The Mustang-Liberal Party of America Symbol
Let Them Worry About Us
By Timothy V. Gatto
I've been silent as these Occupy protests have been taking
place, not only at Wall Street (the root of it all), but around the country
including Greenville, SC, my adopted hometown. The reason I've been silent is
because everything I've heard people say is what I have been writing about for
the last seven years. I really don't have much to add. I was planning to go to
DC but my family was dead set against it. I take over 12 medications a day and
can't afford a hotel room at this time. They were afraid I'd get too caught up
in what was happening there and forget to take my medicine and end up as a casualty.
Probably in my heart of hearts I believe
they were right. Knowing myself, I probably would have left in a stretcher. 60
isn't that old, but with a heart bypass and being a recovering Cancer patient,
maybe I erred on the right side for once.
I'm 60 years old and I feel just as proud of the people at
the barricades as if they were my own children or Grandchildren. This is their
time and I don't wish to steal their thunder. The reason I'm writing today is
because of what I see happening to this idealistic movement. There are very powerful
and intelligent people that want to stop us. They don't wish to just stop us,
but as the movement gets larger, they want to control us. Just as the Tea-Party
was co-opted by the right side of the GOP, the Occupy movement is fair game for
the pseudo-liberals within the Democratic Party. Move-On, political leaders and
others have already made overtures towards the Occupy movement. Like we really
need them, like Jesse James needed that picture hung on the living room wall.
The media, after ignoring Occupy Wall Street for a week, was keen to break their silence and ask what it was that we believe in. When they received a plethora of answers, they regaled in in the different answers they received. They laughed at the protestors, telling the MSM that they "had no real agenda". To those that know nothing, it could very well appear that people indeed had no unified cause.
Even so, that is their strength, not their weakness. Their prime motivations for taking to the streets are not just political issues. They are practical and moral issues. The demonstrators have many issues. When a reporter asks a group of protestors why they are protesting, odds are that ten different people will give them ten different answers Here is but a few reasons they have given:
1. The top 1% holds more wealth than the bottom 95%.
2.
We bailed out the banks and Wall Street with anywhere
from 800 billion dollars to over 14 trillion dollars depending what figures are
used.
3. Banks are STILL NOT Lending to small businesses.
4. The infrastructure is still not being rebuilt.
5. The Federal Reserve is still printing money and providing loans to foreign banks, with no Congressional oversight.
6.
Unions are being dismantled piece by piece.
7. Student loans are increasingly hard to come by and are loaded with skyrocketing interest.
8. The Middle-Class is still seeing its yearly income drop while the bankers and those that work for the largest financial institutions are seeing marked increases in their yearly income (including bonuses).
9.
We are fighting wars for resources all over the
World for profits. The Defense budget is exploding.
