An encounter with the occupiers
By John Tillman

I had a direct encounter with the Occupy Wall Street protesters as I was on my way home the other night. My office is a block north of their Chicago base at Jackson Boulevard and LaSalle Street, so I've been walking through the crowd almost daily as I go about my business. But last Thursday night, I stopped and had a real discussion.

It was delightful.

I asked what it is they were upset with and why were they vilifying corporations, noting that their umbrellas, cardboard signs and the ink used to write their anti-corporation messages all were made by corporations.

Like others, I've seen the news reports about their supposed demands: a $20 minimum wage, forgiveness of all debt and a socialist-style health care system. As the leader of a free-market think tank, it will come as no surprise that I do not support those solutions; they are not economically sound.

But I also know that when people are frustrated, their solutions do not always match the problem. So I sought to get to the heart of what this crowd considered to be the problems in America.

Here is what I learned: First, they don't like crony capitalism in which politicians and government pick the winners and losers. We agreed. Second, they don't like it that people misbehaved on Wall Street. We agreed again. But when I pointed out that the financial collapse occurred primarily because of people playing within the rules created by government and that it was the government itself that made the rules, we began to find more common ground.

One thing that has bothered the occupiers is their image as portrayed in the news media. They think corporate media are misleading the public about who they really are and what they really want. I told them my take, based on news reports, was that they are engaged in class warfare and hate corporations and capitalism. They said that that was not what it was all about; their occupation, rather, is about stopping abuses of the system at the expense of average people. We agreed once more.

When asked for advice on improving their image, I said stop attacking corporations and the rich; they are not your enemy. The root problem is government that seeks to expand and empower itself rather than empowering people. The best way for government to empower people is to go back to the founding principles and focus on creating a level playing field, not seeking equal outcomes or picking winners and losers. We agreed again.

In the end, the 30-minute nighttime conversation taught me that these folks have many of the same grievances as the tea party: They don't like the out-of-control debt, they don't like the out-of-control spending, they don't like the insider dealmaking and crony capitalism, and they don't like it that they feel like they are left holding the bag while the insiders with access to power get away with everything.

There appears to be this great schism in the tea party movement about how the occupiers should be treated: rejected as crazy leftists or embraced?

I'd argue that occupiers and tea partyers should join forces. Given what I heard the other night — at least from this particular set of occupiers — we share far more in common than they realize.

What I have found most interesting about the rise of the tea party is that the two groups who dislike them most are the Democratic and Republican establishments. If the tea party and occupiers find common ground, we'll see the Democrats and Republicans finally unite in a bipartisan fashion against them both.