The Age of Occupy

Ask Dorothy Argyros about the Great Depression, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and the creation and implementation of the WPA. Ask her the important and effective social movements that have taken place in America over the last 83 years of her life. Ask her what it’s like to have lived a life where history has and continues to repeat itself.

Ask Dorothy Argyros what she sees as our last hope.

Standing on the side of the road on Shrewsbury Avenue in Red Bank Saturday afternoon, Argyros held a red, white and blue sign with the message “Heal America, Tax Wall Street,” high above her head, pulling it down only to switch hands when her arm grew tired before hoisting it up again.

Argyros was one of about two-dozen people who  through the borough’s west side before setting up in a small park in the local iteration of the Occupy Wall Street movement, this one appropriately called . The Neptune resident has thrown her full support behind the Occupy movement, one that has  since protestors first erected tents in New York City’s Zuccotti Park nearly two months ago.

The Occupy movement is mostly associated with a youthful, educated underclass dissatisfied with the wealth inequity between the top one percent of the country’s population and the remaining 99 percent. But, as the movement persists and the message of the movement widens, the Occupy base has grown. In the case of Occupy Red Bank, Argyros is just one of a growing number of supporters – a majority at Saturday’s walk – belonging to a segment of the population decidedly middleclass and decidedly over the age of 40.

“I’m just one of those people who believe that as long as money is king we won’t be able to see any real reform on Wall Street,” she said. “The message (of Occupy Wall Street) has got to spread. This is our only hope for any kind of survival in the future.

“I don’t know if I want to say revolution, but maybe that’s what we need.”

The inclusion of experience in the Occupy ranks from those like Argyros who have witnessed social action firsthand may serve as the catalyst to dispel the notion of Occupy as little more than a youthful phase. For a generation that, despite playing witness to a global war on terror, multiple wars, the blurring of laws regarding personal freedoms, and an economic meltdown, largely hasn’t known protest, there’s an added legitimacy that comes along with a rise in Occupy’s median age. 

Where officials have spoken condescendingly and dismissively about the Occupy movement and its followers, broadening the already wide disconnect with comments that would make even Marie Antoinette choke on her brioche, the growing support itself acts a condemnation of those who marginalize its efforts.

The concern for many, including Susan DiGiacomo, is about the world being left to the generations still to come.

“I’m not happy. I’m not happy with the way things are going,” the 67-year-old Tinton Falls resident said. “I’m an old, white woman who collects social security and has a little bit of money saved away. I have no problems. I could even drive erratically and probably get out of a traffic ticket if I asked nicely. I’m OK, but I don’t know how my kids, my grandkids and, soon, my great grandchildren will be.

“I’m thinking about the world my grandchildren will live in. The way things are going, I can’t imagine it being a better world.”

The Occupy movement has been criticized for not having a centralized theme, other than dissatisfaction with the way things are and wanting significant change, whatever that entails. For DiGiacomo, this isn’t a legitimate gripe. The Occupy movement is a forum to challenge all things that are wrong in this country.  The shear breadth of the issues connected to the movement isn’t an example of a fractured protest, she said, but proof of just how wrong things have gotten.

When park squatters simultaneously protest bank bailouts, wealth and income disparity, and student debt, among a litany of other issues, they’re not at odds with each other, they’re merely separate sides of the same die. The issue of America’s incarceration rate, the highest in the civilized world, is a significant issue for DiGiacomo and one she feels fits in nicely with the other concerns.

The older generations that have joined Occupy Red Bank are comprised, seemingly equally, of experienced protestors like Argyros, who has fought eminent domain in her hometown, and those like Sue Coen of Long Branch, who said at 68 and having never protested against a thing in her life, decided now was the appropriate time to take action and stand with Occupy.

For most, now is the time for action.

“The only hope we have is with Occupy,” Argyros said.