#OccupyPittsburgh

It's Monday morning, and that's the cue for #OccupyPittsburgh.

Oh, no - not the losers who are going to take a day off on a Saturday to come down and whine about how  unfair everything is because someone actually expects them to pay back the $100,000 in student loans they took out so they could get a masters degree in American Beat Poetry Studies.  Nah, those looters will be congregating sometime this weekend.

I'm talking about the real "occupy Pittsburgh" crowd.

It's been an ongoing effort now for... whoa, that's a long time.  Oh, yes.  It's become quite a habit around here, you see, though you really won't see much mention of it in the media at all.  Even though we've gone on long enough that we don't measure our occupation in days, or weeks, or even months.

Two hundred and fifty years and counting, now.  My, how those days just fly!

There are around one and a quarter million people that are employed here in Pittsburgh.  We're on a pretty tight organizational schedule, too.  Some of us contribute a couple of days a week.  Most manage to give it a full five days a week.  Others are more hardcore - they're in it for the long haul, and are working their butts off six or even seven days a week helping keep everything running.

And by everything, I do mean everything.  Grocery stores, shops, hospitals, universities, manufacturing, construction, transportation, finances, publishing, robotics, food service, advertising, news outlets.  We even have one or two of them there newfangled internet thingies going on 'round here.

We do our jobs.  We earn our pay and pay our bills.

We take care of our families and our communities.

We live in houses we can afford, and drive 10 year old cars because, hey - it still works, y'know?

Besides, we've got the kid's college to save for.  Don't want them racking up a huge student loan bill, after all.  Because, you know.  That would be stupid.  When the time comes, we'll let them know that any major that ends with the word "Studies" is pretty much right out, too.  For the same reason.

One million, two hundred fifth thousand people working here in Pittsburgh, occupying the city every day.  Earning a living, making their way in the world.

So... let's do the math.  You "* Studies" majors, see if you can find an engineer or an accountant on their lunch break to give you a hand with those icky, bourgeoisie  numbers.  Oh, and even though it's a word problem, trust me on this one - you don't need to deconstruct anything here.  It pretty much just means what it says.

If there are 12,500 #OccupyPittsburgh protesters this weekend (extremely doubtful as that may be), and there are 1,250,000 people earning a living by working in the city of Pittsburgh...

Tell me, who are the real 99%?