everydaycaitlin

QA Your Stuff, Obama!

I just tried to sign up to host a house party for Obama’s January 24th (Happy Birthday Michael Abber aka my brother!) State of the Union, and uh, this is where it took me:

and this is the email I received:

Caitlin Abber has sent you an invitation to ‘Precinct
Caucus: Johnson County, Precinct Fremont/Lone Tree’ —
click here to view the invitation and submit your
response:

Now I know the internet is hard - but you gotta do a better job of QAing your stuff, B!

Notes on The Protest

On Saturday we headed to Times Square for the protest party. We expected a large crowd, lots of confusion, the uneasy feeling of crowds in a crowded place, and perhaps some cops with attitudes watching over a drum circle.

What we got was pretty much that, along with a deep sense of irony about voluntarily going to Times Square on the weekend.

The diversity of the protestors is one of the strongest aspects of the protest. I don’t just mean diversity in color, but in age, demographic, and economic status. There were folks from everywhere, holding signs, holding each other, and holding on to some kind of abstract idea of what a better world is like. Being among them provided me with a sense of personal solidarity I had never really felt before. My financial situation, like everyone else’s financial situation, has always been this thing I never really spoke about. It’s rude to ask what your friends about their salary, or how much they pay in rent, or what they have in debt or savings. It’s rude to say you can’t afford something, or to brag about all the stuff you just bought. Money makes people uncomfortable, and its one of the top reasons couples break up and friendships fall apart.

I think that is what has been the most interesting aspect of the Occupy Wall Street protests. We’re talking about money in away that brings us together. We’re talking about the fact that while many of us have zero debt and large saving accounts (large is of course, subjective), some of us have $300 or less to our name. Some of us piece together money from here or there to make rent, or we live with our parents, or we spend every night in a bed grateful that we’re not on the street.  We all come to a place of uncertainty, and that is the ultimate tie that binds us to this movement.

We are admitting that though we worked hard, planned ahead, and did everything we were told to do (for the most part), we are still in the shitter. The dreams we had of owning stuff (houses, cars, engagement rings, a full fridge of groceries), may seem out of our reach. We wish we had done things different, we wished we had stashed that Bar Mitzvah cash, went to a state school, and never tried to keep up with the Joneses or the Kardashians. We wish we were different people, in a different country, with rules that were fair and leaders who weren’t secret crooks. We wish we could still have hope in Obama, that he was still someone we felt could change things for us. We wish there were more options. We wish we had freedom from want and were allowed to pursue happiness, like we were promised.

But here is the thing — the best part of my generation, something we’ve all learned because we’ve been oversharing on the internet for the greater part of 15 years, is that wishing rarely gets you anywhere. It takes planning, organization, strategy, and hard work (or a really excellent YouTube video!) to make change happen for ourselves. Focusing this energy on the larger issue of our collective hardships is what is going to make all the difference and keep this movement going.

The logical next step is for the Occupy Wall Street protestors to find some sympathetic politicians and start drafting some legislation. Hopefully this will happen soon, as my generation has a reputation for not paying attention to anything for very long. Though hopefully this time will be different.

Anything is possible in America (and especially New York), after all.