Protesting part-time

Spectator has been awash this week with Occupy Wall Street pieces: The Columbia affiliates who have been involved or arrested, the lecture by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein canceled under fishy circumstances. After hours spent “trolling” the comments on these articles, I can see two distinct voices emerging. To quote a few gems, a commenter wrote, “Lloyd [Blankfein] is Satan in a Keebler Elf disguise.” Another commenter called him out: “People who protest at these figures should not be allowed to attend campus recruiting events from these firms.” I hope the first guy has some good disguises to wear to his Goldman interview—or at least a suit and tie.

Though probably not the most mature, these nameless interlocutors represent the dominant factions of the Wall Street debate. One camp is earnestly in favor of action, protest, and even arrest. The other is suspicious of their motives—and with good reason. Columbia students are sitting on a fence in that we are uniquely qualified for jobs in the financial services industry (we live in New York, study economics, and go to tons of recruitment fairs), but at the same time, we are uniquely qualified to be the people who change the system. The leaders, even of anti-elitist movements, are most often educated and upper-middle-class. Columbia has a distinguished history of being at the vanguard of protest and progress. Smart, engaged Columbia kids seem to have a very polar set of options.

However, a new figure has subtly crept into the mix, one that is compelling and unique, who weaves through crowds of suits and dreadlocks with ease. This chameleon, this double agent, is the part-time protestor.

The part-time protestor has a couple of errands to run downtown, maybe a dinner date in the Meatpacking District. She takes the subway to the City Hall stop “just to check it out.” The protest is a spectacle, something like a street fair, a public hanging, or the Thanksgiving Day Parade. She looks for the concession stand and doesn’t find it. But seriously: She thinks the U.S. income inequality gap is atrocious. In 2010, the top 20 percent of the population earned 50 percent of the income. This year, the Huffington Post reports, the gap is gaping wider than ever. She thinks that qualified people deserve to be employed, and that the government should reach out to make this happen. She doesn’t think it’s fair to socialize losses and privatize gains. She believes in regulation, maybe even higher taxes for her family. She wanders through the crowd for a couple hours and makes it back uptown in time—a drive-by.

Recently I went to a lecture by Stéphane Hessel in the business school. The 93-year-old Holocaust survivor was touring America to promote his book, “Indignez vous!” which has been translated from French to English as “Time for Outrage!” Hessel wondered aloud to the audience about whether his idea would catch on in the states: That young people needed to commit to championing an issue, stick to it, and fight to bring about a better, more equal world. He asked, “Why don’t Americans get into this?” I think the answer to Hessel’s question does not lie with the Keebler Elf or the Cynic—or any character to be trolled up from the Internet. The real key to the problem is the part-time protestor.

Something significant has changed since Post-War times, since Hessel’s day, or the era of the Vietnam War protests—we are able to be chameleons like never before. If we wish, we are able to keep our political beliefs separate from our work. Our concept of morality has changed.

It is acceptable to believe that the income inequality gap should be closed, to support higher taxes on the wealthy, that green energy should replace oil, and a slew of other altruistic sentiments. Concurrently, it is acceptable to work in an industry that serves to widen the income inequality gap, to try one’s best to evade tax increases, to invest in big oil. There is work, and there is play. Ideas are play, and work is money. Even if we think the system should change—whatever the system—we will try to reap its benefits and exploit its flaws. For better or worse, our generation has experienced a philosophical divorce between thought and action.

Are there exceptions? Certainly, and millions of them. They’re all over the Internet, and plenty of them are camped out downtown. What I am tracing is a trend in conventional morality, a trend that explains the part-time protestor and suggests a response to “Time for Outrage!” Stéphane Hessel’s memory includes visions of swastikas and stars and the flags carried by American soldiers, clear demarcations of identity and purpose. In the lecture, he asked the audience, “Where are the forces against which one must commit oneself?” He could not have asked a better question. To us, the sides are not clear. We are capable of being enemy and ally at once, because to us, they are indistinguishable enough to wear the same suit.

Amanda Gutterman is a Columbia College junior majoring in English. The Far Side of the Familiar runs alternate Wednesdays.