Occupy Wallstreet

So the new political movement Occupy Wallstreet is a bit delusional in my opinion. I believe wholeheartedly in what they are trying to accomplish, but I believe that it is going to fail because they are not being realistic. The whole movement is about the atrocious fact that major corporations spend billions of dollars to sway elections in their favor, stockpile trillions of dollars and further distance the rich from the poor economically, outsource work to china, all the while fighting the tax hike on millionaires (saying they are the "job-creators" yet don't actually hire Americans) with the political clout that they gain from their billions of dollars in campaign financing.

I get it, all these things are awful. Corporate campaign financing has ruined our democracy and should be illegal; instead the Supreme Court has made it not only legal but has encouraged it by not putting a ban on the spending limit. I hope that Occupy Wallstreet is successful in their movement, I really do... but this is why they are going to fail...

They are shunning support from major corporations who also believe in their cause. They are lumping all major corporations into the same category and using the credo that the only thing corporations are concerned with is profit. This may be true in most circumstances, but there are major corporations out there that have had huge profits and still do their share to be globally and socially responsible. Just a few:

Clif Bars
Xerox
BackCountry
Weyerhaeuser
Disney
Nestle
Ben and Jerry's


Recently, Ben and Jerry's decided to feed the protestors in NYC's Zuccotti park that are at the base camp for the Occupy Wallstreet campaign, they did it with little fanfare and no logos on the items to show their support for the cause. Some of the protestors then had the audacity to come out against them for doing this... this is the ignorance of the protestors and why their campaign isn't going to work. Big Business rules the world. If you don't have some sort of backing by someone with public visibility or someone that the media has an interest in, your protest and your revolution is going to go unnoticed and no one is going to care about it. I think it was extremely short sighted and idealistic on the protestors part (who are all young 20 somethings) to shun the support of a large corporation showing them support.

I wish all corporations would be banned; however, since that will never happen... I think we should help support those that do their part globally and socially and recognize that not all corporations are created equal. There are the very few exceptions that do care about their customers, that do care about hiring American employees and not outsourcing their work, that care about the environment, and care about the overall impact that their product(s) have on society. The facts of life are that we live in a branded society, we live in a Target, Wal-Mart, Costco society. They have pushed out most of the competing businesses because of their ridiculously low prices from their outsourced labor... there is no way around these facts now. People should have been fighting that fight 15 years ago when the trend was beginning to set roots in our communities. There are hardly any options to get supplies locally except for these huge chains, it is a sad and terrible fact. I am going to bet that a good chunk of these people participating in the Occupy Wallstreet campaign still do their shopping at one of these major stores, or maybe one of the major grocery chains?? Whole Foods maybe?? What about the $9 billion dollars of revenue that Whole Foods generated in 2010?? I got $9 billion dollars to go with my idealistic, arrogant, attitude and my organic fruit that was shipped all the way from fucking Guatemala or Argentina... But what the fuck, who cares about the cost of the fuel to get it there because organic means BETTER... So I have my organic banana from Guatemala to eat while I protest the greed of corporate America. Don't want to get hungry in the middle of protesting such things.

Starbucks is another company that has come out publicly calling for a ban on campaign financing... Starbucks, a company that could easily make more money by lobbying FDA regulations on public health codes, yet they do not. I hate Starbucks and the branding of America that it represents, but Starbucks is doing its part to be socially and globally responsible. They have cut energy consumption, use recycled cups, give discounts to customers for using their own cups, will give away the used coffee grounds to customers for composting if requested, and they are ranked No. 15 on the EPA's list of top 25 Environmentally Friendly Companies.

This whole protest takes on the meaning to me as the saying "It is not your Christ I do not like, it is your Christians." They are delusional, idealistic, and arrogant which is just terrible because it is a great cause to support because corporate greed is ruining this country and has corrupted our democracy already.