Is Time Spent Protesting Wall Street better Spent Gaining Career Experience
The month that columnistRoss Douthatcriticized the college-age kids who comprise "The 'Me' Generation" in the June 17, 2010, issue of The New York Times, theU.S. Labor Department.counted 1.2 million unemployed "discouraged" workers - people completely fed up with job hunting. That didn't count the 6.8 million long-term unemployed men and women who were still jobless that month. Imagine. 14.6 million people unable to find work - the graduating "Me" Generation included.
Evidently, when Douthat referenced "the millenials' apparent empathy deficit," passion was brewing in these young, "Me" souls. Rebels without a cause, perhaps, but no one can say their young hearts were not in the right place, at the right time, when they began to gather one September day, almost aimlessly, on the boulevard where the Recession began and forged the bonds that became Occupy Wall Street, 3 years after the Lehman Brothers collapse. Because if you can't protest a financially driven Recession in New York, where can you protest?
The 1 Percent flicked its pubescent protesters off like so many fleas.
"Occupy A Desk!" shouted one irritated banker and his friends during one of its rare organized marches through the heart of the New York Financial District.
"Spread My Work Ethic, Not My Income" sneered bumper stickers from the SUVs of those well heeled enough to afford them.
Sean Hannitycalled them "anti-American."Ann Coultercalled them "Brainless." Bathrobed and toweled activists picketed oneNewt Gingrich fundraiserafter he advised them to "go get a job right after you take a bath."
And now someone, somewhere, is wondering, Is time spent protesting Wall Street better spent gaining career experience?
Ah, "career experience." That Me-focused, practical, serious way one spends one's time when one enjoys the luxury of a career.
In times like these, most people are grateful for a job sharpening pencils. Forget the career. And college graduates, hunting for their first paycheck? Only people nestled in a 1 Percent comfort zone are looking at anything remotely called a "career" in 2012.
The rest of the country, or at least the lucky fraction of the 99 Percent, are fortunate to be grappling with challenges like the price of gas this week, or how much the gas company will charge to heat the house, or what Christmas trees cost this year. Poor people don't have to worry about those things, because they don't have a car, and they don't own a house. Homeless people don't pay for heat or buy Christmas trees.
It is understood that it's a seller's job market out there: employers have their pick of hundreds of resumes for a handful of jobs. Workers are a dime a dozen these days. Especially in a recession, it's good to be rich. It sucks to be poor.
Yes, there are some fresh-faced, shallow career girls and guys out there knocking on doors, resumes in hand, getting "career experience" at this time. It's all about them. Many will no doubt land a job, and many no doubt will have help from well heeled 1 Percent mommies and daddies. Many will be getting paid nicely for that career experience, clueless no doubt as to how desperate it feels to look for work at any wage and not to find it, ever, after months or even years of looking, and ultimately praying, for anything at all. The Me Generation, indeed, occupying desks and climbing career ladders, all for themselves.
Fortunately, there is hope for the future of this country. It will be built on the backs of the 99 Percent who walk the walk on Wall Street, in Zuccotti Park, in Seattle, in Atlanta, in Washington DC, in Oakland, in Miami, and assorted other venues, 20-something activists exercising their freedom of speech and their freedom to have their grievances heard. It doesn't get more American than this.
Nor did it get more selfless, more idealistic than the voices that chanted, pledging peace, and later slept on concrete in Zucotti Park, true to their principles, in the shadow of police in riot gear. These were the 99 Percent. This was the City on a Hill. Freedom, ringing.
Is time spent protesting Wall Street better spent gaining career experience?
Ask the "We" Generation.
