As I was watching the various videos that were being posted of the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park I wondered why it was so hard for the media and other observers to see what this movement was all about. The Republicans and the Republican news channel FOX came out against OWS because it was saying bad things about their best friends with the large wallets. The Democrats have been largely neutral because they did not want to hook their star to a movement that could go either way for them. Other than FOX the Republican mouthpiece most of the major media outlets ignored the story for a long time for reasons that I don’t quite understand. We were endlessly hearing about Lindsey Lohan’s problems and her repeated court appearances in detail as we heard about Paris Hilton before that and yet they were slow on the uptake to cover a major expression of disatisfaction with the way the political and corporate systems seemed to have merged into a single conglomerate.
The message of OWS and the other movements around the country that sprang up in support of the original one on Wall Street is actually quite simple if you look at what has become of this country in the last 15 years or so. It is the voice of the average American saying that we are tired of financing all the big banks, the big corporations, the endless wars that the Republicans have dragged us into and we are tired of our politicians listening more to the money that pours into their campaigns by special interest groups than they listen to us. Is that so hard to get? It must be because all I seem to read about in the media is “Who are these protesters and what do they want?”. They ask these questions like they haven’t a clue as to what the catalyst is for all of the unrest and the protests. People are tired of always being at the bottom of the priority lists for just about everyone. Politicians only hear money. I have watched constituents thrown out of public meetings with their representatives because they dared to question the course that their representative was taking. Corporations look to their bottom lines before anything else. I’m not saying that profit isn’t necessary but I do question just how much profit is needed to move the company forward and how much of the profit is to line the pockets of CEO’s and investors. The people who make this possible are the front line people who handle the day in and day out business of making the company run but when bonuses are threatened they are the first people to be laid off and let go. There was a time when companies used to care for their employees which created loyal employees who went above and beyond their job descriptions to help the company because they knew the company had their backs. Now employees have to look out for themselves and the only thing the company is watching your back for is to find the most opportune moment to plunge the knife in without causing too much disruption to the productivity of the division you work for.
Banks that we bailed out are forclosing on our houses. Execs that are laying off front line workers are still getting their bonuses just like their companies were doing great. Politicians still get paid even though they haven’t been able to accomplish anything in the last couple of years. We pay for our representatives to have better healthcare than any of us get but they want to fight against any kind of universal healthcare bills so that all of us get the care we need. Unemployment is at 9% and yet we can’t get the politicians to work together long enough to come up with any way to put this country back to work. And churches that should be looking out for everyone are too concerned with fighting same sex marriage or abortion to really care much about the children who are actually born or the mothers who no longer afford to put food on the table. All I can say is WTF happened to the world we used to know?
So as all the talking heads on the large media networks continue to either attack the OWS movement or look stupidly at the camera and say they don’t know what it is all about I will just shake my head at their ignorance. There is a line from the movie Dune that really covers what is happening quite well. The sleeper must awaken. And politicians and corporations should be aware that when the sleeper does awaken there will be consequences for those who have been taking advantage of the people with impunity. The sleeper will be a political force to reckon with and an economic force as well. Bank of America got a taste of that with the $5 debit fee that they added and then took off under pressure. People won’t take being screwed forever without fighting back. And that’s what OWS is all about.
