Like the heavily tattooed Paul Armstrong, thousands of American working people are now speaking up in an act of collective whistle-blowing that continues to make headlines daily. Speaking out against a backdrop of thunderous drums and in a setting where nearby skyscrapers often shut out the sun, they spend their days reiterating a few startling facts about the America of 2011.
Fact: More than 17 percent of the adult population of the United States is now unemployed, if you include those who have stopped looking for work and those who are working part-time out of necessity and not making enough to feed their families.
Fact: More than 49 million Americans are now living beneath the federal poverty line . . . which means their families are living on less than $23,000 a year . . . while in many cases struggling with inadequate housing, medical care and nutrition.
Fact: More than 46 million Americans are now living on food stamps -- without which they would literally be walking the streets all day long in search of food. (Yes, that's right: nearly one-sixth of the entire U.S. population in 2011 is now unable to feed itself and surviving courtesy of federal government handouts.)
Fact: While more and more individual people are sinking into abject poverty in this country, most of the nation's major corporations and most of its major banks are continuing to make handsome profits. One number says it all: Less than one percent of the American public now controls nearly half of its total wealth . . . and the stories of corporate executives making $10 million and $20 million and even $50 million bonuses (while their companies are laying off thousands of workers each month) long ago became strictly routine.
As the nation sinks into the grind of relentless poverty, however, more and more economic whistleblowers are stepping forward to insist that this degrading state of affairs cannot long continue.
Take John Bird, a Blackfoot Indian who drove to the Big Apple all the way from Tucson, Arizona. Why? It's actually quite simple, he says: "I never gave up my hope for justice!"
He's sitting on a plastic crate, three feet from a hand-lettered sign:
Sure, You Can Trust the Government --
Just Ask an Indian
"Indian people have never given up hope that some day there will be justice," says John Bird. "Our elders teach us that, so we carry it on. Some days, it all seems pretty hopeless. But this" -- and he waves at the huge throng of protesters in Zuccotti Park, located in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District -- "this is hope. And what we're hoping for is not only economic justice, but also environmental justice."
The reporter leans in closer, with his tape recorder at the ready.
It's eight o'clock on a recent Friday morning at the nation's longest-running "Occupation" protest. Since last September 17th, about 300 people per day (on average) have been living here, crammed into a tiny urban green space surrounded by high-rise office buildings and by long blue ranks of silent, expressionless police.
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