Is it just me, or has the Occupy movement gone full-retard? I mean, I could get behind their (purported) original message, that corporate greed is bad, and that punishing poor people for being poor while failing to actually fix the economy and the jobless problem while ignoring the mega-bonuses that wall street execs have been given and refusing to prosecute traders who were involved in the shady dealings which helped bring the economy down in the first place is just plain wrong. But their methodology escapes me, and I have to wonder if there really is any method to their madness.
Let's take yesterday's events for example. Shutting down the ports on the West Coast will cost the big corporations almost nothing in the long run, but would create additional hardship for the little guy; everyone from union longshoremen to independent truckers who have to pay for all of their own fuel and maintenance and were prevented from completing their daily runs and, therefore, from earning their often meager pay. Now, news outlets around here are reporting that the Occupy protesters found a wrinkle in the union contract that allowed longshoremen to collect their days' wages without interruption; but in order to do that they had to make the picket line too dangerous to cross, which in Seattle they reportedly did by willfully and purposefully causing violent clashes with the police, in the form of lobbing flares, bags full of bricks, pieces of rebar, and other debris at SPD officers who were, until then, peacefully observing the protest. Of course, once they reportedly came under attack, the SPD moved in with pepper spray, flash bangs, and tear gas, and made several arrests. Once that happened, an independent arbitrator declared that the picket line was too dangerous to cross, thereby guaranteeing that the longshoremen would get paid; but that did nothing for the independent truckers.
When a local reporter attempted to interview one of the protesters, he replied by screaming at her that it didn't matter that the protesters were preventing honest, hard working people (part of the 99% that the movement allegedly represents) from working and collecting their pay, because the protester and his whole family don't have jobs and that means that something is wrong with America and needs to be fixed.
Sure, there is definitely a problem right now, and it definitely needs to be fixed, but preventing your support base from doing their jobs because you don't have one is not going to win you any favors.
This, however, is not my only problem with the movement. I've heard from several sources that the movement has taken a lot of its inspiration from the Arab Spring movement. But in each individual country where Arab Spring protests took place, the protesters there had one clear goal - to oust the current leadership of their country from power and replace it with a new, representative form of government. The only clear goal I've heard of from the Occupy movement is to end corporate greed in order to fix the economy, which to me is like saying "it's cold in my house, I demand that you end winter." While it may be feasible to help someone whose house is too cold better insulate their home, or give them access to better heating sources with lower cost to them, ending winter is obviously impossible (short of waiting for spring and summer to roll around). I accept that that's not really a very good analogy, but where does corporate greed end and "honest" corporate success and good earnings begin? If I have a good company, and pay good wages to my employees, and pay for their benefits, and succeed not because I'm illegally screwing over my competitors, but because my products and services are just plain better, and I'm making huge profits, does that make me an evil, greedy, corporate big-shot?
Then there's the camping issue. I understand that American citizens are supposed to have the right to freedom of assembly and the right to freedom of speech (against the government, which most seem to forget or wilfully leave out), but where in those two rights am I guaranteed the right to camp on public, city, or private property? And what does camping in a public park even have to do with a protest against corporate greed? How does my inability to set up a tent and camp out in downtown Seattle whenever I want and for however long I want make my point that corporate greed is bad? All it actually does is distract from the "real" issue that the movement was trying to protest, and since the "real" issue at hand is such a big problem that it can't be fixed in one fell swoop the way ousting Mubarak "fixed" the Egyptians' issue, really just means that these people would be camped indefinitely. Plus, it just invites police reaction to your movement if you're refusing to leave property that (in most cases) has city ordinances in place to prevent you from camping on it.
And that brings me to the other thing that bothers me about this movement. There is an un-ignorable amount of police brutality and misuse of force/misrepresentation of the law/etc. happening around the country (and around the world) right now. It's a big deal. And yes, some of the objectionable police behavior directly involves members of the Occupy movement; but doesn't something that important deserve its own platform and press coverage, instead of being lumped in with these loons who want to camp in city parks and prevent hard working Americans from doing their jobs because bank presidents get paid too much?
tl/dr: The occupy movement's scope was too big to start with and they keep adding more and more problems to it. Someone should make a documentary called "The Occupy Movement in America: How Not to Protest Effectively."