Occupy Wall Street; Protester Becoming the Oppressor? [OPINION]

ForexTV NewsDesk   |  October 2 2011 12:56 EDT

ForexTV.com (New York) by Timothy Kelly

The OWS crowd stomped it’s feet and held its breath in a temper-tantrum again last night.  The Romper Room Revolution continues to amuse.  Last night The Occupy Wall Street kids decided that it would be a good idea to march approximately 800 of their members over the Brooklyn Bridge which is currently under construction.  The group got on their Romper Stompers and headed out over the span eventually spilling-out onto the street and causing traffic jams and a dangerous situation for motorists.

There were reports of approximately 700 arrests (mostly citations for disorderly conduct), many released immediately thereafter.  Police say that they issued multiple warnings to protesters not to enter the roadway because of the dangers they would pose to themselves and motorists.  According to police some of the group complied, but many defied the police warnings and entered the roadway with arms locked chanting “let us go.”  Still many others sat or laid-down on the roadway.


Later, according to the Occupy Wall Street web site there was a post that read: “police appear to have deliberately misled protesters.”  OK, this is why I have dubbed this the Romper Room Revolution.  This event is a farce, could it get more juvenile?  The promises of rock bands, the false statement of police using teargas and not whining that the police tricked the protesters into getting arrested…it is great entertainment actually…you just can’t make this stuff up.  Meanwhile, the group has no specific goals and is content to be a public spectacle.  This whole event is like a great episode of SouthPark satirizing the privileged, upper-class, American kids staging a revolution about nothing…or everything…but not knowing what it is.

The NYPD are a tough bunch, they have to be.  In the last few months they have been on heightened terrorist alerts and with the latest actions against al Qaeda operatives, the threat of terrorism in New York is once again escalated.  Now with a thousand spoiled rich kids running around trying to get attention calling themselves the resistance, the NYPD has the job of fighting terrorism and changing the diapers of a group of privileged pranksters and hackers.  This is an embarrassment to the City and the Country.  My grandfather walked the beat in Brooklyn, my father was a vice-detective in Manhattan and my brother was in the District Attorney’s office…so maybe I am a bit biased.  But witnessing this group of arrogant kids taunting the Police, hoping to get them to respond negatively is nauseating.  I wonder what they will tell their children.

On 9/11 I lost my home and my business in Battery Park City after they were destroyed by terrorists.  I left there with the clothes on my back.  When I returned to collect personal belongings from the rubble in my apartment, I found that it had been looted, everything of value was stolen.  In the aftermath, I was offered $113,000 by relief groups and government assistance…tax free.  I turned it down, despite not having more than a few hundred dollars.  What I did from there was work hard and in my spare time, I worked within my community donating my time.  So when I see this bunch of kids from upper-middle-class backgrounds whining about having no opportunity, it lacks credibility and sincerity.

Occupy Wall Street is a misnomer and it is the first mistake this group made.  The name “Wall Street” and the original target of the New York Stock Exchange was just very convenient and the kids who started this probably saw something about Wall Street in a movie once.  The fact of the matter remains that Wall Street had little or nothing to do with the recent corporate collapses and bailouts.  There are no credit default swaps traded at the Exchange, there are no Mortgage-Backed Securities traded there either.  In fact, there are fewer stocks traded there today than in the past 50 years.  The people working on Wall Street today are mostly working-class white- collar folks making a nominal salary mostly in the $40,000-$50,000 range…the true 99% who are hard working.   OWS is simply targeting the wrong people because they just don’t know any better.

The problem with Occupy Wall Street is that no one in the group seems to really know what happens on Wall Street, or how it works.  They just know that they are angry and they want someone to feel pain, whether they are at fault or not.  The Occupy Wall Street crowd has proven itself repeatedly to be a bunch of spoiled kids who will stop at nothing to get their way.  They use sleazy tactics to lure young kids under false pretenses (Radio Head concert) and issue false statements to incite public anger towards the NYPD (False Web Post that NYPD was using tear gas), trampling the rights of individuals (publishing confidential, personal information about people on the Web) and now they claim that the NYPD tricked hundreds into getting arrested.

Occupy Wall Street’s message of weeding-out corruption and fighting socially-debilitating greed is a very noble endeavor indeed.  The manifestation of their efforts however, is an eyesore and an affront to most decent people.  They are quickly becoming more offensive than the problem they are rallying against.  In today’s social media-driven society, this group could very easily gain the correct knowledge about the true source of their grievances and organize more effective means to target the offending parties.  This group is leaving an ugly trail of collateral damage affecting many average citizens.  There is a mob mentality taking control and in its wake, Occupy Wall Street is leaving a trail of individual rights abuses.

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