-----Original Message----- From: Portside Moderator [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 5:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Something Big Is Happening: Occupy Together; Why the 99 Percent is Crying Out
Something Big Is Happening: Occupy Together; Why the 99 Percent is Crying Out * Something Big Is Happening: Occupy Together (Jim Hightower in Nation of Change News) * Why the 99 Percent is Crying Out (Bryce Covert in New Deal 2.0) ========== Something Big Is Happening: Occupy Together by Jim Hightower Nation of Change News October 4, 2011 http://www.nationofchange.org/something-big-happening-occupy-together-131778 8275 To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan's songs of youthful protest, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?" A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who've been covering the fledgling "Occupy Wall Street " movement - but completely missing the story. Instead of really digging into what's "happening here," they've resorted to fuddy-duddy mockery of an important populist protest that has sprouted right in Wall Street's own neighborhood. In a September article, Bellafante dismissed the young people's effort as "fractured and airy," calling it a "carnival" in an "intellectual vacuum." Their cause is so "diffuse and leaderless," she wrote, that its purpose is "virtually impossible to decipher." No wonder, she concluded, that participation in the movement is "dwindling." Whew - so snide! Yet, so wrong. While the establishment is befuddled by the plethora of issues and slogans within the protest, confused by the absence of hierarchical order and put off by its festive spirit, that's their problem. The 20- and 30-somethings who are driving this movement know what they're doing and are far more organized (but much differently organized) than their snarky critics seem able to comprehend. It's silly to say that the protestors' purpose is indecipherable. Hello - they're encamped next door to Wall Street. Isn't that a clue? Their cause is the same as the one boiling in the guts of America's workaday majority: Stop the gross greed of financial and corporate elites, and expel a political class that's so corrupted by the money of those wealthy elites that it has turned its back on the middle class and the poor. Such movements don't begin with a neat set of solutions pre- packaged for The New York Times, but with roiling outrage focused directly on the plutocratic perpetrators of an unjust economy and an unresponsive politics. The movement will find agreement in due time on specific ideas for stopping the injustice, but now is the time for the passion and creative, nonviolent confrontation that will energize others to stop moaning and join the rebellion. Millions of people are mad as hell and yearning for some leadership to battle the bastards. They're experiencing the truth of the old Ray Charles song: "Them that's got is them that gets, and I ain' got nothin' yet." A majority of folks now see that "them that's got" are not only getting theirs, but also getting ours. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess more net worth today than the bottom 90 percent of us combined. Worse, these privileged few and their political henchmen have structured a new economic "normal" of long-term joblessness, low wages, no benefits or worker rights, miserly public services, and a steadily widening chasm between the rich and the rest of us. This is the alienating reality that "Occupy Wall Street" has arisen to confront. This burgeoning movement began in September, when fewer than a dozen college students pitched camp in Liberty Square, located in the heart of New York's financial district, and began daily peaceful marches down Wall Street. This is not your grandfather's tightly organized protest. In fact, it's intentionally loose - there is no "leader" or leadership council. Instead, group decisions are reached through a consensus-based democratic process. With no faith in traditional politics or conventional media, the mostly young protestors have taken to the streets to make their points, using their well-honed "culture of the web" to organize, strategize, harmonize and mobilize. Their Liberty Square encampment might look chaotic at first, but look again. It includes a medial clinic, media center, cafeteria and library. Food? Their widely viewed website lets anyone in the world go online and have pizzas delivered to them from a local shop. They even produce their own newspaper, appropriately named the Occupied Wall Street Journal. Far from "dwindling" in numbers, the New York protest continues to grow. Moreover, the movement has now spread to more than 50 cities, from major hubs like Chicago to such smaller places as McAllen, Texas. All across the U.S.A., "something is happening here" - something that might be big. Link into it at www.OccupyTogether.com. [About Jim Hightower - National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.] ========== Why the 99 Percent is Crying Out Occupy Wall Street is right to be angry. Americans are falling farther and farther behind. by Bryce Covert New Deal 2.0 A project of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute October 5, 2011 http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/10/05/why-the-99-percent-is-crying-out-60916/ The biggest controversy over Occupy Wall Street is about what they stand for. Are they a bunch of dirty hippies with no agenda? Do they really think they can change the entire system? Why wont they just put out a concrete list of demands and policy prescriptions? While signs at the protests have many, many messages - from BP to Iran to capital punishment - the affiliated Tumblr, We Are the 99 Percent, exposes what's motivating people to get on the streets. With over 700 submissions at this point, Americans from all over have been writing down personal stories to explain their frustrations. While those protesting on Wall Street have grievances that are far ranging, those on the Tumblr are almost all sparked by a combination of a few common things: joblessness, debt, and low wages. They are the stories of those who can't make ends meet. These days, that covers a lot of us. Here's a sampling just from the most recent page (my bold): My mother (leader in her field of pathology, MA) is upside-down on her house. My father (multiple PhD's) lives in his car so that he can do what he loves for a living rather than be a slave to the system. I am 45 years old. I was laid off twice in 18 months... I am "unemployable" because of layoffs. I have not worked since November 2008. I am 27 years old with $100,000 in debt. I was laid off in 2009 and have been struggling ever since then. I have not made more than $10,000 a year since then. My husband and I have $80k in student loan debt. I am in the process of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a hard enough thing in and of itself. I also have over $30,000 in medical debt because of that... We own cheap cars, live frugally, have a roommate to help, and try hard to keep up... I work when I'm not too sick, and he works full time.We have a combined annual income of less than $40k annually. I have an MS from a top state university- & $135k in student loans (& growing). I've lost 2 jobs in 3 months. Lost my job in 2006. Sold my home and moved in with my 87-year-old mother.... Cancer survivor. Need medical care. can't afford health insurance... TOO YOUNG TO RETIRE. Watching my retirement funds and savings shrink. As a newer, less established member of the faculty I was out of work when my college cut classes. Over a year later and I still can't find work... Because of deferments my $41,000 loan has become $62,000. Adjusted for inflation, a smaller American reality than that of my dad -- a civil servant who dropped out of college... My son is learning to speak Mandarin. I am 29 years old. I have a Master's degree. I am $120,000+ in student loan/medical debt. In the past 18 months I: was diagnosed with cancer, lost 2 jobs, worked 70 hours/wk and unable to keep up. I get more calls from creditors than I do friends... I have $4 in my bank account and no job. And I find this one perhaps the most emblematic of the average American's experience: We live within our means, we own our cars, yet cannot accumulate much savings. We live responsibly, and consider ourselves "citizens" and not "consumers." We find it troubling that living simply can still accrue so much debt... We are one emergency away from financial ruin. "Living simply can still accrue so much debt." That's been the American experience for years now. As Ezra Klein put it, the Tumblr is full of "small stories of people who played by the rules, did what they were told, and now have nothing to show for it." For those who are lucky enough to work, the money we take home has been either stagnating or decreasing, and it's getting worse in the aftermath of the recession. As reported by Bloomberg: Take-home pay, adjusted for prices, fell 0.3 percent in August, the third decrease in five months, and personal income dropped for the first time in two years, the Commerce Department reported last week. The declines followed news from the Census Bureau that median household income in 2010 fell to $49,445, the lowest in more than a decade, and the poverty rate jumped to 15.1 percent, a 17-year high. That figure, $49,445, isn't going to cut it. A recent report showed that a household with two working parents and two young children needs to earn $67,920 to meet basic needs without relying on public support. It only drops to $57,756 for a single parent with two young kids. Not to mention that rent, food, and health costs are rising. On top of this, 14 million Americans don't even have jobs. When we don't bring in enough money to pay for the basics, the next place we have to turn is debt. Our total revolving debt comes to $796.1 billion, with the average household carrying $14,743 in credit card debt. Household debt is currently 90 percent of GDP, up from 70 ten years ago. It's no wonder, then, that despite making some headway in paying down our debt loads, consumers are still struggling to do so. And student debt is a whole other story. The total is on track to reach $1 trillion this year, more than our combined credit card debt. Alongside this surge is a rise in delinquencies post-recession. This is partly fueled by the government, schools, and hard-pressed parents pulling back on support. It is also certainly fueled by the dismal job market and graduates' unemployment rate - which will have ramifications for their earning capacity for years to come. I'm not surprised that people are at their wit's end over personal finances. I'm not surprised that they're blaming the banks that make money from keeping us in debt. I'm just surprised it took this long for the anger to find its voice. [Bryce Covert is Assistant Editor at New Deal 2.0. Previously, she was a financial reporter with the online news wire mergermarket, where she was head of the energy sector. She has written on all sectors of the energy industry, as well as clean energy policy, feminism, politics, and other issues. ] ========== ___________________________________________ Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. 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