What The Occupy Wall Street Folks Want
I keep hearing the "media" say the Occupy Wall Street Protesters don't have a defined agenda.
It's pretty simple what the protesters want. They want what Obama promised them in 2008. Change. Systemic change.
I didn't go to college. I didn't make it out of high school because I was a bit of a radical and poor. I watched my peers get higher education and become part of the system. Things like professors and engineers and later, programmers. Some of the best musicians I've ever played with are now retiring from their straight jobs. There was the "uncertainty" that we hear so much about these days, but it was in OUR business, which became their hobby. Easy choice for the white, middle class kids who had a foot up with parents that could afford a college education. Go to school. Party a lot. Study a little. Get a degree and get a day job. The rest of us, those without that "foot up" worked menial jobs and began the 20,000 hour process that you write about. (Is that the number?). Or they sold drugs to customers covered the spectrum from college kids, professionals and the working class and musicians. The musicians like me had an audience because at every level of the economic ladder, folks wanted music. Be it via radio, TV, concerts or live performances in your local bar. Everybody but the poorest had money to spend and they spent it.
Then came the backlash from Middle America for the perceived sins of the '60s & '70s. The drug use. Free sex. The Women's movement. The Anti-War movement. The Civil Rights movement. Any instrument of change meant to give poor or "colored" folks that "foot up" was the enemy of the State.. You know the story. You lived it.
Shit....even I sold out after my girlfriend got pregnant. I worked for the Reagan War Machine.
As we all fell in line, things changed. We had kids, made our daily bread. Got fat and complacent. Even conservative. Reagan declared War on the Middle Class when he fired the air traffic controllers. Democrats ran candidates like Clinton who moved to the right and began sending manufacturing jobs to Mexico via NAFTA. Welfare "reform". Cuts in education. More money went to "defense" and less to trying to help those on the bottom rungs. Taxes were cut and even less money was available for more people who needed help. Then there were the "bubbles". People losing jobs, investments, life savings. As the years progressed all of those things continued to happen, but on steroids.
The result being these kids, all over the country being told "get an education and get a good job and live the American Dream". Problem was all of what used to be "public" universities began charging higher tuition and fees and the kids and their parents have to borrow to get their "higher" education. They leave school with CRUSHING DEBT. After Bush was elected and he continued the "free trade" policies with tax incentives to those companies who ship jobs to China ( like APPLE) and anywhere else they had a supply of slave labor, our "educated" kids end up working as receptionists or servers or worse, unemployed. Better than the uneducated ones that end up looking for any job and only find the military, I reckon.
Come 2008 and the Lite Depression and at least the educated kids can begin to see the fucking they've endured. They also see this dude telling them "I am YOUR agent of change. I am smart and articulate. I had crushing debt, too and overcame it. I will change the system that favors the rich and privileged. I am different than those before me. I am black, too. I give you HOPE."
He gets elected against all odds. By 10 million votes. He will take power with a MANDATE from the American people and he squanders it by hiring those who caused the Depression. "Those who caused it, know how to fix it.", he said.
Three years later, Three years after the "savior" is given the power to make change, things are worse because the great economic minds that caused the Depression did, indeed, fix it. They FIXED IT IN PLACE. For the last FIVE or SIX years, kids with their EXPENSIVE educations can't find jobs. Corporations and Republican politicians are even claiming "We need to import EDUCATED workers to do the jobs that ARE left here, because america workers are well, STUPID". India has shitloads of smart folks itching to come here and make $15, $20 an hour or LESS. Wall Street, who own the politicians that push through the laws the lobbyists write are buying those politicians with the money the taxpayers provided via the bailout ! The Supreme Court then rules "Money equals Free Speech" and it's unfair to companies to have their free speech restrained because Corporations are People.
Those kids in that park in NYC ? They are people. Without money. Therefore, in America, without Free Speech. To communicate, since the LAW doesn't allow them a PA system or a bullhorn, they utilize what is now called "The People's Microphone". A speaker speaks and the crowd around him loudly repeats what he says. That says it all, doesn't it ? Those kids and their supporters in that Wall Street park want a VOICE in their country's future. They want a VOTE that means something. A vote that counts as much as the votes of the rich. They want Democracy where the majority RULES, not the vocal minority that's willing to scuttle the economy to get their tax cuts for their rich owners. They want a LEADER that does the bidding of the people and not the bidding of highest bidder. Hell...make that plural. LEADERS. In our day, as I remember, those leaders were, often, ARTISTS that gave voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless.
Those kids out there ? They want an America that they've only read about in books. We allowed it to be stolen by the moneychangers. Some of them in the music "business". But there's a chance those kids can get it back. They need our support. They need their generation's artists to give them their voice and if they can't provide it, then OUR generation's artists should STEP UP.
It's pretty simple what the protesters want. They want what Obama promised them in 2008. Change. Systemic change.
I didn't go to college. I didn't make it out of high school because I was a bit of a radical and poor. I watched my peers get higher education and become part of the system. Things like professors and engineers and later, programmers. Some of the best musicians I've ever played with are now retiring from their straight jobs. There was the "uncertainty" that we hear so much about these days, but it was in OUR business, which became their hobby. Easy choice for the white, middle class kids who had a foot up with parents that could afford a college education. Go to school. Party a lot. Study a little. Get a degree and get a day job. The rest of us, those without that "foot up" worked menial jobs and began the 20,000 hour process that you write about. (Is that the number?). Or they sold drugs to customers covered the spectrum from college kids, professionals and the working class and musicians. The musicians like me had an audience because at every level of the economic ladder, folks wanted music. Be it via radio, TV, concerts or live performances in your local bar. Everybody but the poorest had money to spend and they spent it.
Then came the backlash from Middle America for the perceived sins of the '60s & '70s. The drug use. Free sex. The Women's movement. The Anti-War movement. The Civil Rights movement. Any instrument of change meant to give poor or "colored" folks that "foot up" was the enemy of the State.. You know the story. You lived it.
Shit....even I sold out after my girlfriend got pregnant. I worked for the Reagan War Machine.
As we all fell in line, things changed. We had kids, made our daily bread. Got fat and complacent. Even conservative. Reagan declared War on the Middle Class when he fired the air traffic controllers. Democrats ran candidates like Clinton who moved to the right and began sending manufacturing jobs to Mexico via NAFTA. Welfare "reform". Cuts in education. More money went to "defense" and less to trying to help those on the bottom rungs. Taxes were cut and even less money was available for more people who needed help. Then there were the "bubbles". People losing jobs, investments, life savings. As the years progressed all of those things continued to happen, but on steroids.
The result being these kids, all over the country being told "get an education and get a good job and live the American Dream". Problem was all of what used to be "public" universities began charging higher tuition and fees and the kids and their parents have to borrow to get their "higher" education. They leave school with CRUSHING DEBT. After Bush was elected and he continued the "free trade" policies with tax incentives to those companies who ship jobs to China ( like APPLE) and anywhere else they had a supply of slave labor, our "educated" kids end up working as receptionists or servers or worse, unemployed. Better than the uneducated ones that end up looking for any job and only find the military, I reckon.
Come 2008 and the Lite Depression and at least the educated kids can begin to see the fucking they've endured. They also see this dude telling them "I am YOUR agent of change. I am smart and articulate. I had crushing debt, too and overcame it. I will change the system that favors the rich and privileged. I am different than those before me. I am black, too. I give you HOPE."
He gets elected against all odds. By 10 million votes. He will take power with a MANDATE from the American people and he squanders it by hiring those who caused the Depression. "Those who caused it, know how to fix it.", he said.
Three years later, Three years after the "savior" is given the power to make change, things are worse because the great economic minds that caused the Depression did, indeed, fix it. They FIXED IT IN PLACE. For the last FIVE or SIX years, kids with their EXPENSIVE educations can't find jobs. Corporations and Republican politicians are even claiming "We need to import EDUCATED workers to do the jobs that ARE left here, because america workers are well, STUPID". India has shitloads of smart folks itching to come here and make $15, $20 an hour or LESS. Wall Street, who own the politicians that push through the laws the lobbyists write are buying those politicians with the money the taxpayers provided via the bailout ! The Supreme Court then rules "Money equals Free Speech" and it's unfair to companies to have their free speech restrained because Corporations are People.
Those kids in that park in NYC ? They are people. Without money. Therefore, in America, without Free Speech. To communicate, since the LAW doesn't allow them a PA system or a bullhorn, they utilize what is now called "The People's Microphone". A speaker speaks and the crowd around him loudly repeats what he says. That says it all, doesn't it ? Those kids and their supporters in that Wall Street park want a VOICE in their country's future. They want a VOTE that means something. A vote that counts as much as the votes of the rich. They want Democracy where the majority RULES, not the vocal minority that's willing to scuttle the economy to get their tax cuts for their rich owners. They want a LEADER that does the bidding of the people and not the bidding of highest bidder. Hell...make that plural. LEADERS. In our day, as I remember, those leaders were, often, ARTISTS that gave voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless.
Those kids out there ? They want an America that they've only read about in books. We allowed it to be stolen by the moneychangers. Some of them in the music "business". But there's a chance those kids can get it back. They need our support. They need their generation's artists to give them their voice and if they can't provide it, then OUR generation's artists should STEP UP.
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