I find it personally very hard to understand how anyone could fail to sympathize with the Occupy movement, but I also understand why doubt and uncertainty hang in the air. As one pundit pithily remarked, "Everyone's waiting to see if this is a movement or just a moment." Movements fit a pattern that so far isn't the Occupy pattern. It has no leaders, no demands, no coherent vision, and no legislation to propose. Nobody is running for Congress on an Occupy platform.
All of this means that the powers that be have no pragmatic reason to come out vigorously for the Occupiers, even though more than 900 protests have been staged so far worldwide. In politics, what unites right and left is obviously opposed to these protests. Both sides share power, money, and elite privileges. Does that spell the end of the Occupy movement as soon as winter becomes hard enough and the police violent enough?
It could, of course. In terms of power, the Occupiers have none. They even lack the power of civil disobedience along the model of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Yet a secret influence may be on their side: a true shift in consciousness.
If you clear out the distractions, what the Occupy movement stands for is economic inequality. The 99 percent are grossly undervalued in society. There is injustice in the way corporate greed has been allowed to wreck the global economy at will, without fear of punishment. There is injustice in the way jobs have been undermined, a manufacturing base ruthlessly destroyed for the sake of corporate profits. This injustice doesn't affect simply the factory workers, farmers, and underclass who typically lead social revolutions. A small elite has stripped away bargaining rights, pensions, and job stability without a shred of conscience.
The result has been this push-back, feeble as it looks when measured against corporate monoliths. Yet there is another side. In countries like India and China, injustice is being righted. For the first time in history, the dispossessed and least powerful people in the world, amounting to billions of them, are finding a voice and a living income at the same time. The problem with this movement toward equality is that it is coming at the expense of rich countries. The prevailing attitude (not always supported by the facts) is that America loses whenever China and India win.
Yet if you stand back, the shift in consciousness is the same. Occupiers want social and economic justice, which is exactly what impoverished workers want in China and India. The specific issues aren't the same; at times they give the appearance of being total opposites. Both sides want more jobs, and when the same job is at stake, there will be a loser and a winner. When a rich country strives to end inequality, the playing field is obviously different from that in a poor country. Even so, the shift in consciousness is the same.
Michael Moore has circulated some practical action points for the Occupiers, none of which would come close to passage in the present political environment. But the first seven strike me as basic tenets of social justice, and if consciousness successfully shifts, they would serve as bellwethers of change. The seven points are:
Therein lies the best future for the Occupiers, that we reach a tipping point in global awareness. The signs are good so far. The Berlin Wall stood until the day a shift in awareness knocked it down. America's grossly unbalanced economic system stands equally firm, and although it doesn't have the Soviet army to protect it, the attitude of corporate greed, political corruption, and elitist privilege serves just as well. That the Occupiers lack leaders, legislation, and political candidates is irrelevant. What they have on their side is truth and a sense of justice. A society that cannot pay attention to those things is by definition an unjust society and deserves to decline. In terms of raw power, the Occupiers have lost the battle in advance. But in terms of a future that rights wrongs, they are the living spark of our national conscience.
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Isn't it against economic inequality and for economic equality?
If it's ok to bash the greedy top 1% in America, what does the rest of the world think about me? Anyone with an income over $35k is in the top 1% in the world. What do the low paid engineers in China and India think of a whiny social worker in America who's protesting she deserves even more wealth?
We fear, because the 99% may rise up against the USA.
Oh, somebody is bound to ask for proof: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/10/28/attention-protestors-youre-probably-part-of-the-1-.aspx
The movement itself has been subverted and it no longer speaks for anyone other than its won agenda.
Concentrate on Wall St and the crimes they have committed and you will get the power that elections have were meant to give you.
When you are ready to fight, really fight, let me know. Till then go home, we've seen this story before.
7) The President shall serve a single 4 year term after serving a single 4 year term as Vice President. A vice President shall be selected by a majority of the leaders of the 100 Congressional districts every 4 years from their members. The Office of the President shall be administrative only. Executive authority shall reside in a new council made up of the President, the Vice President,
3 members of Congress selected from the retiring members every 2 years by the total body, the leader of the Supreme Court selected by the court each 2 years, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Military.
1) Corporations and all organizations including unions must be denied all rights reserved for people
2) No candidate can receive any support of any type including money, services, advertising, etc. except from eligible voters in the voting district of the candidate
3) No candidate can be elected without a majority of the total eligible voters from the candidates election district.
4) No elected person can serve more than ten years in national service in total for all positions served. No elected Official shall receive any benefits of any sort including retirement, medical, access, etc. extending beyond their personal service.
5) Judges of a higher court shall be selected by a majority of judges of the lower court selecting from the members of the lower court; and no judge shall serve more than 6 years in any single court.
"It is class warfare. But it was begun not by the tear-gassed, rain-soaked protesters asserting their constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful assembly but rather the financial overlords who control all of the major levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is they who subverted the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders in control of their economic and political destiny.
Between 1979 and 2007, as the Congressional Budget Office reported this week, the average real income of the top 1 percent grew by an astounding 275 percent. And that is after payment of the taxes that the superrich and their Republican apologists find so onerous.
Those three decades of rampant upper-crust greed unleashed by the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s will be well marked by future historians recording the death of the American dream."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thirty_years_of_unleashed_greed_20111026/
As for your wish list, that will cost a tremendous amount of money. Particularly since the defense expense savings will be illusory. There will always be international events that cause us to spend massive amounts on defense. You cannot pay for all of that by just raising taxes on the wealthiest.
Failure is Failure. And yet is has become a twisted strategy for political success.
The income disparity which is at the heart of the OWS protests is directly linked to the bad economy.
As the income disparity becomes greater the national economy gets worse. We saw it happen with our own eyes.
The greater the disparity the worse the economy
This was not inevitable. It is the result of public policy and the tax code. This is so obvious and yet there a whole industry and an entire political party that are deniers.
Remember how it was before Bush?
We had prosperity and for purely ideological reasons that tax code was junked.