An Open Letter To Occupy Raleigh

I want to be very clear; I openly mock the Occupy movement.

There isn’t one single characteristic about #OWS that distinguishes it from any other leftist movement.  Listening to the rhetoric coming from Occupy you would not be able to identify whether or not your are listening to:

  1. A Greenpeace protest to save seals in Greenland.
  2. A university protest to bring attention to the wages of house keepers on campus.
  3. NAACP protests concerned about the treatment of an individual.
  4. A communist party meeting discussing the evils of profits.

There is nothing that distinguishes you from anything that we’ve already seen.

It’s anger unleashed on the world with no discernible focus.  There is no clear indication that you have a point.

You are open to mockery.

Recently I cam across an entry in the Occupy Raleigh Forums.  It speaks of the end of the Occupy Raleigh movement.  The individual is commenting on how he feels that the movement will be ending soon.

Except for his tense, I agree with him.  The movement has ended long ago, not about to some time in the future.

Let’s take a look:

I’m seeing fewer ideas for actions, and then scarce support for them. What support I do see is aimed at individual causes with no apparent connection to ‘lead to’ the overall direction of systemic change in our governance as a country.

This is what I see as the fundamental flaw in your organization.  You have failed to identify a point; a mission statement.  In your efforts to be “all inclusive” or to represent the “99%” you have instead found yourselves representing nothing.  Instead you let unrelated issues clog your mission and nominal participants in the movement dictate your actions.

Rule Number One:

If your mission statement cannot be measured you have a stupid mission statement.

From what I can tell, the most common complaint of the Occupy folks is that corporations control government/politics.  You need to define that in tangible terms.  For example:

Today, corporations are responsible for 40% [or 60% or 80% – whatever] of all spending in political campaign.  Taken in isolation, corporations spend $xxx million in political campaigns each year.

It is our goal to reduce each by 10% each year until we have reached our goal of — whatever your goal is.

But you don’t do that.  Instead you build these grandiose sounding, but ultimately useless, defining statements.

More:

Yet, here is (was) Occupy… a naive bunch who demanded more, even if they (& me too) don’t completely understand the causes.  We say (said) we’re not going to be dictated-to and repressed any more.  We do understand viscerally, the manipulation and corruption and greed that fuels our mess.

What does:

“We’re not going to be dictated to anymore” mean?

How will you know when you have accomplished your goal?  How will you know when you’ve BEGUN working to your goal?  How will you know if you are making positive forward progress or if you have errored and need to change course?

The goal of anything is to accomplish it.  Tell me, by what method will you identify that you have accomplished your goal?

My guess?  You have no method.  You have no idea how to measure what it is that makes you angry and haven’t the slightest clue as to how to begin such a process.

Last, I’ll leave you with this:

If you are going to succeed in a project or a goal you have to make sure that someone is leading that initiative and that all those who surround you are committed to the success of that mission.

Identify leaders and make them answer to the stakeholders who empower them.

Identify those who don’t share your mission and expel them from the organization as soon as possible.

If you want to run a homeless shelter, then hire or identify professionals in that area.  However, if you want to run an organization that reduces the influence of corporations in politics, then remove from your presence anyone who doesn’t pursue that goal with vigor.

I mock you.

I mock you because you act so serious and are so amateurish.  I mock you because you are so naive of the skills required to run organizations.  I mock you because you become upset with people who aren’t contributing to the cause; the cause of defending the people who don’t contribute to society.  I mock you because you allow a single individual to “block” a proposal.  I mock you because you think that marching for Treyvon, or against fracking, or for unions or for support of gay marriage somehow promotes “ending corporate influences in politics”.

I agree with the individual; OR is over.  But please don’t go away.  I do so enjoy reading your forums.

2 responses to “An Open Letter To Occupy Raleigh

  1. Better to be mocked than ignored — and the tea party is being ignored. If someone is mocked, that usually shows they’re being effective, otherwise there would be no need to mock. The left mocked the tea party in a way similar to how you mock OWS when they were strong in 2010, but now have come to ignore them. OWS no doubt hopes that they are mocked for some time to come by the right — because the right will always mock movements on the left, just as the left always mocks movements on the right.

    • Better to be mocked than ignored — and the tea party is being ignored.

      To a point.

      Mocking a successful organization is one thing. You may disagree with the point of the whole thing, but, in the end, the movement is successful.

      Here, these people can’t organize their campground; fires start in tents causing stray dogs to bite members of the camp who then need to ask for donations to cover “the $4 medicine from Walmart AND the ride there and back.”

      These OR folks are trading sex for wine, fighting when they get drunk and then are surprised when they find themselves unable to move forward their agenda.

      They don’t know what they protest, how to measure how bad the problem is or to even verbalize a goal statement. How will they know when they’re done?

      They are mock worthy.

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