Perspective: A Response to the "Occupations"

Ripples from the splash created by Occupy Wall Street and the related protests are reaching Facebook, most notably as a picture of a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook, relating a story of personal accountability, in which the author distances him- or herself from the "occupants" at the protests. This response to the protests has provoked sentiments from "Right on!" to "What an uniformed jerk!" Though sympathetic to the author, I have to agree that his or her dashed-off response to the protests isn't as well thought out as it could have been, so I thought I'd attempt a dashed-off response of my own:

Here's a transcription, in case the pic is too hard to read:

I am a young mother, about to celebrate 5 years of marriage completely debt free.

We pay for all of our living expenses with my husband's non-profit job and my part-time job caring for another family's child.

I chose to stay home with our two, soon to be three children, and from their births, we have done what we can to save for their future.

My husband works hard, and has been fortunate enough to keep his job throughout the economic crisis, allowing me to continue to nurture our children from home.

I currently have a 3.8 GPA in potty-training. (I had a 4.0 in grad school, but potty-training is much harder.)

We live comfortably in a two-bedroom apartment, spending the bulk of our income on healthy food for our family, and knowing that we can't have everything we want. We do not have an Ipod or smart phone. I don't even have a cell phone and I am perfectly okay with that, knowing that if someone wants to reach me badly enough, they'll leave a message rather than interrupting my walk to the playground with the kids. We do have a used eight-passenger station wagon, which spends most of its time parked on our street, while we bike our butts off for transportation. (Yes, you can do groceries with two kids and one bike.)

If I did have a debt, I would not blame Wall Street, but would check my pride at the door and avail myself of the Food Bank to feed our family if things came to that. In the meantime, I am more troubled that our family makes over 400 times what that of the average Somalian family does than I am that some CEO makes over 400 times what we do. I do what I can to participate in projects for international relief.

I am currently thankful to consider myself part of the 20% of the world's richest people. Yes, it would be nice if “the 1%” felt as strongly as I do about Somalian families, though I doubt “occupying” their turf is going to convince them to give their money away, so I'll spend my time and energy attempting to decrease my own consumption instead. I expect nothing to be handed to me, but try to be as open-handed as I can with everything I have.

That's how altruism is supposed to work.

I will NOT waste my time whining about being part of the 99%, and whether or not you do is YOUR decision.

Here's the original FB photo, and an example of a critical reply:

I say good luck fighting corporate greed. Easier to attempt to master one's own...

(N.B.: Just realized that the student's "Not the 99%" note is a take-off on similar personal accounts, taken from the "We Are the 99 Percent" website: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com.)