26 October 2011

The Albany Occupation: a drive-by critique

On the sixth day of "Occupy Albany" a CDTA bus started down the hill past the State Capitol, the epic colonnade of the State Education Building, and Lafayette Park, and as it banked right at the foot of the Capitol, across the street from where Lafayette became Academy Park, a front-seat passenger saw the tents in the park and the people waving signs on the sidewalk and asked, "What's going on over there?"

"Oh, that's the ninety-nine per cent," the driver explained.

"What's that?" the passenger inquired.

"They don't even know what they're there for....They're protesting against rich people being rich....I can understand protesting against the banks, but somebody working hard all his life and getting rich? What're you griping about? That's the American way...."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So this bus driver knows every rich person and knows that, for a fact, everyone of them worked hard for that wealth? Didn't exploit, rob or steal to get it? Typical right-wing idiocy.

Samuel Wilson said...

To be fair, he also doesn't know whether none of them worked as hard as he imagines. In any event, he didn't seem to get the "1%" idea, since a person can work hard honestly and get "rich" by the driver's standard, yet not enter the category against whom the occupiers protest. As I've suggested before, though, the targeting of a mere "1%" may be part of the occupiers' problem.