the-time), which I don't think compares at all. I don't think a lot of old people who are now whining about OWS realize this difference.  

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