I have been taxing my brain to express how I feel about the Occupy movement and how I can put my thoughts into words that are both meaningful and succinct.
The Occupy movement is the most exciting political action we have seen since the early 70' re: the war and the 60's re: the anti-segregation movement. People are taking to the streets to complain about how their situation, their lives, have been affected by corporate greed and the lack of representation by the people we have elected to state and federal office. It is really that simple. When we have our courts system declare that corporations are people and therefore have the rights of the individual we create an inequity that is just huge. How can we as individuals even begin to compete for the attention of our government when we can just be rolled over by large corporations who's budgets for political actions so out scope our own meager offerings? Let's face it, the 1% owns not only all the wealth, but our government as well.
So, how do we fight this? How do we let both the corporations and our elected officials know that this is unacceptable? We protest these inequalities by going to the streets with peaceful actions. We let the elected and their owners know that we don't approve. When we protested the war in Vietnam, we achieved our goals and got our conservative President to remove us from the conflict. Now granted, he had indeed shot himself in the foot by the dirty tricks he and his Whitehouse committed, but through our peaceful protesting we ended the war. The time has come again where we must let those in power know “we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it any longer.”
If you are like me an unable to actively protest due to physical restraints, you might do other things to help the movement. Yesterday, the Occupy Portland Maine movement asked us for warm long underwear. As we Mainer's know, the winter is much easier to survive with a pair of long underwear under the shirt and pants. They have ask for them to be dropped off at the park where they are staying. I intend to do so on Saturday when I am in town for a party. I also speak out by the means available to me. I know that most of you are already behind this action but every little bit helps. What is it that Wavy Gravy said, “how can you end wars and stuff if you cant yell out how you feel?” God, I sure am dating myself; as some of you look up Wavy on the internet.
As many of you are aware, the 1% are trying to crush this movement. They have resorted to again using lies through their media (supposed news) outlets. They say we are a bunch of hippies (who by the way are in their sixties and seventies now and no longer the “dirty” bunch of students) and crack pots. They say we don't have any demands, we are not organized, we are clueless. They are wrong! By keeping this thing simple, we have empowered ourselves.
What do we want? We want balance. We want to be able to live the American dream which has been slowly eroded since the mid 80's by the 1% through their removal of the checks and balances that history has told us are needed. We want regulation of the banking system so that they cannot bet against themselves and their shareholders creating this man-made recession. We must break up these banks so they are no longer too big to fail. We need to get big money out of our politics. Corporations are not citizens.
We all are Americans and we want the rights and privileges promised us by our fore fathers. As in the past, we must sometimes fight for those rights but not the way our oppressors might, not through violent action. Instead we need to protest passively. We need to respect others. We need to get our messages heard but not through war. Instead we must press these issues by letting our numbers be seen. We must let our opinions be hear but not through violent actions but instead by passive political actions.
We must keep moving forward!
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