OWS Gains Momentum

The Occupy Wall Street Movement really seems to be gathering momentum now. Breaking up encampments in New York, Oakland, Portland and Fresno appears to have had the unintended effect of dispersing and multiplying new demonstrations rather than stopping them. Though the encampments, marches and demonstrations continue to remain remarkably peaceful, authorities appear to be getting more and more worried and eager to quash the movement.  Remarkably, there have been 4,400 arrests as of Thursday, November 17 nationally against Occupy Movement protesters.  That is already 400 more than were arrested by the government of Iran during the protests against the fraudulent elections there in 2009!

Last Friday's outrageous pepper spraying of peacefully demonstrating students at the University of California at Davis was the latest impingement on the First Amendment rights of citizens to peaceably assemble and exercise freedom of speech.  To read about the incident and watch a video of it, click here. 

The movement is gaining strength because its message resonates.   First, Wall Street brokers and investment banks got bailed out when their casino securitization schemes came crashing down.  With this in hand they turned around and showered themselves with billions of dollars in bonuses.  Then, instead of turning to job creation, Congress concentrated on debt reduction, even bringing the U.S. to the brink of fiscal default.  Instead of offering real help to homeowners in danger of foreclosure, the Bush tax breaks of the wealthiest 1% were protected.  Across the country, instead of asking the haves to contribute to society at the levels they used to, students have been socked with an 81% increase in tuition in recent years, with the prospect of 16% a year more for the next four years.

The pattern is clear.  The wealthy pay a 15% tax rate on capital gains while wage and salaried labor pays 25 to 35%.  Corporations are allowed to park income in the Cayman Islands to hide it from accountability.  Oil companies, big agribusinesses and corporate jet owners receive subsidies while regular folks are told to expect their Social Security and Medicare to be cut and their children's class sizes to go up. Big interests with their campaign cash and their 17,000 Washington lobbyists have gamed the system to help the rich get richer while gutting everything that helps sustain the middle class.  Fantastically, now it is the middle class's money which is going to support plutocrats.

The Occupy message in response to is equally clear: this class warfare of the top against everyone else is destroying opportunity in the country and must be reversed.  By uniting the vast majority to vote their interests they challenge the comfy arrangements that have grown up over time and threaten to restore some of the social mobility and the safety net that has been so shredded since the inception of the failed trickle-down ideology in the 1980s.