Posts tagged ows

To anyone older than 30, allow me to explain to you why my generation, the Millennials, is protesting and occupying your streets and parks.

We’re protesting because for all our lives we have been told that if we are good little boys and girls who do well in school, go to college and put up with an unfulfilling and low paying job flipping burgers to get ourselves to that 2-4 year degree, we will have a job - a real job. Not minimum wage, not $7.50 an hour serving coffee, but the beginnings of a career. We were promised.

No, we’re not simply entitled brats. We were taught that flipping burgers was for losers who weren’t going anywhere in life, that we should be better, and we could be if we worked hard enough. We were told that waiting tables was a sign of shame, not of a work ethic. So don’t call us arrogant or lazy - your generations taught us these values.

We are protesting because we outnumber you - Gen X’ers, Baby Boomers, you’re both smaller than us, yet you hold all the power. There are no important Millennial politicians, and there are very few Millennial CEOs even though we are just as smart and better trained than you are. We understand technology better, and have an entirely new, more effective way of networking. But you already have most of the jobs and aren’t willing to make more. You’re the ones running the banks that don’t lend, the businesses that don’t hire - all in the name of the bottom line.

I’ll show you a line, it is the line between employed and under/unemployed and over 25% of us are on the wrong side of it despite looking for work. Here’s another - we’re more likely than any group other than the very old to be in poverty. Thanks a lot.

We are protesting, finally, because you are leaving us a short-sighted, messed up world and telling us it’s our responsibility to fix problems you caused. We’re supposed to solve global warming even though you won’t take the steps now to get things started (again, for the bottom line). We’re the ones who have to solve world hunger and endemic poverty despite you having the resources right now (and you have more than we will have). We’re supposed to bring peace and security to the world, even as you erode our rights in front of us and bring us to the act of protest with your abuse.

You run up a debt we will have to pay with jobs that aren’t as good as yours in an economy which won’t grow as fast, while facing greater competition abroad from people in other countries who are likely better trained for the jobs that exist because you’ve been systematically raising prices and gutting the budgets of our education system even as you tell us college is a requirement, not an option. Student loans are a new form of class warfare - protesting on your bridges is our retaliatory strike.

So to anyone out there over 30 watching Occupy Wall Street, understand that it isn’t just about the 1%. It isn’t just about corporate greed and Wall St. executives - it is about the systematic burdening and disenfranchisement of the youth in this country. That is why so many of the protestors are jobless 20 year-olds. If our message sounds confused, it is only because there are so many things to complain about. But never forget that we are out there for a reason - not the least of which is that we’ve learned that you just don’t listen, and we have no way within the system to enact the change we desperately need. Simply put, we don’t trust you anymore.

Understand that OWS isn’t about our failures, it’s about yours.