Quick background: After PodcampAZ this weekend some of us were relaxing together and of course someone pulled out a recorder. If she publishes this conversation I’ll let you know. We started the “official” conversation discussing the difference between the tolerance and coexist bumper stickers (she has the tolerance one on her car) and then moved on to other political points. In there a few times the Tea Party and the Occupy movements came up.

And I ended up yelling at someone.

I can’t remember my exact words (hopefully they’re on the recording) but the gist was every time someone would mention the Occupiers, Mr. Conservative would either scoff or make some snide remark. This bugged me. I’ve been working very hard to use a smaller paintbrush (shut up, yes I have!) when I think/talk about people who think opposite of me. So let me get this down here, paraphrasing myself, before I forget:

I have no real idea what the Tea Party is about. All we see on TV are the loudest most obnoxious, racists, hateful representatives but standing behind them are people who feel strongly enough about their feelings to take the time to gather to be heard. They may have had better leadership and organizational skills, but this and the Occupy movement have that in common. Years ago the poor and overworked rose up and said we’re not gonna take this shit anymore and unions were created to protect them. Well, unions have now become the screwers and people are rising up again to say the same thing. We don’t like what’s going on in America and we want to be heard.

The Occupy movement has no real solution but those people are in pain. Those people are wanting someone to know they’ve lost their homes and/or can’t find jobs or are in enormous debt or whatever and you can’t scoff at people’s pain. They feel strongly enough to gather and protest you must respect their feelings. Sure, people lost their houses because they made bad decisions but they were ALSO set up to fail by the banks. Sure kids gather debt in colleges but the loans were made easier to get and the jobs they’re now ready for are not there.

We watch our government throw millions of dollars at banks and the banks turn around and give their already high-paid execs millions of dollars in bonuses. It’s bullshit. Voting doesn’t work because the politicians either lie to get elected or just have such an enormous fight against the lobbyists and special interest groups and whoever they’ve got on their side that change doesn’t happen.

As another friend says, “the system sucks” and right now the Tea Party and the Occupy movement are made up of regular people trying to have a voice. These people are in pain. And you just can’t scoff at them. You can’t paint everyone you oppose with the same giant paintbrush. That is demeaning.

And that’s not right, that’s NOT okay.

Whew. I later apologized to Mr. Conservative for directing that specifically at him, but he admits I was right to call him out and he’d try harder to show respect. Now if we could get the media and government to do the same thing, show respect to the people trying to speak, maybe someone would come up with a fair solution. Right, that’s never gonna happen.

I really hope most of that conversation is published. We talked about much more but as with all recordings in public places who knows how the sound will work out until you get into editing. I’ll let you know what she ends up with.