Posted on 06/17/2012 2:54:00 PM PDT by Libloather
For one protester, 'Occupy' becomes a way of life
By Edith Honan | Reuters – Fri, Jun 15, 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Seven months after Occupy Wall Street's eviction from Zuccotti Park, the round-the-clock encampment in lower Manhattan that was once the movement's center, one protester has created his own version of the communal living experiment in Brooklyn.
The spacious apartment in Crown Heights where Austin Guest, a 31-year-old Harvard University graduate, lives with another seasoned protester is a far cry from the crowded, chaotic Zuccotti Park of last fall, where hundreds of protesters camped out each night.
Nevertheless, inspired by Zuccotti, with its free meals and free books, Guest said he and his friends are pursuing an Occupy-like experiment in mutual aid.
In the apartment, for example, the protesters follow a code of conduct designed to prevent one person from dominating a conversation. Guest, who majored in performance and media studies at Harvard, said he has had to "unlearn" the sometimes "impenetrable" rhetoric of the Ivy League.
"I was trained to speak in, like, five paragraphs at a time, with really clearly delineated, bulletproof arguments. And that kind of communication doesn't leave a lot of space. That's the point. It's impenetrable. And that's not how we talk in OWS," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They should fear the dark!
Sure there's food stamps, and there's no such thing as unavoidable hunger today in America (the schools in my town have free lunch and breakfast all summer long, and it's advertised on main street). But I actually respect the idea that someone would refuse to accept food stamps when temporarily down on their luck, and instead would continue to work for their food by gleaning and accepting charity. I used to work in a restaurant where lots of the guys worked to set aside unsold still-good but illegal-to-save food for some of the very poor employees with big families to feed (like our dishwasher who was probably illegal). I'd still rather see that poor dishwasher take home the food than for him to go hungry or worse, go scam for food stamps.
“Hi. I’m Austin and I’m a professional freeloader...and you can be one too if you apply my principles from my new book “Living Off Society. A Freeloader’s Guide To The Good Life Without Spending A Penny”.”
Harvard and other Ivy League business types insist that more spending and more debt is the solution to a spending and debt problem.
An Ivy League degree is a complete waste of money if you ask me.
Fine by me if they want to run a neo-hippie commune on their own property. They might actually learn the hard way why collectivism rarely works.
I used to work at a cafe/bakery, and the bakery side made everything fresh, every day. If you worked the night shift, you could take home whatever cakes or pastries you liked, otherwise they were going in the trash. Perfectly good food that would keep for days afterwards, but the owners were sticklers about only serving the freshest stuff to the customers.
Other restaurants are not so scrupulous. The leftover bread goes in the meatloaf, and burgers that touch the floor go in the “chili” bin.
As one who lives in Portland - the mind twisting question I can’t get past is how they don’t understand in their theatrical protests - breaking government regulations - they are demanding more.
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