We Occupied Spokane!

This afternoon, my younger brother, Phil, and I joined the Occupy Spokane procession as it marched down Main Street.  I say we joined this movement, but we really just happened upon it on our way to Atticus to blow some money on delicious coffee.  But seeing as our dad is a journalist, how could we possibly miss out on a ruckus of people clamoring for something or other?

There was a huge mess of people out there.  Some seemed as though they had been protesting since the 60s by the look of their clothing, but strikingly enough there was such a diversity among the faces: college students, track-suit moms pushing their kids in strollers, nice old librarian ladies.  The signs were all the same ones we see in the news from New York.

Looking for someone to talk to, Phil and I kind of just plunged into the middle of the yelling marchers, feeling very out of place and pretty uncomfortable.  The weirdest thing was walking past the windows of the fancy restaurant, making eye contact with the wide-eyed "1%-ers."  That's when it hit me.  The 99% of Americans who feel like they need to assert their rights enjoy far better conditions than the rest of the world.  If over a billion people in the world live off of less than a dollar a day, the 99% in America are practically rolling in the dough. 

 Phil and I asked one woman in the crowd what was going on, she told us that we should invest our money in credit unions instead of banks to protest the housing shenanigans (not a bad idea.)  She thought that marching with Occupy Spokane is a way of communicating to the government that they should quit subsidizing unnecessary programs (sounds pretty conservative) and make efforts to mitigate the behavior of huge corporations.  Based on those premises I would have marched with her all the rest of the way through town, but her following comments lost me.  It was greed, she said, that motivated government to continue glossing over the wealthy and coming down hard on the poor.  This woman continued on with talk of wealth redistribution and better support for people with no healthcare.  There was an overall sense that this woman felt entitled to the money that others had earned.

  I believe that this woman has a biblical longing.  As people, we desire to be connected to a community that will support us when we're going through a rough patch and through which we can bless others, but I really believe this community cannot be created by government.  At best, the United States government can compel people be civil, but that is no replacement for relationship.  Community comes through radically loving other broken, rotten people and allowing them to love you in the midst of your crap too.  Occupy Spokane and Occupy Wall Street is a desperate cry from a culture that continues to come up with more technologically advanced ways to alienate ourselves from one another.  We are a broken, lonely people and covenantal relationship with the God who gives us the grace to need one another is the answer.