Occupy what now?
Just thought I'd throw in a quick thing about the #occupy protests that are occuring around Australia at the moment.
For those of you living under a rock, the #occupy protests started in the US, specifically on Wall Street, that home of American brand capitalism. It was and is a reaction to a massively broken system that has seen banks and multi-nationals seemingly escape any consequences for their own actions at the expense of the tax payer. The people protesting in the US are demanding things like a more equitable distribution of wealth, universal health care, more regulation for the financial system, a better education loans system and so on and so forth.
Really, what they are demanding is to be like us.
Australia is a country that by and large has fixed those problems. We have universal health care, we have a well regulated financial sector, we have a Uni loans system that is the envy of the world, and when it comes down to it, the division of wealth, while a thing that no one is every going to be happy with (unless you're at the very, very top of course) isn't actually that bad.
The catchcry of the #occupy movement is "We are the 99%". This is a reference to the US wealth split where 1% of the population controls more wealth than the other 99%. We don't have that in Australia. Hell if we expand that to a global 1%/99% split then all of a sudden we become the 1%.
Look I'm not saying Australia doesn't have problems, sweet crap do we have problems. Asylum Seekers, Indigenous Health, Gambling problems, Drugs and Alcohol and a competition to see who can do the least on important environmental/energy issues. However these problems aren't going to be fixed by a sing a long by the tent in the middle of your city of choice. Instead it's going to require that the people singing protest songs and handing out pamphletes engage more deeply in the political process. Or possibly volunteering to help remote indigenous communities, or how about qualifying as a social worker and working with people with addictions.
In Australia we are not at the stage where communal sitins are required. We don't need Soviets setting up in each city (and yes considering the Socialist Alliance and other similar groups are involved, I'm going to call them Soviets), what we need is a way to avoid getting to the point where that may in fact be required.
You know what the most dangerous thing about the #occupy protests in Australia might be? It's that they may in fact be massively counter productive. Take the #occupybrisbane protest. For two nights running they've been running a live stream where they've managed to become the laughing stock of the country. They've managed to conflate protests against percieved economic skull duggery with the anti-vaxxer movement, the anti-flouride movement and the anti-carbon tax movement. I watched the stream last night and they refused to answer legitimate questions, ban hammered those who pointed out flaws in their arguments and generally acted like a bunch of teenagers rebelling against their parents.
Sigh. I know I'm sounding like some old fart who "just doesn't get the vibe man" as one guy said last night, but if you really, really want to help improve this country? Get out of the tent and into the community. Work to convince people of the strength of your argument, help people, don't just lecture at them from a street corner.
