If you read my last article, Another Election Year, in the November issue of Alive Magazine, you would know that I’m not overly political. I am proud to be an American citizen and I do exercise my right to vote, but it’s not like I would ever join a call center movement and interrupt your dinner hour with a courteous reminder to support my candidate or vote down a referendum. In the past, I was never one to protest. While I whole-heartedly believe that protests have their time and place, I’m just not a joiner—that is, until me and my bowling group of dads decided to fly to the North Pole and “Occupy” Santa’s Workshop. It’s not that we have anything against Santa or Mrs. Claus; we were just caught up in the moment.
We got our idea from Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”). OWS, as most everyone knows, is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and over 1,500 cities globally. OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future. I got that from their website www.occupywallstreet.org.
I would be lying if I told you we have enacted some altruistic global movement to liberate the working class elves, to determine if Santa’s monopoly on Christmas has made him a billionaire or to expose the NYSE symbol “SWS” as Santa’s Workshop. From what I’ve seen, the elves seem to be pretty merry. Santa runs his operation as a Not for Profit and SWS is actually a failing solar company headquartered in Sunnyvale. Granted, the folks at PETA might have something to say about the cruelty of making reindeer fly, but to a man, our group of super athletic suburban dads agreed that if we could fly we would gladly pull Santa’s rig.
Can you imagine a bunch of premium-jean-wearing-dad’s, from the I-680 corridor, pulling Santa’s sleigh? Santa might yell out, “On Blackhawk, On Diablo, go Crow Canyon and Round Hill.” No, the truth is, me and my boyz were just looking for something different to do during our holiday break and a trip to the North Pole sounded cool. No pun intended.
The occupations around the world are being organized using a non-binding consensus-based decision-making tool known as a “people’s assembly.” We don’t even know what that means. This process of organizing your local community and bring awareness to social injustice makes sense and it’s sure popular, but I’ve heard many people verbalize that a great majority of the occupy participants just seem to be on the “encampment bandwagon.” I’m not saying that Occupy North Pole was well thought out, but we’re going to cause trouble. We actually did have a “hidden agenda.” We wanted to see how the toys were made.
For my entire lifetime, I’ve heard about Santa’s Workshop. Who doesn’t know about the “naughty and nice” list, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman? It wasn’t too hard to convince sixteen beer drinking suburban dads to take a little road trip for the good of mankind. I also promised them we would stop at In-N-Out Burger. Ultimately, what got my brothers to jump in our SUVs and begin the 13,000 mile journey from Danville to the North Pole, was that I promised anyone that accompanied me that they would be able to ask Santa one question.
After a rather long drive, our occupation began once we set up our tent city and began making protest posters. Slogans such as; Less than 1% of the world has Mistletoe, Jingle Bells the Government Smells and, Frosty is Cold Blooded seemed harmless enough. Truth be told, we were just hoping to get some face time with Mr. Kris Kringle and enjoy the hot chocolate dispensing fire hydrants. If we could score a University of Santa’s Workshop hoodie and a candy cane foam finger, the trip would be considered a success. Sadly,
Santa didn’t appreciate our occupation. He came out a few times and told us to go home because he was busy working on the logistical challenges of delivering presents to the seven billion people that now inhabit the earth. Needless to say, he was a bit more effective than Mayor Quan in Oakland.
Sometime after our beer buzz wore off and the ten thousandth elf thrown snowball rained down on Occupy Wiener Roast, we decided to pack it in and head home. It’s not that we didn’t believe in our cause… wait, what was our cause? No, we just realized that we could be more effective at home being good dad’s to our kids during the holidays. Not to mention that we froze our “bowling” balls off it was so cold.
Santa reminded us that the holidays are a time for family not fighting … or something like that. The Jolly one is usually munching cookies and mumbles a lot. Maybe next year, we’ll Occupy Arizona “Spring Training” or Occupy San Diego with the kids (the zoo, Sea World and LEGOLAND) for spring break.
We’d like to Occupy Maui or Orlando during the summer if the economy picks up. I just hope my wife doesn’t expect me to Occupy Michigan (the in-laws) for Thanksgiving or you’ll really hear me protest.
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