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OWS - The Message, The Response, THE Demand

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Message John Pagoda

The Occupy Movement has been in existence for two months and there are still those who subject it to ridicule and derision characterizing it as a bunch of hippies, anti-Semitic hippies at that, or druggies and slackers or worse, extolling those who participate to take a shower and get a job or rhetorically asking what kind of movement has no leader, no message and no demands.  

Wallowing in their own bigotry, hatred and ignorance those who oppose the occupy movement fail to understand that the very presence of the occupy movement was the message and the message was that our supply side trickle on economic system isn't working out for most of us and our political system is bought and paid for by those on Wall St. to keep it that way.

The mere existence of the occupy movement globally and here at home from coast to coast is the result of an economic system motivated by an insatiable greed placing profit above people, plundering the environment and spending/investing some of that profit on politicians to give legal approbation to the unfettered free market of capitalism which eventually created an unacceptable level of suffering   among an increasing number of people who are at best living from pay check to pay check and becoming more familiar with Dylan's voice singing "when you to nothin', you got nothin' to lose".

The occupy movement was/is takin' it to the streets sayin' this ain't right by peaceably assembling to object to the last 3 decades or economic injustice where worker productivity increased as did corporate profits yet during that same period of supply side economics worker's wages remained stagnant while CEO's salaries increased by 260 percent creating a income disparity the same as it was before the Great Depression begging the question: are we doomed to repeat the history we have forgotten?

Foreclosures are up.   Personal bankruptcies are up, delinquent payments as well.   Food, basic health care costs, housing, education, student loans are all ticking up at an alarming rate.   Jobs are down except for the ones shipped overseas so a company that doesn't pay taxes makes a bigger profit by buying the cheapest labor available. Poverty is on the way up in direct proportion to the decrease in regulations of this form of free market Capitalism.

All this economic injustice is permitted and perpetuated by corrupt politicians paid to maintain the status quo that favors the few who benefit the most from the imposed sacrifice on the rest of us through cuts in services and increases in taxes requiring "we the people" to participate in our own exploitation and oppression except for the wealthy job creators who add to their financial fortunes rather than creating any jobs at least here at home and a dysfunctional government which is bought and paid for by the wealthy to legislate and protect a economic system by obstructing or watering down any legislation that benefits the common good of "we the people".

Indeed the corporate controlled mainstream media largely ignored the occupy movement but thanks to the oppressive response by The State the Occupy Movement has become a manifestation of that revolution which began over 235 years ago when freedom loving people declared their independence from the same despotism that is now embodied in the absolute tyranny of the corporate state.

The recent violent and unprovoked attacks by paramilitary gangs in blue against those who dared exercise their first amendment rights to peaceably assemble and speak truth to power from Oakland to New York City and Portland, Denver, St. Louis and other cities as well which occurred last week is in reality nothing more and nothing less than the transparent display of a police state committing acts of terrorism to impose a failed economic agenda and a despotic political ideology on "we the people".

As a nation we can no longer pretend to be the land of the free   when citizens try to exercise their constitutional freedoms in city parks from coast to coast and the government to which we gave our consent resorts to the tactics of a terrorist state to intimidate and crush a perception that challenges the status quo.

Where are the employees of the public sector those members of the police who are paid with our tax dollars to protect and serve us especially against those who come at us with pepper spray and batons drawn?

Where are the people who wanted to take their country back since President Obama was inaugurated when police across the country followed unconstitutional orders from "big government" of The State cracked down on the occupy movement nationwide and violated the Constitution of these United States?

Why such silence from those wrapped in the red, white and blue of the political right when the same Constitution they read the second day of controlling the people's House was being so openly violated?   This is the same crowd that spews such narcissistic nonsense about "American Exceptionalism" but when these cowards didn't have the courage to stand up for those individual rights which were secured by the ultimate sacrifice of a numberless number of men and woman they could no longer conceal the reality of sheer, shameless, utter and rank hypocrisy of their phony patriotism.

When the survival of our present economic system which is based on that love of money that is the root of all things evil requires that individual civil liberties be violated by any means necessary by a government for sale at all branches while the good Germans cheer repression and the sheep look the other way there leaves little doubt that the use of violence by The State has or should have removed any pretense that we live in a democracy with liberty and justice for all or a nation of laws and not men.

These are indeed the times that try men's souls and we're in a place where the center can no longer hold because the message of the occupy movement about economic injustice and the unprovoked use of force in response by The State now demands we choose between the unfettered, unregulated free market capitalism and the corrupt and   dysfunctional   government corrupted which is rigged to protect it through repression or an economic system which at the very least insures basic health care, an equal opportunity for an education, affordable housing, and a living wage for all citizens secured by a political system based on liberty and justice for all with the freedom to function in the best interest of the common good.      

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Frederick Douglass

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"tomorrow is guaranteed to no one" compells this fellow traveler to describe the way of life that requires a new way of living where something is left behind which decreases the suffering of all forms of life that follow.
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