Pepper Spray

Remember the Pepper Spray Incident?

I was so angry, I promptly wrote a letter and saved it to my hard drive. Here it is, for no reason other than the nice weather is coming and I find myself wondering if any of the Occupy Wall St. protesters are planning a reunion.

Dear Protesters,

What are you so mad about? (Besides the pepper spray incident, of course.)

Is this whole thing about jobs? If so, is it the prospect of either not working at all, or being forced to work a low-wage food service job to get by that has you so angry?

Maybe it’s the pressure to sell yourself to a corporation once you get out of college so you can pay off your student loans and contribute to the economy? And speaking of student loans, could it be that you're paying $30k a year to go to school when it's free in other countries? I wonder if that’s why you seem so upset. Maybe it's the healthcare debacle? Or the incarceration rate? Especially if you have friends who are immigrants, minorities, or low-level drug offenders.

Could it be the fact that buying a house in America is even more of a losing deal than it was for your parents? By the time your 30-year note is paid, you've signed away more than 10 times what you will originally pay for the property. Or is it the mortgage crisis and the fact that more than 4 million American homes were foreclosed on while big banking showed huge profits? I'm sure the CEO of Bank of America and his $9 million dollar bonus hasn't helped. And now they want to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners?

But not everything is about money. So maybe it’s something more philosophical with you protester types, like you were raised to believe you can do anything in this country, but over time, you’ve learned the hard way that it just isn’t true? Maybe you're wondering why today's America suddenly feels like a more intolerant place than it was even a few years ago?

Or maybe you're just sick of hearing the phrase "freedom isn't free" in every new country song? 

Then again, maybe it is just the pepper spray. It certainly was a mean thing to do, and I can see why you’re upset. As one commenter on YouTube put it, “when you use your body to make a point, it radicalizes a person.”

I'm sensing it was the pepper spray incident.

But don't worry. It shouldn't happen again, especially based on the swift report-writing action taken by the UC Davis leadership team. In April they issued a report that said "The decision to use pepper spray was not supported by objective evidence and was not authorized by policy."

That should fix things.