Palindrome Of Year 2011: Dammit I’m Mad
By MICHAEL SCHENKLER
“Grandma” is leaving for Florida this week.
We had a great dinner yesterday and then saw Spiderman.
Last week, Allison sang to her 3rd grade class and continues to get more and more into teaching.
Today, Lee and Anna celebrate her 28th birthday at the theater (Happy Birthday Anna).
Work continues, dining continues and play continues.
Life continues.
Occupy Wall St. also continues.
Although our lives go on, we are still connected to the quiet rumbling protest which is spreading from Zuccotti Park in Manhattan to the major metropolitan centers across the globe.
Embrace it. It speaks for all of us.
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We, the 99%, have too little control over our own financial destiny. The big moneyed interests and the government whose financial policy they control have with selective regulation and deregulation, oversight (supervision), and oversight (omission), prosecution and persecution, bail-outs and sell-outs, managed to construct an economic system where the rich get richer and the rest of us don’t.
The catchy name in the 99% movement refers to all of us who are not part of the moneyed class. Yes, it’s a big and diverse tent. And if the 1% can play on the differences, unity will be impossible. If the radical fringe captures the media’s message, they too will divide and defeat the movement.
But under the big tent, there is true discontent: dissatisfaction with a government that continues to fail us, with a system which doesn’t serve us and an economy which is slowly choking us with no remedy in sight.
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My request to you is to give them a chance. Heed the message of the movement. Find their positives; accept the reality that protests also attract negatives. But embrace the cause. Defend it to your neighbors. Shout it to the elected, and please spread the word.
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Me, I’ve been part of the system for years. I’ve witnessed justice and injustice. I’ve gone along and I’ve also protested.
But my friends, when I hear the right wing bullshit about how a millionaire’s tax will cost us jobs or cries from the rich that we want what is theirs, I get angry.
You’re damn straight, the rich better start paying their fair share. The government better fund more jobs, and regulate the financial shenanigans of Wall St. and a banking industry run amok. They better find a way to decrease the influence of money in national elections; they better disclose every cent of money received by public servants and every cent spent. They better tie loans and bailouts to money which must trickle down (thank you Ronald Reagan) to the working class. If a bank gets public money, their bonuses are capped and their loan and mortgage pool monitored; failure to fund the nation’s needs would cause default on the federal loan.
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| The “Occupy Wall St” movement even has a newspaper. |
But my friends, we were not and are not making the rules. It has been a government corrupted by big moneyed interests that has had the task of guiding our economy and regulating the financial industry.
And all we can do is determine which electeds are committed to reforming the system, leveling the playing field and making the rich pay their fair share.
We can join “Occupy Wall St.” and “Occupy Together” on Facebook, share the messages of the occupy movement and share our own feelings. We can speak out. We can write columns. We can speak to friends and neighbors. We can spread the word.
And as we cheer on the “Occupy” movement, we can also open our windows and shout: “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
Follow me on Twitter @MSchenkler
MSchenkler@QueensTribune.com
