This is a repost from a while ago on Facebook, I've since read some things that lead me to believe a "unified message" isn't all that necessary, but here it is for discussion anyway.


What is up with Occupy Wall Street? Is it some crazy communist movement by well-off college kids who are naive and bored? Well, no. Protesters make up every race and age range, and the reasons they're out there are very, very simple.

1. People are losing their jobs and their homes faster than at any time since the Great Depression.

2. Young people are finding it harder and harder to find a job, and it doesn't look to get any easier in the future.

3. The people who crashed our economy in 2008 by knowingly trading in fraudulently rated mortgage-backed derivatives have never been brought to justice (and likely never will without some kind of major public outcry), and there is not enough oversight to ensure that it won't happen again.

4. The major media outlets, and in particular Fox News, have enabled and supported the conditions that led to this, and continue to do so.

I'm sick and tired of these ridiculously trite (and flawed) analogies that purport to explain Everything You Need To Know About These Stupid Liberal Protesters.


If we really want to change things, the change will be inevitable if we only have one simple, oft-repeated demand. Look at all the successful revolutions that have happened around the world this year. They all had one simple demand.

The origins of Occupy Wall Street explained - Occupy Wall Street - Salon.com


What should our one simple demand be?

Economic justice.

Does Economic Justice mean that everybody should make 200,000 a year no matter what they do or don't do? No, that's stupid. If you make millions producing a valuable product or selling a desirable service, you deserve your money. If you pay a fair tax rate that helps to provide for the common good, and you don't destroy the environment or compromise safety, that's economic justice.

But watching some of our kids at school devouring their lunches like starving dogs because they don't have any food at home while Wall St. fat-cats fly to Paris for lunch and convince the population that All Taxes Are Bad is not economic justice.

Tens of thousands of people losing their homes so a few people can make money hand over fist and pay a lower tax rate than the people who collect our garbage is not economic justice.

Tens of thousands of people losing their jobs because corporations make more money exploiting cheap foreign labor in dirty and dangerous conditions with absolutely no negative consequences to them is not economic justice.

Spending billions of dollars of our tax money to keep banks afloat that are Too Big to Fail while the CEO's of those banks who made the crappy investments see their bonuses increase even while the rest of our lives go down the toilet because of those crappy investments is not economic justice.

I may have a hard time describing it, but I know it when I see it. And I've seen less and less of it over the last couple of decades. I think it may be on the verge of extinction here in America.

Economic justice.
Economic justice.
Economic justice.

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Political Buddies

I can see what the movement stands for, but I don't really see it being able to actually DO anything. People want economic justice, but the system is NOT going to deliver. Only if the movement starts spitting out viable political candidates will there be a chance of the movement really changing anything.

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Political Buddies