It appears that Occupy Gainesville is ready and raring to go.
I hope that its demonstrations Wednesday will have proven this column wrong.
Despite the lack of media coverage that accompanied its first several weeks in process, Occupy Wall Street has managed to become big news. It's drawn in thousands of protesters, all willing to vehemently picket and, in some instances, face arrest and police abuse for their actions. It has extended outside of New York City, sweeping the nation as it calls upon the beleaguered 99 percent to stand up for its beliefs.
But what is it the protesters believe?
That hasn't been made clear. Surely we know what they're protesting against, in an abstract form. They're protesting against the wealthy elite. They're protesting against the conservative right. They're protesting against a government that provides for the rich and defrauds the poor. And as their clever (and at times devastating) Tumblr website reflects, they're protesting against the wealth gap that exists in our nation.
Don't get me wrong, those are good reasons to protest. The top 1 percent currently earns 21 percent of the income and, more importantly, maintains 57 percent of the non-housing wealth. The divide is egregious, and it's certainly worth complaining about.
But that doesn't make a good case for a revolution. Instead, it's a problem, and in order to fix a problem, you need a solution. Try as I might, I can't find a solution among the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The more-or-less official blog for the protests, occupywallst.org, lists no agenda, no demands and no purpose. Occupy Orlando's letter to Central Florida outright states, "We acknowledge that we have yet to offer a comprehensive plan to fix this mess."
This isn't just a leaderless movement. This is a movement without direction or aim.
I won't deny it's done a damn good job of getting attention and getting people riled up. The now famous YouTube video of NYC protestor Jesse LaGreca bashing Fox News went viral at rapid speeds, making up for the fact that it was never aired on the network in the first place. But nowhere did it mention what Occupy Wall Street is actually trying to achieve. It was a well-articulated, effective attack aimed at the corporate news media. And unfortunately, that's all it really was.
As fascinating as it is to see a diverse group of people yelling its grievances at the top of its lungs, invading the national consciousness and taking the media by storm, it's nothing more than an interesting sideshow unless it finds some sort of common purpose. At the moment, it doesn't have one.
Ironically enough, perhaps one of the clearest and most helpful explanations of the Occupy Wall Street agenda came from a major American corporation, Ben & Jerry's. On its official site, it outlines not only the issues it joins the movement in lambasting, but it specifically details the ways in which it is working to fight the corporate evil that exists in the country.
Basically, Ben & Jerry's is doing Occupy Wall Street's job for it.
The fact is, it's easy to get people mad. And there are some damn good reasons to be angry. We should be furious. And we should be doing something about it.
But anger is not enough. You can decry the way the nation functions all day and all night for weeks and weeks on end. But that's not good enough. That's not going to get us out of this mess.
To be frank, without a proposed solution, all you're doing is taking a dump on the government and big business.
Or, rather, police cars, as the case may be.
Alex Guilmartin is a psychology and pre-law senior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays.
