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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 11/23/11

Occupy Wall Street Protestors Blow Whistle on US Greed

By Donald R. Soeken and Tom Nugent  Posted by James Murtagh (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 3 pages)   2 comments

- "Stop the Greed and Start Meeting Human Needs!"----

 Protesters At Occupy Wall Street Are Blowing Whistle On Decades of Corporate Greed and Corruption in U.S.

By Donald R. Soeken and Tom Nugent  

New York City -- If you want to understand how thousands of ordinary Americans have recently been transformed into corporate "whistleblowers," just spend a few days hanging out with the demonstrators who've gathered here for the social protest known as "Occupy Wall Street".

The dramatic signs of their spontaneous whistle-blowing are everywhere.

PEOPLE ARE WHAT MATTER -- NOT PROFITS!

WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT!

STOP CORPORATE GREED AND START RESPECTING HUMAN NEEDS!

As you wander among the pounding drummers and the leaping dancers at Lower Manhattan's now-famous Zuccotti Park, it's easy to see how an astonishing new "social awakening" is beginning to transform the American landscape.

Like the "Arab Spring" of 2011, in which one Middle Eastern dictatorship after another (think Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and maybe Syria) sank beneath the waves of surging popular dissent, the "American Fall" of rapidly accelerating social awareness now promises to make whistleblowers out of ordinary citizens from Maine to California . . . with earthquake-like consequences that cannot as yet be predicted.

            Something new is happening in American, and it's happening right now.

            "Something's coming, mister," says Paul Armstrong, a 48-year-old, Los Angeles-based ironworker in a hard hat, as he waves his sign (" I am a union ironworker, I vote, I work, I pay taxes, I'm pissed, so I'm here!" at the swarming TV cameras.   "The working people of this country aren't stupid.   They see how things have been going lately, and they're starting to wake up.   They see the widespread unemployment, and they see how people are being forced below the poverty line every single day.

            "They're demanding jobs and decent wages, that's certainly true.   But they're also demanding respect.   They're letting everybody know that the old days of being "talked down to' by bosses at the top of some distant pecking order are over.   Those days are gone for good!

             "What we're now seeing here in New York is the same spirit that was at work in Cairo during the Arab Spring.   We're seeing an outcry from workers who want to be treated with dignity, and who want to be able to make decent wages on the job.   If you talk with the working people at this Occupation, you soon start to realize: there's a big change moving on the wind.   I speak only for myself here -- not for the ironworkers' union or anybody else -- but I sincerely believe that we have to change the way working people are being treated in this country, and soon."

 

                                    Still Looking -- And Hoping -- For Justice

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James J. Murtagh, Jr. is a doctor of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine, and the Medical Director of several sleep laboratories in Southern Ohio. Dr. Murtagh extensively writes on medical ethics. Dr. Murtagh is the founder of a new (more...)
 
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