Brief Thoughts about the Occupy Movements

Below are two quick thoughts about the Occupy Wall Street movement:

1. Last week I wrote a paper on how the parting of the Red Sea helps to understand God better. As I wrote the paper, I took many breaks to follow Facebook updates on the Occupy Wall St., Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy DC, etc... protests. Last week I ended up thinking a lot about God's liberation of the Israelites and how God's liberating force is still working today. I haven't arrived at clear, well-thought-out conclusions, except that I still see God working in today's world, in these protests and in many other ways.

2. On Monday, as I was walking around Princeton, I saw an unsigned poster advertising Occupy Wall St. On the poster, it encouraged people to join the protest, but at the same time it used the either you-are-with-us or against-us mentality, implying that if I, the reader, didn't go down to Occupy Wall St. right that moment, then I was against the movement. This mentality really soured me. This mentality has been used to divide people on many issues before, like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

But from what I have read online, this one poster doesn't represent the whole movement. I trust that most people involved know that not everyone within the 99% can come out to the occupations due their own situation and circumstances, but that does not mean that we/I don't support the movement.

I hope this continues and I hope to visit the occupations in Philadelphia and DC soon.