‘Occupy’ rhetoric more divisive than unifying

Editor,

I attended the teach-in session provided as a discussion of issues by the Occupy Albuquerque movement on Wednesday afternoon in the SUB. Although I do support the cause and most of the ideals it presents I must say that I was rather disappointed by the teach-in.

Several speakers lamented that young people, including UNM students, were apathetic to the cause and did not get involved in the movement and politics in general. One speaker then read comments by UNM students posted on the Daily Lobo website with regards to the Occupy Albuquerque protests.

Unfortunately, after reading each individual comment he responded with a tone and comment that ridiculed and were sometimes borderline disrespectful to the author. Here were young individuals who expressed their opinions on a matter (and were also sometimes disrespectful), being publicly ridiculed by the speakers and host of the teach-in. The speakers and host, in turn, responded to these individuals’ comments by calling them “losers,” “people seriously lacking in critical thinking” and asking “what kind of humans are these people”.

Clearly the ideology and thoughts of the Daily Lobo posters do not support the Occupy Albuquerque movement, but to ridicule them because they expressed their different political views is just as bad and promotes the un-involvement and apathy that the speakers disliked in young people.

Furthermore, I came to the teach-in hoping that the statements of the speakers would not be geared toward political views of the left or right as the movement is said to represent 99 percent of the American population.

During the teach-in, I slowly became more aware that the comments of the hosts and speakers unfortunately promoted divisiveness of the “99 percent” and promoted left-wing issues and candidates. One speaker used the term “right-wing, Tea Party jerk” to refer to a certain type of person (note: this is taken out of context) and other speakers asked the attending crowd to support a certain party or candidate over another.

These political views at one point flew in the face of comments made from attendees. This occurred when one well-spoken individual from the crowd discussed how people should get more involved in the voting process and support candidates based on the issues that are true to their own beliefs rather than party affiliation.

The speaker followed up this comment no more than two minutes later by loudly proclaiming at the conclusion of his talk that the crowd should vote for specific candidates for congress and senate, without providing any of their thoughts and position on issues discussed during the teach-in. I found this comment to be a complete disregard for the previous individual’s comments which the speaker himself and crowd had just applauded.

I hope that future teach-ins are provided in a more neutral, responsible and professional manner in order for Occupy Albuquerque’s ideals and message to be better understood and spread to the 99 percent of the American population.

Guillaume Lafond,
UNM exchange student from the University of Manitoba, Canada.