This is What Durhamocracy Looks Like!

David Larson

After hearing about how the “Occupy” movement continues to spread to more cities across our country, and now the globe, I decided to go see for myself what it is all about. Durham is not a large city but nevertheless, I knew there was a small “Occupy” contingent in the Five-Points area. October 22nd was a sunny fall day, perfect for an angry protest, but when I arrived around 1pm, there were only around twenty people milling about. Some others were there, like me, out of curiosity.

Clothes-lines ringed the square with poster-boards clipped all along them describing the personal stories of the “99%.” What immediately struck me about the stories on these poster-boards was that almost all of them involved getting deeply in debt, usually with college loans, sometimes with a mortgage, and then not being able to find a job with high enough pay to deal with this burden. I read a story on one sign about a person getting a doctoral degree in Literature, incurring $100,000 in debt and then being unable to pay this back. Like all the others, the sign concluded with, “I am the 99%.” In this person’s case, I highly doubt it. What also struck me about the signs was the not-too-uncommon use of Communist and Socialist symbols like the hammer and sickle, the clenched red fist, and multiple mentions of the mass-murderer Che Guevarra. I couldn’t imagine a square filled with swastikas, SS lightning-bolts, and pictures of Heinrich Himmler getting too many cars to honk in support, but I digress. I’m not suggesting this represented the majority opinion, but those Communists that were there apparently did not mind identifying themselves as such.

To get a feel for the people there I decided to begin interviewing some of the occupiers. A mohawked man in his early twenties was standing next to me reading some of the signs. I decided to intrude and see if he would answer a few questions. He agreed, and after some prodding proceeded to tell me how he had left his job at Costco to participate in the protests. After traveling to New York, where he was on sanitation duty in the original occupation, he has since spent his days in this square. His wife continued to work to pay the bills while he traveled and protested. Again I heard about student loans, now delinquent by many months, that were in danger of default. Unconcerned, he said he would get around to paying them when he started working again.

When I asked him about his demands and his hopes for America, I heard a vision that would be repeated by others at the protest later. The most important thing for him was to ensure every American had an “inheritance right” that guaranteed them a comfortable living wage whether or not they decided to work. When I inquired about what might motivate people to continue building the economy, he said that human beings are “naturally motivated” and would continue to work regardless of motivation by greed. The model he pointed to was the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, where everyone contributes as they feel led. It was the government’s responsibility to provide everything and he said, “it’s not like we could ever run out of money; we can always just print more. There are always more trees.” I began to try to explain the concept of inflation to him, but when I just received a blank stare, I decided to move on.

The next person I approached happened to be the fourth PHD I had come across, including the stories on the signs. He was a Math professor at Duke University, and said he had been sleeping on the ground in the square. After seeing the dirt caked in his hair, I believed him. This man went on a very similar rant about guaranteed wages for all regardless of work, and free college. Interestingly, he kept guiding the conversation back to the concept of class warfare. He informed me that class warfare has always been a reality but it has been going the other way, top down, for most of history. Every once in awhile, the bottom needs to rise up and fight back. After five minutes of this, I got the picture. I nodded and thanked him for his time.

Just as I was starting to interview a young lady, I heard a PA system announcing that it was time to start the rally. This should be interesting. Looking around I noticed that over the last couple hours the crowd had grown to about sixty in anticipation of the 3pm “rally.” The rally was organized where anyone with any gripe could get up and speak their piece into the microphone. Once they were done, we were all supposed to yell, “What should we do?” After hearing about intergenerational relationships from an older gentleman, and an argument over whether light rail was a scam or a necessity, things started to heat up.

A thin young woman in over-alls came to the front and brought the conversation to banks. She was encouraging everyone to take their money out of the big banks and put it into local credit unions. This point seemed fair enough, but then she told them all to do it on “National Bank Transfer Day” on November 5th. This is where I decided to intrude and ask a question. “After all of the bank bailouts and the negative effects on the global economy that were brought about by big banks failing only a couple years ago, do you think there is any risk of your plan causing more bank failures? If everybody withdraws their money on the same day…” I was interrupted by shouts of, “We hope so!” “That’s the point!” and other such comments. One man tried to deflect a little bit by saying, “It’s not like we could have any effect on these big banks anyway.” The message was clear though, bringing down the big banks would not be such a bad thing.

Later I did a little research on the date of November the 5th and found that there are other revolutionary efforts to bring down major institutions, including Facebook (say it isn’t so!), on that date. It is a date associated with Guy Fawkes, who attempted to bomb the British Parliament, and with the leftist cult-classic film, “V for Vendetta.” In the film, a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask brings down the government of a pseudo-George Bush character on….you guessed it, November 5th. In an unlikely coincidence, the first man I interviewed, who had left his job at Costco, was standing behind me wearing a “V for Vendetta” styled Guy Fawkes mask.

The next person to speak was a charismatic African-American Pastor named Sylvester Williams. It turns out he is a Durham mayoral candidate and wanted to show his solidarity with the movement. He got up and talked about how as a minister for Jesus Christ he thinks everyone should try to emulate Christ’s love for the poor. Immediately, one of the more outspoken “occupiers” ran over and tried to grab the microphone from him, yelling, “I’m a Buddhist! I’m a Buddhist! You can’t say that!” After some discussion the Pastor continued his speech, mentioning Jesus at least a couple more times to the white, Birkenstocked, Buddhist’s dismay.

Nobody had anything more to say after a couple more minutes, so it was time to wrap up; and what better way to conclude a protest than by joining together in a song. After reading the lyrics to this song and observing the aging bohemian trying awkwardly to get the crowd to join in, I decided it was time for me to leave. As I was walking away they started singing the song as a round,

“Life goes around in a circular motion

Love is a little boat upon the sea

Everyone can be a part of everything anyhow

You can be happy if you set yourself free”

The muddled emotional message was a perfect summary of all I had observed.

On the drive home I had a little time to think and let it all sink in. Some of their concerns were justified. There is something that strikes most of us wrong about bailing out major banks that made risky decisions with other people’s money. There is something that angers us about business and government colluding at the highest levels and free from any repercussions. Even for a limited government supporter like myself, I can also see their concern about North Carolina being 49th out of 50 states in education spending. If we conservatives only support funding a few things (defense, law and order, education, infrastructure), maybe we should make sure we do those few things well. I couldn’t help but echo Herman Cain a bit in his reaction to these crowds though. For the man who is choosing to default on his loans while protesting across the country on his wife’s dime, maybe he should blame himself. For those who recently graduated with a PHD in Literature (like the one sign claimed), maybe they should blame their own poor planning for their crushing $100,000 debts.

Better yet, why not blame the Universities!

Not only did the universities put our generation deeply in debt with degrees that are virtually worthless in the jobs market (French Poetry?, Feminist Studies?), but they convinced many that the most failed and murderous ideology mankind has yet to see, is actually kind of edgy and hip and “works pretty well on paper.” The price of college is spiraling out of control, rising at around double the rate of healthcare inflation. You would think this would cause less high school graduates to consider college but there is record enrollment in most states. 70% of all high school graduates go on to college now, even though estimates are that only about one-third of jobs created in the next decade will need anything beyond a GED.

The status-quo of very expensive, often useless degrees, being paid for by large loans is a recipe for failure and discontent. Adding to their discontent, and misdirecting it, is the virtual brainwashing being done by leftist professors. That sounds ridiculous to some but as a conservative, when I see a recent study show that 77% of Humanities professors self-identify as liberal/left leaning, while only 8% consider themselves conservative, I don’t know what else to call it. In the Social Sciences it is only 66% to 8% so maybe I shouldn’t worry though. The lessons the graduates are going to take with them as they enter the job market are that if they don’t get work, the government needs to step up and create jobs for them and corporations need to just go away and stop hurting “the people.” Ironically, that is exactly what the recent graduates with dangerously high debt and no future are yelling in cities across America.

The outrage at the banks is warranted, although I’m guessing these occupiers haven’t heard about the government’s role in all this. Maybe give the evil banks one more week of “occupation;” but when you’re done, how about you move down the street to Duke University or UNC-Chapel Hill and address the more likely root of your problems?