Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street movement is being criticized for being leaderless and lacking organization. Well, I think that just about sums it up. The way I see it the people have lost confidence in their government to do anything to prevent antisocial behaviour that is occurring on Wall Street and various other financial entities around the world. In other words, the people feel like their leaders have abandoned them; so yes leaderless.  This does not render it an unworthy movement.

I saw a great photo of a mother with her child at the occupy Wall Street rally. She was holding her baby and a sign that said something like: I am not a hippie, I am not an anarchist, I am not a mob, I am not a left-wing nut job, I am just a mother that wants a better life for her child. This summed up the leaders of this movement. I do not believe that the protesters want a leader per se. I think that this is a beautiful expression of "look here is where all the anti-social behaviour is – let’s draw some attention to it and stop it." It is a very gentle form of vigilantism if you will. Peaceful protest. If no action is taken to stop the anti-social behaviour then the next stop will be something like Greece style protest, then onto North Africa style protests. I don’t think anybody wants that, so let’s listen to each other and speak about the problem and implement a solution.

What is the problem? Fundamentally, I believe that the root of the problem is the present trend in politics to provide large amounts of money to financial institutions and corporate entities and then saddle the people with the repayment of the debts. People want to be free to eat, drink and generally live. With continual debt being mounted on them and the government purportedly representing them being the entity piling it up on them, they are worried that they are being enslaved and will no longer be free to eat, drink and generally live. How much this feeling is justified or will grow will depend on whether or not the system continues to pile debts on the people. People generally want to contribute to society. We might all have a different view as to how to best do this, but if you force people into doing it one way, you are likely to get discontent. The larger the number of discontented people there are, the larger the ferocity of the protests will be.

In North Africa, the freedom and wealth of the people was dramatically lower and the protests were more violent. Similarly, in Greece, the protests are more violent then in America, but less than in North Africa and the Middle East. On some level I think this is reflective of how good America and Europe has had it over the last many decades. I think we in the West have been spoiled somewhat and need to realize (and I think many people do realize already) that our standard of living will likely need to suffer somewhat in order to redress a global balance of wealth. Having said that, they way to do this is not to bring the wealth of the masses globally (aka the 99%) to the value of the poorest people and have a very small minority (aka the 1%) live off the backs of the 99%. The internet has done much to educate the 99% about the disparity of wealth in the world. This is a good thing.

With the American masses mobilizing, as it were, I think that the financial establishment should take heed. This is perhaps the last gentle finger pointing. After the banking fiasco of 2008 people wanted some proverbial heads on sticks – this didn’t happen. I do not believe that the 99% will allow this to happen again. I see these protests as a challenge to government and in particular to Barak Obama to step up to the plate and take action! So what are you waiting for Barak? Where is that change you promised? This is your moment, or have they corrupted you too? These are some of the questions I think the people are genuinely asking of their government. So to paraphrase JFK – ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what is your country doing for you? The people asked for change, change that was promised (albeit amorphously) by Barak Obama and now they are waiting for delivery of that change. In the absence of delivey, we will take action all by ourselves.

I fully support the Occupy Wall Street movement in this way and I believe it is a great expression and example of anarchy in action. It is also potentially a sort of prelude to the sort of anarchy which many people associate with anarchy – the violent sort. I hope the violence can be averted, but it will take courage and strength from some very brave politicians to avert the violence. It will also take courage and faith from the people who will have to rally around any brave politicians in order to ensure that the corporate propaganda machine that is seemingly controlling things does not succeed in their plan to scuttlebutt any opposition to their greedy pursuit of power. I will proudly, actively and vocally support any action that seeks to end the debt trap game and give power back to the people.