An Open Letter to the Occupiers

To the Occupiers,

This modern confusion is universal. No one knows what’s happening, but it is. The politicians are afraid and are trying to fight it but it’s too late, real change is coming to America. After 2001, our leaders hid our burgeoning generation behind a wall of security, and you know what happens when a sheltered child realizes that his parents had been lying to him and had been losing the battle anyway the whole time. He watches his home fall apart and the money dwindle. When his parents can’t seem to agree or even come to terms on any major or minor decision, the rebellion begins.

It begins with angst. An anger and a lashing out. Sometimes the parents listen and realize their mistake, but that’s rare and I’ve never seen it happen. Instead, the adults take it personally and clamp down overreacting in a very destructive manner and ultimately hammering the final nail into the coffin that holds the soul of their once innocent child that they coddled to death after a traumatic experience shook the whole family.

Now we’re seeing the awakening of a pissed off generation who were force-fed television from an early age, despite our authority figures constantly impressing upon us the fact that TV will rot our brains. Same thing with drugs. I remember when a person on drugs didn’t even make sense to me, why would someone hurt themselves so? The war on drugs had a specific propaganda target: my generation. But it didn’t work, obviously, most people my age (and I was born in 1987) are into the idea of a moderate recreational drug use, mainly marijuana, as a means of relaxation or medicine or whatever, and one of our goals is to end that ridiculous ban and waste of tax money.

The Occupy movement doesn’t surprise me, I knew it was coming. My predictions were confirmed on May 1st of this year. I was driving home from Connecticut after a trip to visit my girlfriend. About halfway into the drive I glanced at my Twitter feed on my Blackberry and saw a tweet from BreakingNews that Osama Bin Laden was dead. I was honking the horn and cheering out the window. I felt such a relief.

In September of 2001, I was in my 2nd week of high school, a nervous freshman stepping into the first year of the next stage of my life. My school was near a military base on Cape Cod, and we heard the first wave of jets rumble overhead on their way to New York City. I watched ABC’s coverage of the 2nd tower collapsing on my English class television. Someone in my class had an airline pilot for a father, at one point during class a teacher called him into the hallway to tell him that his father was not flying that day. It freaked us all out, the whole situation and that day Osama Bin Laden became my class and frankly my entire generation’s Hitler, our Stalin, our sworn enemy and we wanted him dead.

Ten years of war, disaster, over-security (I remember soldiers with big weapons guarding the Bourne and Sagamore bridges in my town. Have you ever heard of those bridges? Neither have the terrorists.) All of this negative energy loomed over us as we finally graduated and some of us went off to college. The rest of us couldn’t afford it, and in 2008 could no longer even get a loan to continue our education. I worked at a cemetery until I was laid off, as one of two employees, the other was nearly 60 years old and now digs the graves alone.

I arrived at my home just as President Obama was beginning his speech, the night of that fantastic news of our evil nemesis’ death. I watched with glee wanting so terribly to drive to Boston or back towards New York City to celebrate with someone, anyone who felt the same elation. I rushed downstairs to tell my sleeping parents, whose house I still live at, they didn’t really seem to care. I felt so dejected. Was this joy and relief of the Al Qaeda leader’s death mine alone? I couldn’t believe that I was the only one reacting with such positive and powerful emotion. Then it began. The news took notice of groups of revelers gathered near the White House, then Times Square. A friend of mine who attended Boston University at the time posted a video to Facebook of cheering crowds in the streets there too. I was bursting now with euphoria. I felt my generation coming alive, to celebrate together for a universal purpose, the downfall of our arch rival on this planet, the man who for the past ten years was, as we were told, was trying to kill us everyday.

Now that the Occupy movements have begun, they won’t be stopped. Real change will happen. I’ve said it for a while, that this time is much resembling the late 60’s in it’s fervency. Except now it’s not so dreamy; it’s cold and it’s angry, it’s actually going to work. Real change is coming to America despite what any of the liars and frightened adults try to tell us on their television. It’s not their turn to be in charge anymore, it’s ours, and we have a big mess to clean up. We’ll do it too, and make this world a much better place. I am finally proud to say that I am a part of this seed coming through history and I hope we can shift the tides away from this doomed spiral downward and start restoring economy and common sense in this nation. A nation that’s become lifeless and plastic and commercial and fake and suffocating, killing itself much like the empires of the past.

I hope we continue to Occupy and force ourselves to be heard. In the world of constant information, it’s so much harder to get one’s voice to the mainstream, so we must continue to band together in order to mic-check loud enough, so the whole world can hear! It’s a coming out party for myself as well as the rest of the flotsam that remains from the Bush/Obama economic fallout. Our generation is now rising into it’s prominence, let’s keep doing a good job and remember the lessons of resistance leaders before us from Ghandi in India to our friends in Tunisia; violence always fails, peace and positivity always prevails. Let’s prove to the world that despite doing things a little differently, we can handle the challenge, and likely do things much better than they could.

Good luck and stay strong occupiers,

Sam Hartson

October 12, 2011

Bourne, Massachusetts