Back in March Adam Bonin posted a link to a story about a lawyer who was leaving corporate law to walk across America with his dog, Mabel.
I followed the link and ended up a Facebook friend of Tyler Coulson. Right now he is about 160 miles from Vegas, after starting out from Delaware all those months ago.
He has had a view of the country that few have and it inspired him to post the following on his blog. I have encouraged him to join Dailykos, which he did, but he doesn't have diary posting privileges yet. He has given me permission to repost it in it entirety.
Since he has an internet connection tonight he will be in the comments to respond to any comments.
Everybody knows that there are no jobs. That 5% of Americans own more wealth than 80% of Americans. That the wars aren’t ending. That Congress won’t pass a jobs bill, and everybody knows Congress has nearly shut down the government three times this year. That our roads are crumbling and our schools are failing. That our health care system is broken. And everybody knows that the banks, the CEOs, and the politicians are not paying their share.
Everybody knows that the boat is sinking.
I have met dual-income families who live in motels because they cannot get together enough money for a security deposit on a rental, let alone the 20% to 40% down it would take them to qualify for a mortgage. People who cannot find any of the work they are trained for and who cannot afford to get the training they need to find a new job. Who cannot afford to service their student loan debt because there are no jobs. Who will never have the money to retire. But Congress won’t pass a jobs bill, Washington cuts subsidized loans that would help poor kids get trained in graduate school, and yammers endlessly about privatizing social security. We taxpayers pay for endless wars and bank bailouts, and the Wall Street folks pay nothing. None of this makes any sense.
And everybody knows.
But we can’t fix any of these problems, or any of the other million problems we have, because we citizens do not have have access to the machinery of government. Not us, not you, not me. Corporations, Wall Street, billionaires, millionaires: They have access to the machinery of government. Everybody knows this.
Why? Because the Supreme Court decided that we can’t afford it. Since the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, there are no meaningful limits on the money that corporations and special interests can spend to buy elections, and no meaningful reporting requirements on political spending. The next presidential election will cost 6 billion dollars. Ninety-five percent of congressional races are won by the candidate who spends the most money. That means that those who own and control profane wealth can own and control elections, can own and control politicians, can own and control the government.
They can own and control you.
Our elections, politicians, and, indeed, our government are owned and controlled by corporate and special interests. We don’t own them, because we can’t afford them. And we cannot fix this with a ballot box. They own the ballots!
And everybody knows.
But the past few weeks, protestors have been camped out in lower Manhattan in protest against, as I understand it, 1) banks, 2) money in politics, and 3) other stuff. These folks began organizing under the Twitter hashtag #occupywallstreet. I have heard that over a thousand peaceful protestors have been arrested. I have heard that there are concurrent protests and “occupations” in Chicago, Louisville, San Francisco, Boston, and on and on. I have heard the are solidarity protests in Europe. I have heard that among the protestors are unemployed folks, Afghan and Iraq war vets, cops and firemen, teachers, students, and on and on. These are all rumors, of course, as I am not there.
No. I am in a tent in Utah.
What caught my eye about this #occupywallstreet thing is that the call was for a whole mess of folks to go to Wall Street and camp. Now, if there is one thing I know about, it is living in a tent — I think it is rather interesting that I have been living in a tent, following on Twitter as a few hundred people live in tents. There is something profoundly strange about it all.
There are people in Manhattan reporting about the protests on Twitter. I picked one, @AyeshaKazmi, to follow. I had to follow on Twitter because media would not report it — only recently, my Facebook news feed has started to blow up with people mentioning it, and only slightly less recently did I see the protests reported in any detail on any news sites. As of now, there doesn’t seem to be any clear “message” or “goal” of the protests — seems to just be a lot of people angry for a lot of different reasons all in the same place. In fact, a friend of mine (and friend of the walk) who lives and works very near the protests, tells me that New Yorkers are annoyed by the protests primarily because the protestors don’t have a clear message or demand — I can relate to and agree with that complaint. He tells me it is like watching the protest scene in the movie PCU.
And that is why I am here, hiking, and not there. It is great that these folks are motivated, but standing around and shouting “99%” won’t do any good. Holding signs about censorship and bank bailouts and immigration and gay marriage and everything else won’t do any good. I wish it would, but I know it won’t do any good.
And everybody knows it won’t.
Because these are all symptoms. Crumbling infrastructure, an unfair tax code, outsourcing the manufacturing sector to undeveloped countries, spiraling costs for health care and education, bloated defense spending, refusal to protect (and design rationally) entitlement programs, endless wars, the war on civil liberties: These are all symptoms. The disease is the influence of money in politics.
You can protest until you are blue in the face, but our politicians won’t fix any of it…because they do not work for us. They work for their contributors, PAC funders, the banks and the big businesses. They do not care what you or I think, or what is best for us, because they are owned and controlled by their campaign financiers.
So while a bunch of folks “occupy Wall Street”, I have been occupying the whole damn country. From Delaware to Utah, and soon into California and all the way to San Diego. Why? For a million reasons, all jumbled up and confused like the OccupyWallStreet protestors! Because there is fairness and equality in what I am doing. Because our freedoms are slipping away. Because the America I know will be gone in a few years. Because I want every person to have the same liberties and rights that I have. Because I want every person to pay their fair share. Because I reject the inequality and injustice in our financial and political systems. Because I am tired of paying for endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, against terror and drugs and civil liberties. Because I am tired of watching Washington wage class warfare and claim it doesn’t exist. Because I am tired of being told to be afraid. Because I am tired of paying the salaries of whining, criminal children in Congress.
And because I want a life that is a step more beautiful.
My reasons are chaotic and disorganized, but I am just one man walking across the country with my dog. As long as those protestors in Manhattan, and elsewhere, have goals and demands as chaotic and disorganized as mine, then they may as well be walking alone in the desert, too.
But if we all could just accept that we are right now starting over in this country, then these protests could mean something. These protests could begin a great reconsecration of the rule of law in this country if we all recognized that we have no government so long as special interest money can buy it. Nothing will change — not a single of your pet causes, from abortion to monetary policy — until we accept it that money rules this country, not votes. We are not represented in Congress. The only way to reclaim our government and to make it legitimate is to remove the power of monied special interests to buy and control the machinery of power.
If the goal of #OccupyWallStreet were a clean and clear demand for a constitutional amendment overturning the Citizens United opinion and limiting political donations to a reasonable amount from citizens only…then I would not be living in a tent in Utah right now. I would be living in a tent in Manhattan.
Until then, I will follow the protestors on Twitter and I wish them luck: You keep occupying Wall Street for me, and I will keep walking cross country for you.
