To the editor:

Staff writer Priscilla Colley’s commentary on the Occupy Wall Street movement in the Oct. 28th issue of the Pioneer would be right at home on right-wing blogs and “news” sources.

She proclaims that the protestors have no work ethic, and have made a conscious decision not to work, and instead to be hippies, lounging and dancing in the street and beating their drums. It’s an interesting analogy, although not very accurate.

Reality painted a very different picture of the Occupy protests when a two time Iraq War veteran, Scott Olsen, was injured in Oakland last week. He has only recently been upgraded from critical and is still currently in the hospital unable to speak.

The Occupy protesters all around our country are not the slovenly hippies that Ms. Colley would like to paint them out to be. Instead they are all American citizens. They are veterans, teachers, public servants, and employees from all walks of life all across this country who think that we have some serious and complex problems facing our country that our elected officials aren’t working to solve.

We do have complex problems in this country, but a large part of that problem has come from dialogue like Ms. Colley’s. Proclaiming that people she has never met are lazy, or hippies, or unemployed, does nothing to attempt to solve those problems. Instead it only drives that wedge deeper. Perhaps instead of making hasty generalizations about a group of people that she has obviously never met maybe Ms. Colley should head down to Occupy OKC and try something new — talking to people, instead of writing about them.

—Kenneth L. Meador

OCCC Student