Cosmic Reflections

Milt and I made a commitment: we’d brave the crowds at First Friday, Las Vegas (around 10,000 people expected) to support the fundraising effort of Occupy Las Vegas, rather than participate in their march on the Strip. Serious introverts, we much prefer to stay at home, quietly watching the news of it on T.V. In fact, we’ve been faithfully following this grassroots movement on Democracy Now! (Free Speech T.V, Link T.V, DemocracyNow!.org). Meanwhile, there’s been precious little main-line media coverage of the weeks old Occupy Wall Street until now. Now that it is spreading across the country, there’s seems to be some surprise that average Americans playing ‘by the rules’ are feeling ‘taken advantage of’ and even betrayed by Wall Street, bailed-out banks, and elected public servants.
Yet this IS a democracy, after all. It is our constitutional right AND responsibility to participate. Thus local versions of Occupy Wall Street are empowering an interesting cross section of citizens too express their frustration with the current economic crisis, mostly from personal experiences.
Most of us have felt powerless over what has happened to our jobs, our homes, our mortgages, our retirement accounts. And many of us have had a definitive incident that pushed us ‘over the top,’ and propelled us into action. Separately, these stories feel like private, isolating incidents that we internalize: we must have done something wrong, or made a mistake, etc, and now must suffer the consequences.
But not unlike the consciousness raising efforts of the women’s movement back in the 1970s, these private stories accumulate into a public profile that proves that one percent of our population controls the well being and wealth of the other ninety nine percent of us. This is not fair. Enough is Enough!