“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear,” Buffalo Springfield sang in 1967. Actually it was pretty clear what was happening back then: Hundreds of thousands of Americans were demanding an end to the Vietnam War.
For over a month now, hundreds of thousands of people have been taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Starting in New York, the protests have spread across the United States and the world. There’s even an Occupy Bend event, with demonstrators camping in a vacant lot on (where else?) Wall Street.
Compared to the Vietnam-era protesters, the Occupy Wall Streeters are a strangely mixed ideological bag. Their gripes are about everything from home foreclosures to the Federal Reserve to the high cost of gasoline to the alleged cover-up of the real story behind 9/11.
Critics of Occupy Wall Street – mostly Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe themselves and their shills in politics and the media – try to use this lack of a single sharp focus to discredit the movement. “It’s just a ragtag mob of lazy socialist communist hippie trustafarians with too much time on their hands and no idea what they really want,” their rap goes.That indictment is not only inaccurate (the protesters represent a wide range of ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds) but unfair. Although you can’t write a neat bullet-point list of policies the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators support, the basic things they want are abundantly clear.
They want an end to government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
They want an end to a system where billionaires get tax cuts and bailouts and everybody else gets lectures about “personal responsibility.”
They want an end to policies that have enabled the top 1% to grab six times as much of the nation’s wealth as the bottom 80%.
They want to change the game so working Americans stop seeing their real incomes shrink even as the incomes of the 1-percenters astronomically grow.
They don’t want to impose “socialism” or “communism” – they want to make capitalism work for everybody, not just the privileged few at the top.
The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators understand that, as Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi writes in his book Griftopia, America “is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government.”
And they know that’s got to stop.
The two big dangers facing a populist movement – and Occupy Wall Street, unlike the billionaire-funded, Washington-lobbyist-managed Tea Party, is a real populist movement – are that it will dissolve before it accomplishes anything or that one of the major parties will co-opt it and subvert it for its own purposes.
It’s too soon to know whether Occupy Wall Street will fall into one of those traps. But for now, those who are out there marching and camping to call attention to the monstrous corruption and injustice of our political-economic system, including those in Bend, deserve our thanks – and THE GLASS SLIPPER.
This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2011.
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Let’s see who does fund the Occupiers? There is the billionaire George Soros and there is thug union money from the AFL-CIO. As far as lobbyists go, who better than than our own president.
What amazes me is how these folks overlook the fact that our president has received more contributions from Wall Street than all past presidents…….combined!! These people should be camped out on Pennsylvania Ave., not in NYC.
I also get a kick out of your list of their issues and solutions but somehow claim that their solutions do not require a socialist approach. Sorry, but I can’t think of income re-distribution (their main goal) as anything but socialist.
Another one of their issues is the very high amount of debt in the form of student loans that many carry. Having $50K to $100K of debt to go along with an English degree is a very difficult place to be. But instead of demonstrating at the universities that have charged such exorbitant ever increasing and unjustifiable tuitions, they demonstrate against the financial institution(s) that supported their education. However, to do otherwise would be to hold their liberal professor mentors more accountable, and we can’t have that. Thus their misguided anger focuses on the financial services industry.
So lets follow the Occupiers money. Zucotti Park is a private park owned by Brookfield Office Properties. Over a week ago, Brookfield wanted the protestors dispersed , but then changed its mind. Why? Well Brookfield Properties is owned by Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) which also owns Granite Relaible, a windfarm project in New England. Just a week ago, Granite Reliable received a loan guaranty from our government (i.e. Obama) for over $168 billion. (Can you say Solyndra?)
So the quid quo pro? A loan guaranty in exchange for a change of heart to allow the mob to stay at the park. Your tax dollars at work. Here’s the link: articles.businessinsider.com/…1_?loan…wind-farm-solyndra.
Why don’t we hear about this in your reporting?
“to the alleged cover-up of the real story behind 9/11”
The Source, in spite of repeated denials, once again outs itself as a member of the kuku bird 9/11 truthers club. And again kudos to Bill R., nailed it again.
Bill: $168 BILLION? Try million.
Also, the OWS demonstrators are by no means all disgruntled English majors with student loans. And a lot of them aren’t real happy with Obama either.
Jon: Reading comprehension problem there. Referring to “the alleged cover-up” is rather different from saying there was a cover-up. I’ve never seen the Source endorse the 9/11 truther nonsense. In fact it’s often been taken to task by the truthers for NOT agreeing with them.
I stand corrected. Meant to say $168 million rather than billion. Thanks Mr. Miller.
The script does indeed say “alleged cover up”…….of…….”the REAL STORY behind 9/11”
The only aspect the article alleges is the cover up, not the “truth”. My reading comprehension is impeccable. I have identified similar slips on numerous past occasions. And while the Source may have never overtly endorsed the “truth” movement, with careful reading, its pretty clear “truthers” populate the editorial staff.
Jon, this is what the sentence says: “Their gripes are about everything from home foreclosures to the Federal Reserve to the high cost of gasoline to the alleged cover-up of the real story behind 9/11.”
The sentence is describing what some of the OWS demonstrators are complaining about, NOT what the opinion of the Source is.
“And while the Source may have never overtly endorsed the “truth” movement, with careful reading, its pretty clear “truthers” populate the editorial staff.”
And it’s abundantly clear that you’re full of it, Jon. Do you even personally know any of the people on the editorial staff? I do. They are not “truthers.”
But you’ll just go on believing what you want to believe and employing your “careful readings” to justify your beliefs, so I won’t waste any more of my time here.
And now we also find out that NYC mayor Bloomberg’s long time domestic partner, a Ms. Taylor, sits on the Brookfield Properties board (that owns Zucotti Park) along with the park’s namesake, Mr. Zucotti.
So let’s see if I have connected the dots correctly. Protestors target Zucotti park becasue it is private property and the city can not act unilaterally. The park owners complain about the mess and ask the city to help clear the park for cleaning and the Mayor is all set to do that.
This action is suddenly and inexplicably called off by the mayor and the Mayor now says the mob can stay as long as they like and the City will be stuck paying the police (union labor) OT at the taxpayers expense to keep the peace.
How/why could this have happened? Perhaps Brookfield Asset Management got a call from the “regime” (Obama admin) indicating that it was still considering its loan guaranty on the Granite Reliable windfarm project owned by Brookfield and that the “regime” did not want the mob inconvenienced. Ms. Taylor then demands of her partner, the mayor, to call off the police to which he dutifully complies, and the regime somehow approves the loan guaranty at about the same time. How tidy.
If this were Bush, the press would be up in arms, but as usual Obysmal gets a pass.
Then it should have read, “Their gripes are about everything from home foreclosures to the Federal Reserve to the high cost of gasoline……… to the assertions of the 9/11 truth movement and their stance that the WTC attacks were executed as a false flag operation executed and covered up by the US government.” Here’s the difference, this is describing the viewpoint and stance of another group. It displaces ownership of that particular viewpoint to the truthers and detaches the writer from any perceived solidarity to the notion, whereas the article statement personalizes the viewpoint to the writer him or herself.
And you’re correct, I don’t know any Source editorial staff. But along the same logic trajectory, you assert to know a lot about me from my writing.
How very Fox News of you Bill R. to make this a republican vs democrate issue…its so easy to make it US vs THEM so that you can be lazy and let the Fox talking heads tell you what to think. The Occupy Wall Street movement spans the globe at this point…and you attempt to turn it into a Sopho’s funded mob gathering…it seems to me that you watch a little too much Limbaugh and O’Riely instead of putting a little leg work into where you get your news…Try to answer the question of why this movement is spreading across the globe instead of justifying its purpose by pointing out who owns the park that they are meeting at…in one city…pathetic.
BTW, you are aware that the Solyndra guaranteedd loan debacle was started during the Bush administration…right?
You know that the Bush team tried to conditionally approve the Solyndra loan just before President Obama took office?
You know that the loan comprises just 1.3% of DOE's overall loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that's known to be troubled.
Or didnt Glenn Beck tell you that?
Well ToddV there is no denying that there is justifiable unrest and dissatisfaction out there because a large element of hope has been pulled away from today’s middle class. However, I beleive it is misguided for the most part and belongs to be aimed directly at Washington and this regime’s policies.
As for the funding of this world wide mob, Soros can spread his money all around. He is very global. And BTW, my sources for news tend to be from various sources. The specifc item I referred was not a link to Fox or Limbaugh. Everything I’ve mentioned above can be found in the New York Times, the WSJ and other respected sources. Your laziness comes from pigeon-holing anyone who does not conform to your world view.
So you need to wake up Todd V and exercise a little intellectual curiosity and go a little deeper and ask a couple of questions. Don’t just swallow the Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz dribble hook, line and sinker.
“I beleive it is misguided for the most part and belongs to be aimed directly at Washington and this regime’s policies.”
I would remind you that the financial collapse that led to the present Great Recession occurred during a Republican “regime.”
But you’re right that populist anger needs to be directed at Washington as well as Wall Street, because Washington enabled the Wall Street scams that led to the current mess.
The Tea Partiers think it’s all the government’s fault. The Occupiers think it’s all Wall Street’s fault. When both of them figure out that the real problem is Wall Street’s control of and collusion with Washington, maybe they’ll join forces. And then look out.
While it’s been pretty well documented that the core of the problem rested in gov’t institutions mostly Fannie/Freddie; its corrupt protectors mainly Barney Frank and Chris Dodd; misguided legislation like the Community Redevelopment Act; and a FED that kept the cost of borrowing artificially low.
These are all gov’t sources. Did Wall St. have influence. I’m sure. But in the end the gov’t failed us. And you are very right that at some point, the Tea Party and the Occupiers will realize they have more in common than not.
Today’s paper had a picture of the Occupiers at the corner of Wall and Newport. Look at their signs. For the vast majority of those signs, if you did not know this was an Occupier event, you’d swear you were at Tea Party rally.