Occupy for Good

Occupy Ambridge started last night. We had eight people come through, plus a dozen kids. Little Ruthie was the last one standing. Anne made the “Occupy for Good” sign. She and Kathleen came up with the slogan, which has a nice double entendre. Miriam and Sam made the Occupy Ambridge sign. The rain started after about an hour.

In between chasing kids around we got to know each other and started talking about problems facing Ambridge and America. There is a march in Pittsburgh tomorrow and an event in Aliquippa next weekend. And of course there is the ongoing occupation on Wall Street. Christy was so tired out from his trip to Wall Street that he fell asleep at our house (across from the park) and slept through Occupy Ambridge, but he and I did catch up later.

Here’s a guy from Portland Christy met, bringing a bit of the ol’ Apostle Paul to the mix. Go figure, there’s some overlap between the Apostle and Glenn Beck. Can you spot it? ;-)

Love, something we can all agree on. I floated the idea at the coffee shop yesterday. Kathleen thought it was an overused term, as in “I love Kentucky Fried Chicken!” Maybe. Tim, I thought, had a good insight, which is that if we’re talking about increasing love then we’re talking about changing our hearts, which can’t be done by force. Government is force, and so laws have limits. As Tim put it, “We want to reward hard work and punish greed. But how do we tell the difference?”

We can’t change our hearts by force, and we also can’t change our hearts by talking on the Internet. This is where occupation comes in. Occupation takes the chaotic democracy of the Internet and brings it into the real world, where we can talk face to face.

Occupation can change our hearts for good.