Tag: Occupy Wall Street

 

The protesters who call themselves Occupy Wall Street are a disparate and varied group of progressives or leftists or anti-status quo men and women who are tired of our 30-year-old program to promote the interests of the very wealthiest and neglect the needs of the very poorest.

 

No nation stands still and watches its very core, the middle-class, sink into poverty, unemployment, joblessness, illness and idleness. Eventually, a nascent and small group of angry people takes action and sits down somewhere where they will be noticed. Now they are sitting down and speaking up right in the middle of the most powerful financial district in the world.

 

It’s long overdue, this growing anger at the legislative corruption of a Congress which prints money only to have it spent overseas on wars; a Congress that spends lavishly on tax breaks for companies who hire workers in foreign lands, while cutting health insurance and jobs at home.

 

America, we are told, cannot afford affordable education, health care, housing, public transportation, police protection and environmental preservation. But we somehow can spend trillions on sending private companies overseas to weaponize, fight, advise and spend American tax dollars in Africa, Asia, South America and Europe.

 

The Republican mantra says the government must not interfere at home. But overseas we can invade and rule. In fact, we must.

 

Very few of us fight and die in war these days. So the coffins which come back are not seen nor do many mourn the dead.  We live in a time that values convenience over justice.

 

And inconveniencing the wealthy and the privileged is the point.

 

Occupy the 405.

 

Protests need to move to the wealthy section of Los Angeles so that Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Westwood and Santa Monica also feel the pain. If protesters stopped traffic and brought cars to a halt, the news media would have a field day. Anderson Cooper would set up his rig right on Sepulveda and Wilshire and helicopters would swarm overhead as tens of thousands gathered to demand what all Americans need.

 

Stand on the Freeway.

 

SOTF.