Sunday, October 9, 2011

What's it all about?

There has been a lot of criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement, much of which centers on the supposed lack of a clear message.  It's not that the message isn't clear, it's that there are is a long list of grievances and unless the sources reporting take the time to hear many of these, they will remain ignorant.  Of course, considering those "reporting" are in America, they're either completely stupid or just plain lying if they say they don't know what this is about.  In fact, I think you'd have to be from another planet to not know what this is about.  I am not a politically or economically-minded person.  The intricacies of this mess are a blur to me but the big picture is that our country has been robbed and the whole world is suffering. 

My personal complaints in relation to the Occupation:

*  Working too many hours for too little compensation.
*  Working full time with no health-care.
*  The fact that higher is out of reach education due to the cost and lack of promise in the job market.

But also:

*  The difference in percentage of income paid as taxes by the ultra-rich over the past 30-50 years.
*  Millions of Americans lost their savings, retirements, homes, and got no compensation.
*  Those who were at fault for the losses got a "bailout", (because they run on our money), but not a cent was returned to the people who actually lost everything.  Not a single person went to jail.
*  Students graduating college can't find jobs in the field they studied for, and if they can they don't pay enough to live, let alone pay back their enormous student loan debt.
*  Millions of Americans have no health insurance.  Of those who do, most have to pay large co-pays and pay for many things that aren't "covered".  Health "care" is an industry, aimed more at "treating" dis-ease than preventing or maintaining health or curing anything.  Big Pharm. is an evil industry.
*  The 1% (top wealthiest) greed has infested everything, causing us to relentlessly pursue our planet's natural  resources and use forms of energy that are ecologically toxic. 
*  We've been brainwashed into consumerism and have lost much arcane knowledge, we need to regain more power over our own well-being.
*  Our food is tainted, the government has allowed the modification not only of prepared packaged food-type products, but also of your basic tomato.  It's getting difficult to get clean seeds.  There are far too many money-makers in our food system, putting pressure on farmers and exponentially over-charging consumers.
*  Our politicians, (and, therefore, our policies), are insistently influenced by large corporations with designs on wringing every cent out of the world while polluting at their leisure. 
*  The "two"-party system isn't working anymore.  The super-rich should be taxed properly and out of that more reasonable tax-pool, each individual who is elected by any party should be given the same (reasonable) amount for campaigning and time in televised debate or, better, just making statements and taking honest questions. 
*  Voting should matter.  There should be no electoral college.  One person, one vote.  Period.
*  And we should be able to vote on EVERYTHING.  We should not be at the mercy of congress sweeping in mid-term and abolishing our new, shiny health-care reform.
*  Every American citizen, (I believe every human being but I have to start where I am), should have health care, a college education, decent primary schooling that is not based on standardized testing, a home that's made of healthy, natural materials and is affordable, work that pays a high enough wage to pay bills and enjoy life, fewer weekly hours worked and more time off, healthy, clean food that isn't "genetically modified" or made of chemicals...
*  We need to be more local.  I'm against sending work over-seas but for a somewhat different reason than some.  I do want things I buy to be made here, as near to me as possible so that the transport of goods does less damage.  I also want these nasty corporations to stop setting up sweat shops in other countries, paying people disgustingly nominal wages to work in brutal conditions so that I can have some cool stuff at the Target dollar-spot.  If we stop all of that, if we bring our work home and take our money back, stop warring all over the place, we could go to these countries and help because our own country would be functional.
*  We don't want to be at war anymore.  Bring our soldiers home.  That's a lot of people who could work at designing and building clean, sustainable power sources.
*  There is a lot of work to be done in this country.  There are a lot of jobs to do.  We just need the money to pay for them.
*  We're not alone.  The reason we've sat in American and watched as Egypt and Libya and Greece and so many other places erupted is that it's been almost-tolerable for so long.  Not only do we have a lot of conveniences here, we've also been taken with the idea that we're somehow in a bubble, that the things the rest of the world has to deal with don't affect us.  "Well, sure glad we don't have any evil dictators here in these great states!"  Unless you really stop and think about it.  Or if they get really greedy and just decide to pull a mighty heist right before everyone's eyes.  Like they did.  It took us three years of stewing over that to get to where we are today.  We're standing up for ourselves, and we're standing up with the rest of the world.  We've finally said, "We're with you!  We're not going to take it anymore, either!  We're with you!".   I'm really glad to be here, watching and cheering and, soon, marching with the whole world.   


 It's about taking it back!

9 comments:

  1. I think you've got some great, progressive, inspirational thoughts. Your words are heard, loud and clear. Wish more people thought like you.

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  2. Apparently many do! I'm so glad we're finally speaking up and getting together. It will be a rough road but if we support one another and stay focused, we could change the world!

    -Melissa (awitchtrying)

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  3. Glad to see you are still writing. We have to be more than compensation. Having 'no jobs' is just a symptom of deeper problems within. When we only base an economy on the generation of war, compensate CEOs at a ratio of 475:1 (the highest in the world), have Corporations that pay ZERO income tax and yet call for higher taxes on the working poor (the poor and homeless consider them the lucky ones), and then fail to realize what we spend in 8 days on the military budget could have fed the world...well perhaps we do need to fail spectacularly in order to end our destruction in order to create again.

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  4. There are so many problems, there's such rampant injustice. I don't think our current system is fixable. They seem to want easy "lists of demands" and answers but there aren't any. Our list of grievances is miles long. I believe we, the people of the United States, have the strength and the know-how to figure out better ways. I'm really excited to see us banding together!

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  5. I hate to make this comparison, but with the tea party and the right, their message is pretty simple and makes for easy sound bites. The left is more nuanced and hard for the media to apprehend easily enough to fit between commercial breaks.

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  6. Strangely I only heard about this on the news this weekend. Sad to say, the media here in England seems to be more concerned about the issue of protestors wearing masks than they do the real issues behind the movement.

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  7. It's not a media-friendly movement. Thing is, we need to recognize that the media doesn't usually show the whole picture. A lot of channels have done their best to make the protestors look like kids and hippies, a disorganized mess of people who don't know what they want. The real problem is that what we want isn't one thing. The right's message is simple because they want to adjust a system that's already out of balance in a way that puts things even more in their favor. When there is a list of demands from the Occupy movement, it will only be the beginning. I don't understand how a person could be living on this planet in this day and age and NOT understand what is being protested. We want money out of politics and to be out from under the corporations that are running us into the ground- for a start.

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  8. Hi. I'm still out here. Thanks for stopping by!

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