They don't get it.
I am still struggling to survive. I have no health insurance. I would love to be able to buy quality health insurance that does not fleece me for a profit. Having no health insurance makes it statistically more likely that I will die, because I do not have access to the vital preventative medicine that is a basic human right, and I do not want a hand out, I will gladly pay for this health care myself, but I don't want your corrupt insurance cartel, I want a single payer system of health care that doesn't funnel my hard earned money into a CEO's salary or a corporate dividend. When it comes to my life I am still struggling because my life is being put at risk in this unjust and corrupt economic system of political bribery, because corrupt politicians in BOTH parties have been bribed by the health insurance industry to make sure that the health insurance industry maintains their monopoly so that only expensive junk insurance is what is available, junk insurance that will still bankrupt you and provide you with substandard care, and the health insurers do not care because they are the only game in town and they know it, so you peasants can piss off. This story is the same in almost every industry, whether it is the Too Big To Fail banks or the military contractors or the corrupt corporate media, right down the line we know that the game is rigged in the favor of huge corporations and the politicians they bribe, and we are still struggling and they don't give a shit.
We are still struggling to survive. Too many of us. It is unjust, that in this great nation of wealth so many have so little while so few have so much.
We The People are literally struggling to survive, hammered on all fronts by Corporate Interests and corrupted political power.
What do I stand to gain when environmental regulations are repealed and my water gets dirtier? I require clean water.
What do I stand to gain when corporate tax rates are lowered and more of the tax burden is thrust into my lap? I am a human being goddamnnit, my life has value! I am NOT a corporation.
What do I stand to gain when we cut funding for education? I require education.
What do I stand to gain from tax cuts for the rich? I am not rich.
What do I stand to gain when health insurance companies make my health care so expensive I will surely go bankrupt or die prematurely because of the inaccessibility of that care? I am a human being goddamnnit, my life has value! I am NOT a health insurance corporation.
What do I stand to gain when corrupt politicians make it harder to vote? I am a voter.
What do I stand to gain when free trade policies send my jobs overseas and imports cheap foreign made crap. I do not want to buy cheap foreign made crap. I want to buy American products made in America.
What do I stand to gain when worker's rights are under attack? I am a worker. I demand my rights.
What do I stand to gain from spending cuts to the public sector? I live a public life. I am not rich enough to afford the Versailles lifestyle of the gated community complex, nor would I ever wish to do so.
What do I stand to gain when regulations are torn down and private industry is allowed to police itself? I am rewarded with BP spills and Foreclosure fraud scandals, insider trading and Massey Energy mine disasters, crumbling infrastructure and new bridges in Afghanistan that I will never drive on, what do I get out of this deal, what does anyone who is not such a corporate person that they have forsaken their true personhood, that of humanity, to do right by your fellow man instead of waging war on him, whether it is a war with guns or an economic war of exploitation and collusion and monopolies, what do any of us get out of this deal? We get exploited. We get our democracy ripped out from under our feet by phenomenally wealthy interests so that only money equals speech, and you ain't got no money. What do I get out of this grotesquely distorted historical aberration of income inequality? I am not rich. I am struggling to survive, we are struggling to survive, even if I am more comfortable than the poorest among us am I not my brothers' keeper, even in some small way?
I have been told that I would be better off washing dishes than spending time at #ows. The world of the 1% is a world of no minimum wage where you take the crumbs you're thrown, a world where the 1% is forever Too Big To Fail. A world where you are at the mercy of "market forces". A world where Democracy and the rule of law is meaningless because money equals speech. Our system is no longer "1 man = 1 vote", when Mayor Bloomberg and Rick Scott can use vast sums of money to buy political office, when you can't run for President without a billion dollars in campaign funds our system has clearly been hijacked by corporate money.
I am still struggling to survive in my own way. I have no health insurance, which puts my life at risk. FACT: People who have no health insurance have a statistically higher risk of dying because they aren't receiving the vital preventative health care that every human being has a right to regardless of the profit demands of the monopolistic health insurance cartel.
I have enough money to pay another month of rent after this one, which should see me through until the end of the year, but I have no real secure income yet. After that, I don't know, but I'm not worried about myself right now, I worry about the people I meet, people who tell me stories about how they are suffering and what they think needs to change. Getting the chance hear these stories is worth the reward. I am sure I will figure something out, I have been through worse, and I love what I am doing, I feel inspired and at the same time I feel a responsibility placed on me, to do right by the people around me and to fight back against the lies and corruption that we can all see staring us in the face, the inequality and the discrimination and the tower of babble that the media financed by corporate wealth and corrupt political operatives has spun around us. I don't really care about my own money situation right now, I have enough to last my frugal needs, so I am not soliciting any funds right now, rather, I would like to point out how ironic it is that I am being called an "elitist" by a puff piece wall street writer for pointing out that the tea party voters who are not rich are entirely voting against their own economic interests when they vote against health care reform and for tax cuts for the rich. I want America to have more economic justice for tea party voters too, because they are Americans as well. 99% of Tea party voters are the 99%, it is their corrupt political leaders and morally bankrupt pundits whom I oppose.
People joined the tea party because they were, and still are struggling to survive. I wish them well personally, but politically what tea party voters achieved was electing the most thoroughly corrupt menu of corporate stooges in American history. Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, John Kaisch, Allen West and Rand Paul and other 2010 freshmen have all been shining examples of the corporate ownership of petty politicians at it's worst. The tea party succeeded politically because they were 100% supportive of a cruel corporate agenda. As if that side ever had a hard time winning a fight.
And honestly, Democrats are just as thoroughly corrupt as Republicans, it is just that the ignorant Fox News watching clowns eat up the corporate agenda, whereas voters who would be inclined to vote for Dems know they have been sold out over and over again, and this causes an enthusiasm gap, but I doubt the Dem Establishment is surprised by that or even cares. I am so disillusioned with the Democratic Party that I am disgusted. Someone once told me that the GOP only cares about the wealthiest 1% and the Dems only care about the wealthiest 10%. Our sad state of politics today reflects that assessment.
So as I type and just jettison some of the strum und drang in my mind I realize that we are all struggling together against those who want the corruption to never end and those who they have convinced to fight on their side. The glowing reviews the corporate tea party got from CNN and Fox were in support of their corporatism, the smear pieces News Corporation owned media like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post are meant to attack #ows because of our opposition to corporatism, and THAT story itself is so obvious the fact that seemingly no one in the media wants to compare the cheerleading for the tea party compared to the smears against #ows proves largely just how corrupt the corporate media is.
The reality is that nearly ever policy supported by elected tea party officials since the 2010 election has been an attack on programs that benefit working class people and an attempt at cutting taxes for the rich and corporations. Hell, almost every GOP Presidential candidate has already endorsed a tax formula that would raise the tax burden on the majority of Americans while giving the wealthiest 1% yet another tax break that they don't even need.
The tax code is just one facet of the massive inequality that is strangling the democracy and the economy of our culture. Millions upon millions of Americans are struggling and our political leaders and media voices can do nothing but sell us more of our own impoverishment so that sanctified "markets" can be free. Our corrupt corporate media can lie us into Iraq, ponder the legitimacy and immediate threat of WMD's and Death Panels and a debt ceiling collapse but it is absolutely USELESS when it comes to providing consumers and voters with critical information about the corruption in economics and politics in America, because the corporate media multiplex is a part of the corrupt system we are fighting against. We the people are struggling to survive, crushed beneath vast wealth arrayed against us on all sides, be it the intellectually dishonest and discriminatory offensiveness of the right or the sniveling cowardice of the Democratic Establishment to ever bite the corporate wealth that feeds it, above all is the corporate capture of our democracy, of every aspect of our society, so that now even our prisons have become profit centers, in this way has the struggle come so close to home for so many people that they are willing to stand in the streets and protest this gross inequity. What do I stand to gain when corporations are allowed to make unlimited donations to the elected officials who are supposed to serve We The People, not the health insurance industry, not the criminals on Wall Street, not the military contractors or the Oil companies, what do I get out of it, what do we get out of it when corporations are allowed to hijack our democracy and write their own laws against us?
We are still struggling. They don't get it. But we get it.
In the words of Doctor Cornel West . . .
Martin Luther King Jr will smile from the grave
And say we moving step by step
with what he called a revolution
don't be afraid to say revolution
we want a transfer of power
from the Oligarchs
to ordinary citizens
move with the poor children of all colors
and the orphans and the widows
and the elderly
and the working folk
as we connect the prison/industrial complex
with the military/industrial complex
with the wall street/oligarchy complex
and the corporate media multiplex.
We want a transfer of power from the Oligarchy of political bribery and Corporate Interests to ordinary people and we are struggling.
And the rich and powerful just don't get it. They aren't paid to "get it", they are paid to ignore it and continue to push their failed trickle down anti-government ideology, but We The People have no time for their petty partisan squabbling because we are struggling to survive. I believe Occupy Wall Street is a manifestation of that struggle.
I leave the floor open to you . . .
Peace and love to all,
You can follow me on the twitter machines at @JesseLaGreca