With Occupy Wall Street's expansion, and the expansion of brutal police responses across the country, much attention has been paid to President Obama's relative silence on the movement and – most notably – his silence on the way in which authorities have treated citizens, from Zuccotti to UC Davis, who are merely engaging in their First Amendment rights to assemble.
Perhaps I am parsing Obama's Thanksgiving Day message through a lens shaded by my engagement in and support for OWS; however, I sense implicit acknowledgement of the movement and the struggles for which it's fighting:
President Barack Obama said Thanksgiving this year will be “more difficult than most” for many Americans because of economic challenges. He called on “each of us to do our part” to help the nation return to prosperity.
“No matter how tough things are right now, we still give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, timed for the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.
To be clear: I personally to not want President Obama to explicitly weigh in on Occupy Wall Street, for it is my view that any partisan taking-of-sides on his part could do damage to the movement's expansion into the mainstream.
(His tacit acknowledgement of the movement – after being mic checked in New Hampshire – went farther than perhaps any statement to date when he stated to those interrupting him, "[F]amilies like yours, young people like the ones here today — including the ones who were just chanting at me — you’re the reason that I ran for office in the first place.")
And anyway, the success of this movement does not hinge on President Obama's approval or support.
It hinges our ability to grow this movement such that politicians will have no choice, in order to save their collective political skins, to side on what I view as the right side of history, to side with the 99 percent of Americans who no longer will allow a corrupt financial industry to mold our nation's destiny, to mold our collective destinies.
It is up to us to, as President Obama says, "do our part" to "determine our own destiny." A destiny that so many of us need rerouted.
And so, on Thanksgiving, as I gather with friends and family, I will take Obama's words, craft them and mold them and make them my own. And I will redouble my resolve to work towards determining a better destiny, not only for myself, but for those who are struggling more than I am.
I will remember these faces today, and hope that – in our halls of power and at the Thanksgiving tables of our leaders – these faces are beginning to reverberate in their synapses and haunt their lush tables full of harvest and bounty:
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