Occupy Wall Street Protesters Clarify Goals...Sort Of
Try as I might to resist the urge to give any sort of additional attention that the mainstream media has not already given to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and what seems like a number of different messages and goals, I ultimately could not.
If you read my last column, you know that I was recently in New York for a charity 5K run with my brother. The night before the run, we stayed at a hotel mere steps from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, from which a fair amount of media coverage has been provided.
One happy little fluff piece that caught my attention came from a ”photo blog” courtesy of msnbc.com. What jumped out at me in this feature was MSNBC’s way of presenting the human interest aspect and perhaps portraying the protesters from a sympathetic point of view.
I am in no way a fan of MSNBC and believe their level of journalistic integrity is roughly on the same level as the now defunct News of the World, but I have to admit that they told an effective story here.
By the same token, it was also very glaring that no two people had the same answer for questions about what they want or what they would consider “mission accomplished.”
One protester declared that “mission accomplished would be when the entire world is globally dynamic and we’re sitting here and nobody has to starve to death. I want the world to be united.” The same person indicated that this global dynamic would entail everybody working “’for a common goal for humanity,’ such as ending starvation and providing free education.”
Still another protester said, “The acknowledgement is good enough for me...but if people were still out here and there was a reason, and I could find myself on accord with that reason, I would probably be out here still.”
Perhaps my favorite response to what “mission accomplished” would be was this gem: “I don’t know yet...[I’m] waiting for it. I want to end corporate greed, so hopefully equality – you know, the way they distribute the wealth.”
There you have it. So MSNBC pretty much documented what I saw with my own eyes a little less than two weeks ago: a gathering of people who didn’t really have a common message and may not have been aware of why they were truly there.
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