A few days ago, after I shared on Facebook a notice of an Occupy Denver event taking place this weekend, a close friend replied, "What are you promoting Dale? What's this movement about?"
Another friend liked my reply and suggested that I post it as a note. I decided to make it a blog post instead, so I could include some images and hyperlinks inline. Here it is.
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Well, that's a fair question. This is my understanding of it, which may not be expressed the way the people most involved would choose for themselves.
I think it is a more or less gut response to economic injustice. There have always been some people more wealthy than others, and as someone is supposed to have said, "Ye have the poor always with you." In the last thirty years, though, and particularly in the last ten or so, there has been a systematic, deliberate and massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.
The government, which in theory is supposed to represent the interests of all people, and particularly of the most powerless and therefore most vulnerable, has been little more the willing servant of the rich, bought out body and soul. Both parties have been more or less complicit in this.
The most culpable have been the financial sector,the big banks and Wall Street investors. They went on an unprecedented spree, gambling recklessly with other people's money to enrich themselves. When it all fell down around them, as it had to eventually, we the people bailed them out. Then they walked away with impunity, not one of them (except a few of the most egregious examples, like Bernie Madoff and Raj Rajaratnam) being indicted, much less jailed, for larceny on a scale that defies comprehension. Many of them even received and were allowed to keep bonuses for the success of their crimes!
All of this wouldn't sting so badly if there were an expectation of a better life for all and a chance of upward mobility for at least some of us. The widespread fear is that we are being locked permanently into a society with a tiny class of the super-rich, an ever growing underclass suffering in poverty, and a shrinking middle class with less and less hope for financial security. My parents and yours believed we would have a better life than they did. Hardly anyone believes today that their children will live even as well as we do, even in our straitened economy.
For better or worse, right or wrong, we Americans have always believed in our exceptionalism--that we were meant to be a "Shining City Upon a Hill." We thought we had a social compact that guaranteed we would be an example to the world of what it might be, free of an aristocratic ruling class securely ensconced in its privilege, a place where everyone had room in which to develop and express the best they had within themselves. That is what we are losing, and this may be the last chance to seize hold of that dream and resuscitate it before it slips away, irretrievable forever.
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