Obama asked us to believe in change, so we elected him and we saw none. We stood up and gathered, demanding the same change we were promised, and so far all we are given is tear gas and criminal records. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement scares corporations and those in their pockets because it is the ignorance of the people that they have fed upon and thrived off of. They call it a “Class War,” but if there is class warfare then how come the only casualties are on the side of the lower classes? It seems to be a class massacre and the 1%ers, the 1% of the population that holds the wealth of America, have all the ammunition coupled with the high ground. Up until recently it has been a cold war where the upper echelon of our society has used underhanded secretive tactics in order to promote themselves monetarily while ensuring the demise of the American dream, the dream that if you work hard you will be rewarded in kind. This movement, which calls themselves “the 99%” or “Occupy Wall Street,” is the people finally waking up to the inequalities that have been purposefully hidden from them.
Recently the Occupy Wall Street movement in Oakland, California, became a surreal scene as tear gas and police batons flew freely on protestors. The official Statement by Police is that the protesters threw rocks at riot gear police and they felt the mood was becoming hostile. But the beginning of it all is truly the fact that the protestors were being removed on the pretenses of public health and violation of laws, specifically the fact that the “encampments” were not allowed indefinite stay. These seem like viable reasons until you remember that these “encampments” are actually the people’s right to peacefully assemble, hold a peaceful protest, and you remember that the people are protesting so that the quality of public health across the board is advanced. It seems extreme to promote public health through teargasing, bludgeoning, and arresting the public. Especially since the crowd being teargased consisted of university students, university teachers, veterans, and, as one video shows, people in motorized wheel chairs.
It is easy to begin to direct blame towards a political party and lose sight of the corruption as a whole, but don’t. The mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, is a democrat and across the board both democratic and republican politicians are treating these protests the same. They are moving closer and closer to a point at which they will try to quell the demonstrations. It is the American political group as a whole that seems corrupted by corporate influence and they have made it easy to control the people by pitting us against each other, Democrats vs. Republicans. The best way to control your enemy is make him your friend, by creating a false enemy. Civil Disobedience is what this country is founded on and we are beginning to see that the controlling body do not wish to be self-retrospective or proactive with the community of America but rather is content to just control and rule. It can be said that those that have been in power for so long are not there specifically because they are just or have better ideas, the proof is the state of which we find our country in today, but because they are the ones with the strength to do so, and strength in this day in age is measured by the backing of capital wealth. This is just the way our Country is designed at this time. We have even gone as far as to legally say that Corporations are “people” and money is “speech,” which skews the specific written English definitions of “people” and “speech” completely. The reason laws can be written is that linguistic definitions are supposed to hold true and make the use of these laws clear and fair to all. However, now that we are rewriting these definitions, the laws seem less like steadfast moral principles for living within our society, but malleable to the will of those looking to cheat the system and people of The United States of America. The Politicians started off thinking the protests were cute, and backed them. This was until they saw that the people were not just letting off steam but meant business, were educated, and wanted REAL change. Now they are scared that this change could be coming. They have already begun to fight back, but will the people hold strong? Or disband? To quote Henry David Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience, “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”