The Protests Are Real

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who say they represent ninety-nine percent of the population are mainly young, middle class, and white. Many of them are deeply in debt because of the student loans they took out in order to get the education they needed to start their chosen careers. Now they cannot find jobs that will pay them much more than the minimum wage. They feel betrayed and rightly so. The great disparity in wealth between the top one percent and the rest of us is not lost on those young people. The only thing the people the Republicans called “job producers” seem to be producing is a great increase in their personal wealth. No ideological group or political party had to tell the demonstrators to object to the greed that is enriching the rich at the expense of the rest of us. The facts are self evident, and the demonstrators are reacting to those facts. They are not being transported to the locations of the demonstrations in buses provided by the Koch brothers; nor are they carrying signs with slogans provided to them by some political stink tank. The demonstrations are a genuine expression of the pain the majority of the people of this nation are feeling. Racial and ethnic minorities are suffering the most from the outrageous inequities in wealth. I fully expect those minorities to join the demonstrations soon. What we are seeing here is the beginning of a social and political movement.

The Washington Times has printed a list of demands from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Actually it is two lists. There was the original post and then an update that added to those demands. The additional demands are reasonable, and I agree with most of them. I was amused by a comment from one reader that called the first demands a fine example of communistic proposals. I agree that some of the demands are not practical, but this does not mean that we can or should dismiss the entire list. For instance, I do not think we can do away with free trade, but we do have to modify the all or nothing globalization or we will be left with nothing. Caterpillar and Whirlpool are just the latest examples of companies who have exported factories and jobs. I also agree that we need a single payer health care system. I do not think we can get a stimulus package that is as large as the one the demonstrators are proposing, but I do not think the American Jobs Act will be final solution either. I might add here that even the demands that appear to be too radical might be desirable if modified or scaled back a bit. The main thing is that all of the demands are addressing real problems that need to be addressed.

What we must bear in mind is that all real grass roots movements will over-reach at times. The opponents of those movements will always use what could be called the radical demands of the demonstrators to try to discredit the entire movement. There is a real danger in doing this because it escalates the attacks coming from both sides. The greater the opposition to needed reforms and the longer it takes to implement those reforms the greater the suffering will be. This has a strong tendency to radicalize the movement. The sooner we bring about meaningful reforms the better. There is absolutely no doubt that we cannot keep going the way we are going now! The key here is to prioritize and get the reforms started. If there is not an escalating improvement in our current situation there will be an escalating reaction to the injustices we perceive. That is not a threat it is merely an observation based on historical facts.

Please see my previous posts “In the Streets” and “Political ADD.”