Rise up and take the power back
It’s time the fat cats had a heart attack
You know that their time’s coming to an end
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend
- Muse, Uprising
We are not poor. We are not oppressed. We are not struggling to make ends meet.
We are 20-something grads from prep schools and top 20 colleges. We live together in downtown suites. Many of us work alongside some of the top 1% in America at Goldman, Barclay’s, and Citi before we go out drinking with them.
We have only one thing in common with the rest of the 99% – we hate where we are headed.
We hate that we blindly accepted finance and consulting as what all the smart grads did.
We hate that we were sold on nobility, fortune, and a brand name that our parents would love.
We hate that the 16 hour days we work make no dent in the world.
We are crew members on the 1% ship, and we want mutiny. Fortunately, we have the connections, information, money and fury to lead it.
The most important thing we can do now is to find each other. The “Occupy%CityName” phenomenon helps, but it needs leaders like us from the inside to make a lasting impact. One way we can do that is to make sure that everyone out on those streets keeps meeting each other regularly and, more importantly, finds the people who care about the same problems we do. We can easily do that by organizing events on Facebook or Meetup.
These events don’t have to be big; I organized a meetup for the first time last week and exactly 2 people came. What’s more important is that we realize that we are not alone, and together we are more than capable of pushing the world forward.
When we find other people who care about the same problems we do, we can build and test our ideas to solve them for practically nothing. On top of the connections we already have, there are more people, foundations, and governments who want to help us. If we need to learn to code, I promise you that it’s a lot easier (and more fun) than making powerpoints and spreadsheets for our bosses too.
So, if you were waiting for the perfect time to leave Wall Street, my God this is it. We are young, privileged, bank-rolled and furious. Let’s keep finding each other and start building something better.
really good stuff, brendan.