When I worked for the now sitting President Barrack Obama's campaign in 2008 I was hopeful and excited to finally play a part in this great nations political system. Since before I can remember I have been pointing out, arguing against, and outright disobeying unjust and inane authoritarian rule. I have always believed that in order to progress we must not stifle creativity or alienate those who offer different perspectives and I was finally getting a chance to HOPEfully change a system I had seen run amok with gluttony, corruption, and greed since I had first begun to understand politics.
Boy, was I wrong about Obama...
It's laughable how apparent the corporate coup has been, ever since 2000, the patriot act shortly after that when I was just transitioning from middle school to high school; the wars through and beyond the decade, oil catastrophes and lobby increases, Net Neutrality and SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, citizen assassinations, detentions, repression and indoctrination; Elections of hope ending in administrations of hope: "maybe next time he'll man up," "you can't get it all done in the first term," "this isn't what he stood for or ran on..." and people are just now confronting the fact in the wide open.
It has been an incredibly long 12 years. I'm older now, and more cynical than ever. Those of us who grew up watching the political system work (or not work) while we ruminated on the consequences and discussed our own ideas openly, using the internet with amazing savvy, have come of age. It's not about hand-outs or cruelty of the "real world" for the youth, it's about a life-long recognition of dysfunction and the cruelty of men of power and our own insatiable desire to work remedy it. Revolution isn't a hand-out, you have to work to make this world a better place. This is a new kind of protest, a new kind of Revolution; something they weren't ready for, but something they inspired.
Occupy.
A speech, the only speech, I kept a copy of on my book case. Values espoused within are values I hold in the highest esteem. Apparently, many people around the world feel the same way I do...
and apparently, he didn't know we were serious about what he was saying...