DATELINE (Drinking Liberally Buenos Aires) - Tonight's hot topic of conversation was the Occupy Wall Street movement and ...by extension ...Occupy Buenos Aires.
A straw-poll was taken regarding the movement and Buenos Aires' place in making a show of support for the world-wide day for Occupy on November 11th.
Opinions were all across-the-board, as you would guess at any gathering of DL. At least one person did not feel informed enough to comment. Another felt that the show of support in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere was as useless as Woodstock (opinions then were expressed that "Woodstock Nation" actually kept the Vietnam war from dragging-on as long as Iraq/Afganistan.)
The very word "Occupy" was taken to task for implying a genuine "taking" of Wall Street, Oakland, Austin, and so on. Some echoed recent web-commentary that the passive nature of OWS would be a short-fall. Without calling for violence, some felt that without militancy it was doomed to fade away.
Other comments reflected poorly upon the perceived "middle-class" nature of the occupation ...instead of the truly, economically damaged segment of the population.
Even further, many comments reflected a confusion as to an opposition to capitalism itself and whether a change to socialism or communism was being advocated.
Other comments were much more encouraging toward the occupiers.
The most encouraging made a point of the fact that the movement was tapping into what could be the most central and destabilizing and explosive issue that can be faced by societies which claim to be essentially middle-class: the growing inequality between those who have risen to the top ...and those who have not.
The implication, to me, being what to do with those who have "lost" on the "level playing field" of the great economic game.
I´ve always been struck by the way that people from the US fall in love with Argentina. There are many other places closer to the US that offer natural beauty, friendly people, and great culture ...all at a big discount.
My personal opinion has been that the experience of Argentina/Uruguay resonates with people from the US/Canada ...because these two areas are the great middle-class societies of the New World.
Although the middle class has taken a beating, world-wide, during the last decade and more, these two geographically extreme cultures still hold-on to an American Dream.
The barriers against uniting these two very similar cultures are also extreme in distance and political experience.
Those barriers, both real and imagined, both geographical and political, should not keep us from showing the mutual support that we all feel.
We should stand with each other ...even though we are not clear as to specifics.
I saw a historian on TV recently. He was asked as to the lack of specifics coming from the Occupy Wall Street movment. He said not to worry about it.
He said that the movement to abolish slavery had no specifics. They had no point-by-point plan as to what to do if slavery was abolished. They did not concern themselves with a lack of co-ordination.
The graying historian said, "their mission was not to draw-up plans and give facts and figures and percentages ...that´s for politicians to do!"
He said that their mission was to say slavery was wrong ...and to say it over and over and over again ...until enough people were convinced of that truth.
I say that until enough of us are convinced of that truth, OWS will fail. However, if we stand together ...even without specific policy proposals ...we can convince each other that the current outcome of a winner-take-all mentality will destroy everyone of every economic strata.
With that, I invite you to stand with every other interested person in Buenos Aires, across the 8 lanes of Avenida Libertador, in the park, in front of the US Embassy Residence, in a peaceful show of support of every other like-minded person who lives and breathes 24 hours a day in NYC's Zuccotti Park and beyond.
Contact Patricia Reynolds, founder of Occupy Buenos Aires
...or myself
...to offer your support, if by nothing else than to stand in support on 11/11/11 at 11am.
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