Commentary: What's the value of Occupy (city name)?

People do strange things when frustrat­ed, like protest. Take for instance the new craze sweeping the nation called Occupy (you fill in the city).

It started on Wall Street with thousands of protestors camping out. Then it spread to other cities like Philadel­phia and in Washington, D.C.

Now even places like Rome are getting into the act.

I saw a few of these pro­testors outside my office window last week downtown. They were clogging traffic marching as a small group, maybe a hundred or so, chanting “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” They marched for a while and then they were gone, back to their makeshift mini-tent village across from D.C. City Hall.

Now there’s a lot of com­mentary on this whole oc­cupying a city with protests thing. Some say it’s the liberal version of the Tea Party. Some say it’s just a bunch of young new age hippies and anar­chists trying to stir up trouble with no clear purpose at all.

I honestly don’t know what the motives of these protes­tors are, but I think it maybe a little of all that. All I can say is that whatever their motives or goals are, protests in city parks won’t achieve them.

I know that some people are legitimately frustrated about our economy. But had the government not bailed out our financial institutions, even though some, and I do emphasize only some, were interested in dishon­est or at the least immoral gains, the nation would be in much worse shape. So, it’s time to get over that and not use bailed out banks as the source of frustration.

One can only imagine what state the economy would have been in if our bank­ing institutions had failed.

People would have protested that the banks were allowed to fail, with their money.

If people really feel that protesting against the finan­cial institutions or banks is the source of our problems, just stop doing business with them. It’s as simple as that.

But going down the street chanting, tying up traffic and occupying parks in cities isn’t a permanent solution.

The powers that be will just wait them out and carry on as normal. Now I don’t want to be a pessimist with all the occupational protests. If nothing else, it’s good to see that people are frustrated enough to express them­selves in some kind of way.

However, the best way they can do that is at the polls.

Funny thing about America — there’s an election of some kind every year. Next year is a presidential campaign. We will see if all those protestors will actually show up at the polls where their voices can actually be heard. Hope­fully this new movement will materialize into something worth considering.

But in the meantime, stop blaming everything on big business and class warfare.

Yes, there’s a lot of irregu­larities between what used to be the middle class and the super-rich. However, the reality is it’s always been that way and the worst way to handle it is through this superficial class warfare.

This is a dangerous subject for America. We are not built on wealth redistribution.

We are built on every person having a fair shot at obtain­ing wealth, or as we used to call it, “the American Dream.” At best we should be asking our government to make sure the financial, social and political environment encourages growth of ethical business people willing to take risks to achieve their dreams but also to hire those seeking their own. To achieve that, you don’t need another protest, you need a plan and that plan needs to come from the powers that be.

I’ve heard protestors blame Wall Street, the super rich, politicians and anything else representing some form of authority. However, I’ve never heard them say what they can do to make this a more perfect union. It’s everyone else’s fault but theirs and they think they’ve found an answer — spend the night chanting in the park.

There are places in the world where protests mean something. The Arab Spring, as it has come to be known, comes to mind. People were protesting, even giving their lives, to get rid of truly op­pressive systems.

But in this country and in much of Europe the problem isn’t the system of govern­ment. No, the problem is our mentality of transitioning ourselves from a society of entitlement to empower­ment. That’s a mentality you can’t protest or chant your way out of. 

Davon Gray lives in Woodbridge. Email him at davongray@verizon.net.