Dear #OccupyDallas

Dear #OccupyDallas

To adapt a worn-out Internet meme: Protesting: you’re doing it wrong.

I absolutely agree that the outsourcing of jobs and various other practices commonly performed by corporate America are unfortunate and have certainly contributed to our hardships as a country. However, I am concerned with your lack of proposed direction.

A protest generally works in this way: A hates the way B does something, so A lets B know that he isn’t going to take it any more. A tells B that he should change in ways which will make A happy.  B may or may not comply.

For instance, people protesting the current war might do something like this:

A protest village in London, June 2010

You’ll notice that their signs plainly state what makes them unhappy and what changes would make them happy.  This is where you have failed miserably.

There are hardships.  The American economy has been poor for years. Companies are sending jobs overseas because they can’t seem to see beyond their shareholders.  This is all very true, and it might even be something to get worked up about.  However, declaring yourself the 99% and marching with no demands helps no one, including your own cause.

The problem here is that no one knows what you want.  We all recognize that you hate that the 1% controls things.  We know that many of you haven’t been able to find jobs or have had to suffer without cable for two years.  We understand that corporate greed seems to run our country.  However, you have come to the table with a thousand complaints and not one solution.

How in the world do you expect to get what you want when even you don’t know what that is?

There is no way to make your current movement happy.  Every movement should have an objective of sorts and the only one yours seems to have come up with is, “The majority of us does not agree with the minority, but the minority has more money!” which is less of an objective and more of a rambling T-shirt slogan.

The fact of the matter is that you will never succeed if you continue on in this manner.  The success of a movement is determined by the reaching of certain goals.  You lack discernible goals and will therefore find it difficult to ever feel that this movement was successful.  As of right now, it just sounds like you’re a group of people whining about first-world problems while you secretly hope for government-mandated wealth redistribution (which, by the way, never works out quite the way people think it will).

Please stop protesting until you can intelligently define your terms.  After that, you may proceed in your demonstrations.  This is, after all, the land of the free, where people can speak, write, act, protest, run their businesses and make money in just about any way they please.

Sincerely,

Chelsea