The children of the 1980s business-school yuppies who cared about little but making money and voted for Republicans because they erroneously thought they were ‘good for business’ and would lower taxes on the middle-class, are now in their 20s and 30s and have awakened to who the real enemies of the middle-class are — and it isn’t liberals or progressives as they’ve been told by thirty years of right-wing propaganda. In fact, it’s the misnamed ‘conservative’ Republican Party, the Blue Dog Democrats, and the wealthy top one-percent they dutifully serve at the expense of the rest of the us. Mainstream pundits have been asking ‘Where is the outrage’ and, when the outrage came to Wall Street and other cities around the country, they tried to ignore it, but it’s now grown too big for them to ignore. It’s similar to the non-violent protests of the ’60s that ended the draft and the Vietnam War, and ushered in women’s rights and civil rights for minorities, but it has some new twists today as the forces against them are openly stealing, the economy is in the gutter, our political structure is riddled with bribery, and even their yuppie parents are now hurting as their pensions and retirement packages have either lost value or were eliminated and their good-paying jobs are being systematically decimated. This Wall Street movement is rapidly spreading to Main Street America and I think will become a political force stronger than any other by the time of the 2012 elections. I couldn’t be more proud of these altruistic young adults (and the union folks and some gray beards) who have sacrificed their time and bodies to bring the fight to the valley of the arrogant Too Big To Fail to establish a better future for us all and a return to representative democracy in this country. As Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The protestors are currently right on the line between ‘ridicule’ and ‘fight you’ but they are quickly moving into the final category of victory as history, reality and common sense are working in their favor. I hope they will one day be honored as heroes who marched to bring light into an era when darkness reigned on a mountain of stolen loot — maybe with a commemorative statue at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway itself. 😉 BTW, donate any spare change to OccupyWallSt.org to help the protests continue.
