A mass protest movement has grown up almost overnight as thousands of frustrated and angry middle class Americans take to the streets in peaceful protest about the economic conditions in America. Beginning with a protest against the Wall Street tycoons whose greed and frankly criminal activities led to the Great Recession and to the mass unemployment endemic in the country today it has spread to Occupy demonstrations in hundreds of cities, state capitals and county seats. First populated by young people, as with almost all protest demonstrations, they were quickly joined by middle aged middle class citizens, teachers, firefighters, blue collar workers, laborers and soccer moms.
The movement has been portrayed as a liberal progressive movement countering the right wing Tea Party. Ironically the initial stimuli of the Tea Party movement was the big business bailouts from DC and the Occupy movement is angry about those as well and the lack of accountability of the corporate heads who still make huge bonuses and manipulate futures and positions for their own financial benefit.
The Occupy movement, aka the 99% movement, is fueled by the frustration of many who have sat on the sidelines and watched as their freedoms have begun to erode. There are those who feel that personal liberty is more important than just being able to bring a gun into a bar. There are those who believe that health care should be a right in this great nation and that the health care industry should not be dominated by big insurance corporations. There are those who have earned their graduate degrees only to find that the economy has no jobs for them and they are saddled with huge student loans that offer them a future without the means to own a home and raise a family. There are those who see their children in ever enlarging public school classes because those with the money to afford private school want to cut back public education. There are those who have lost their job and doubt whether they can find another of equal worth before they reach retirement age and now they see radical right wing Tea Party Republicans threatening whether they will have Social Security or Medicare when they retire. They watch as these tea party radicals blame the ills of America on entitlements (something you are entitled to because you paid into it) instead of the corporate greed of those who dominate the right wing Republican party through their massive campaign contributions.
1% of Americans today seem to own more of the nation’s wealth than the other 99% collectively. There’s just something that seems wrong about that to most Americans. Most don’t begrudge those who have it’s just they feel cheated out of their dream of having. They are the real “silent majority”. The Americans who don’t always vote because either they see no difference between the candidates and the parties or they don’t see how voting benefits them. When the middle class was the vast majority of our people the upper classes supported programs to aid the poor for two reasons 1) it assuaged their consciences and 2) if they could keep the middle class worried about the poor coming and taking what they had then the middle would ignore what the top did.
The tactics of the very rich in America haven’t changed since the days of the Gilded Age (1880-1900). It is simple: economic, ethnic and racial divide and conquer. Class warfare was invented by these super rich. The poor against the middle; whites against blacks in the south to protect the economic power of the bourbons; office workers against laborers to protect the power of the corporate moguls. Keep non-union workers at the throats of union workers even though many non-unionized workers benefit from laws passed in response to union efforts.
Now the right wing Tea Party folks led by Rep. Eric Cantor attack the Occupiers; call them mobs. Claim they are fighting other Americans and that political officials shouldn’t encourage them. You see it was all right for the right wing to demonstrate and call themselves Tea Partiers after the first great American demonstration in 1773. It was okay for those people to protest to take their America back. And it was fine when Republican elected officials hailed and praised the Tea Party marchers. But if liberal progressives (and their elected officials have been silent compared to the right) march; if Franklin Roosevelt’s “forgotten man” teams up with the “silent majority” well to the right wing that’s another matter - because that threatens their attempt to stampede Americans, using the weapon of fear, into a decade of reaction that will undermine the entire American social fabric of freedom and personal liberty built up so painfully over the past century.
Occupy America must spread and continue - march to the polls all of next year - overcome every tactic used to suppress voter turnout and throw the right wing Tea Party radical Republicans into the harbor with their tea. Take back America for the 99%.
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