as he writes in his column titled The Occupy protests: A timely call for justice. He gives lots of reasons, beginning like this:
Occupy Wall Street and its kindred protests around the country are inept, incoherent and hopelessly quixotic. God, I love ’em.
After noting the refusal to make specific demands, and criticizing Eric Cantor as a hypocrite for his attacks on Occupy Wall Stree while having praised the Tea Partiers, he notes his belief that the protests are occurring at just the right time aimed at precisely the rught target, and may be the start of something "big and important,' and then he offers this paragraph:
“Economic justice” may mean different things to different people, but it’s not an empty phrase. It captures the sense that somehow, when we weren’t looking, the concept of fairness was deleted from our economic system — and our political lexicon. Economic injustice became the norm.
Robinson provides a brief explanation for how we have arrived at where we now find ourselves, technology and globalization, and a set of policies that rather than ameliorate the worst effects thereof accentuate them. And then:
The result is clear: a nation where the rich have become the mega-rich while the middle class has steadily lost ground, where unemployment is stuck at levels once considered unbearable, and where our political system is too dysfunctional to take the kind of bold action that would make a real difference. Eventually, the economy will limp out of this slump, and things will seem better. Fundamentally, however, nothing will have changed.
He acknowledges that this may be broad and unfocused but (a) it is also true, and (b) the Occupiers have grasped this and understood that therefore the protests should begin at the financial center, hence Wall Street.
Robinson notes the expansion across the country, although that expansion is now far broader than the two dozen other cities he acknowledges. Then come what I think are the most important two brief paragraphs of the piece:
Already, after less than a month, commentators are asking whether the Occupy protests can be transformed into a coherent political force. For now, at least, I hope not.
We have no shortage of politicians in this country. What we need is more passion and energy in the service of justice. We need to be forced to answer questions that sound simplistic or naive — questions about ethics and values. Detailed policy positions can wait.
questions about ethics and values such questions should logically lead to examinations of things like our current tax and regulatory structures. Of course that will scare the shit of out the 1%, and it should.
One can make an argument that those with access to wealth and power should NEVER be allowed to define their own ethics lest they justify their ability to crush the rest of us. Unfortunately, that is what has been happening.
In that regard, might I also suggest you read my good friend Dave Johnson's piece at Alternet, 5 Conservative Economic Myths Occupy Wall St. Is Helping Bust, in which the five myths are
1. Business does everything better than government.
2. Rich people are “job creators.”
3. Government and taxes take money out of the economy.
4. Regulations Kill Jobs.
5. “Protectionism” hurts the economy.
Perhaps you will not agree with Johnson on every point, but reading his piece will deepen your understanding of why these protests are critical to the future of this country.
So many important voices are beginning to recognize the significance of these apparently disorganized protests around the country. When the nation's newspaper of record devotes a key editorial to supporting the protests, perhaps the issues that led to them are beginning to be seriously considered.
Eventually the occupations may well fade away. We know that every time force has been (mis)applied against them they have grown. Perhaps that is why that even as police in Boston forceably removed those on the Rose Kennedy Greenway they made clear that they would not attempt to remove the original gathering on Dewey Square, and why Mayor Bloomberg now seems willing to let the gathering near Wall Street continue, at least for now. Robinson thinks even when they do disappear,those that think they therefore will be proven wrong. He concludes his column with this sentence:
I think the seed of progressive activism in the Occupy protests may grow into something very big indeed.
For the future of all of us, for the future of this nation, and especially for the future of the young people I teach everyday, I hope Robinson is right.
Peace?