"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."--Plutarch
Thursday I rallied, I protested, I watched, and I listened as 5,000 or so Portland residents gathered to send a message that we are pretty pissed off. "At what exactly?" numerous media personalities asked. We know. And they also know. Conservatives dismiss us as a rabble, a mob (Lars Larson), stinky and unemployed (Ann Coulter), and of course "useful idiots" of a George Soros-planned-union-supported socialist power grab (Glenn Beck). Typical stuff from the far right. But I have learned in life that the louder someone yells, the more aggressively someone attempts to marginalize a point of view, then the more scared they are about the validity of their own position. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks", don't ya know.
I, of course, can't speak for everyone in the occupy movement but I suspect that the "demands" of the protesters cannot be summed up in a 30 second sound bite. Mine certainly can't. We're talking about 30 years of government policy here; to be able to condense it to an "acceptable length" for the media is like trying to drive from Portland to Seattle on one gallon of gas into a headwind. There are indeed many grievances the occupy movement puts forth but I contend that these many branches have but one taproot: Government Policy.
Deregulation, the continued encroachment of corporate interests into the political process, free trade agreements, and tax codes, to name a few, have so ludicrously tilted the playing field that it is now almost impossible to hide it any longer. Hence the protests and corporate media marginalization. And before you think this anger is merely a progressive phenomena, aimed solely at conservatives, I will argue that BOTH parties are responsible for this debacle.
While Republicans are an easy target because of their pro-business platform, many Democrats are just as guilty. It is no longer about parties, it is about income disparity. Instead of an 'R' or a 'D' after their name, I suggest that we start using 'M' to show these politicians' true party affiliation. Millionaires make up approximately 1% of all US population according to 2010 census data, yet they comprise 66% of the Senate and 41% of the House of Representatives. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20075586-503544.html Millionaires may not write all our legislation but they have a super majority in passing or killing it, as all bills must be passed by both houses with exactly the same wording. Millionaires run our country and quite frankly they don't care about the 99% until election time. Meanwhile, they enact policies that further enrich the few and increasingly punish the rest.
That's it. That's what we are pissed about. The evidence is irrefutable. Our country is teetering on depression simply because we have elected millionaires who, for the last 30 years, have looked out only for themselves. To cover their tracks, they would sometimes throw the 99% a bone, to occupy our attention, to mislead us, but it's now impossible for them to hide anymore. Never mind that the IMF issued a report that shows that gross income disparity is BAD for the economy, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/imf-income-inequality-is-bad-for-growth/2011/10/06/gIQAjYADQL_blog.html , never mind that corporate profits continue to increase http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/visualizing-booming-profits/ while few jobs are created. Never mind that 10% of the population holds 80-90% of stocks and bonds in the country http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html and stocks are those things that corporations pay dividends on when they are profitable. I could go on and on with the "never minds", but you get the idea. The continued greed of the wealthy is so utterly transparent that people are finally protesting these injustices.
So when the media ask "what are you demanding?", I will simply say we are demanding that Congress enact policies and laws that benefit the 99% of Americans. The 1% have had 30 years of getting everything they want. It's our time now. Period.
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