I Need Someone to Educate Me..

OccupyWallStreet (OWS) is people who claim to be part of the 99% - the participants' slogan "We are the 99%" is their belief to the difference in wealth between the top 1% and the other citizens of the United States.

They are mainly protesting social and economic inequality..what consider as corporate greed...they seem to want the same "power and influence" of corporations...in other words...they want these people to spread the wealth and give them a piece of their pie even though they didn't do anything to earn it.

Where they SHOULD be organizing? On Capitol Hill. There are those that believe Wall Street is corrupt - yeah - it is. As it is their "representatives" that make the regulations, laws, loop holes and the like for these corporations to be corrupt...just like those same people on Capitol Hill...they work for themselves instead of their constituents...

Basically? Bottom Line? These people are only distracting what is really going on behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. They are allowing the lawmakers to continue their in their ways and create more laws and loop holes...it is a distraction...thank George Soros for funding it...now question this??? what's trying to be passed on The Hill this week? Or this past month? Distracting from the campaign trail...so the lawmakers can shirk their responsibilities on The Hill and campaign for their job again...

At the risk of sounding insensitive, here's the way I see it:

Occupy Wall Street/99% is to protesting what Seinfeld was to sitcoms; A Show About Nothing.

:(

If I had to sum it up in a sound bite, something has gone wrong, fix it!

The biggest problem I see is they don't really understand how we got here so all their demands don't make sense. Like all debts should be forgiven. Well yes that would fix your problems as you see it but it isn't a functional demand. Sort of like in Bruce Almighty when everyone won the lottery at the same time, sounds good, doesn't work.

They need to get a leader that can round up the thoughts, direct the anger properly, and speak for them. Thing is I get the feeling they don't want that either.

See like that link, taking our homes through an illegal foreclosure process? Regardless of how the mortgages were bundled to be sold as securities the people are still way behind on their mortgages. Your homes are being taken because you are not paying your mortgage!!!

When the corporations of America are buying the government and it's policies and decisions, with no other motivation than to increase their profits, regardless of the effect on the citizens, then that's a problem.
Increase your profits? Sure.
Just don't use OUR politicians and policy to do it.

I tend to think of the Occupy movement as demanding a separation of state and business.
Kind of like the need for separation of church and state.

There's a concept in most SciFi that breaks governments down into two systems:

Territorial States (USA, England, Japan, etc.) &

Multinationals / Non-Territorial States (Apple, Starbucks, Kohl, Banks, Airlines, etc.)

The non-territorial states wield AS MUCH IF NOT MORE power than most land based governments. Many have as much, if not more, money than territorial states. And UNLIKE terretorial states, they can't "lose". Go ahead. Try to Nuke Microsoft. Where do you do it? You CANNOT destroy a multinational company. It's made up of people, and has offices All Over The Globe. Take out one set of headquarters, and they've got 6 more. And remove one set of leaders, and you've got hundreds more. You can fight a war against nation, because they've got limited geography. You can't fight a war against a multinational. They're NOT bound by geography.

In many ways, Multinationals are like 'the nobility' or 'the princes of christendom'. Governements, rather than controlling them, have to treat them as peers. Instead of armies of soldiers and retainers, they have armies of lawyers and bank accounts (as in, if any major corporation in the US LEFT the US, we'd have major economic collapse... which gives them *a lot* of power & political traction). It's a not so balanced stalemate.

It's an old problem, in a new way, and it's born of the Industrial Revolution.

Occupy Wallstreet is the natural progression from Union Strikes (and quite frankly, any smart government will let it continue, to use it as leverage in their own political dance with corporations). People are protesting CORPORATIONS, in much the same way as people have protested governments -or parts of governments- in the past.

Which is a bizarre, yet totally normal/natural progression/attempt to rebalance power that happens periodically throughout history.

What will happen is pretty simple to predict if you study history. 1 of 2 things: Either the rebellion will be put down, and the corporations will continue to run their businesses unchecked (nobles will continue to rule unchecked) and the balance of power will remain the same until the next rebellion OR "something" fundamental will change. Which will keep people "happy" for awhile (aka everyone -both nobles and peasants, or senators and emperor- will be unhappy, but the rebellion will disperse being less unhappy than before) UNTIL some ingenious person or series of people decide to make use of the new system in a way that makes everyone unhappy again, until enough people are unhappy long enough to rebell again.

Jefferson said 'A little revolution is good from time to time.'

That's just what's going on right now.

NOT a lot will change (revolutions rarely change MUCH), but they shake up the balance of power for a bit, which will allow things to change for awhile.

Most of us are the 99%.
We work hard, we save, we are careful with our spending. Most of us do not have insurance even available through our employers. And those that do have it offered, cannot afford it.

We pay taxes every year and most of the time, the percentage we pay is more than the 1% who are the Uber wealthy.. I am talking multi millionaires who are so wealthy that the percentage of taxes they paid compared to the rest of us, ends up either being nothing or hardly anything.

This group that are on Wall Street or in Banking, are using OUR money, in illegal ways, bending rules or taking huge risks,, This has led to many of us in the 99% to have to pay more fees, lose their retirements, and investments. They inflated property values, they gave loans to people that really could not afford the payments. They set them up for failure..

The 1% is also not making more jobs or starting new businesses here in the States, because they are investing outside of the US. They are right now holding on to their money "They" have done this because of the economy (that they caused), and not willing to take the same chances to employ the 99% of us that need jobs to just survive.

We are o longer going be silent. We are not going to let the 1% think we do not know what they are doing. We do not feel sorry for them and the amount of taxes they need to be paying because we have ben paying more than our fair share and following the "rules" this whole time.

Haha Beth, I know what you mean. I went with my teen down there to have her interview some people for a school assignment. These people are #1--stoned half the time, #2--doing things in tents that does not include actual sleeping (cough cough), #3 have all different reasons, some make sense, but most are clueless. Some think Wall ST. companies are going to have to, and I quote, "Write us all checks and give back money to poor people." Ah, yeah, sure LMAO! I loved it when a local news reporter asked if Barney Frank & Co. should be imprisoned? NOT ONE PERSON OUT OF THE 22 PEOPLE SURVEYED KNEW WHO BARNEY FRANK WAS!!!! They just want to hang out, make the place look like the sewage plant, and pretend they are re-creating a "Woodstock". I'm sure "organizers" that back the prez actually know what they are pissed at, but the actually looneys on the street don't. One muslim lady interviewe said she was there to get muslim holidays made official in NYC public schools......hysterical. Some "youths/college age punks ran around vandalizing property, of course, they were arrested as they should have been. Unfortunately, the money they feel has been wasted...they are creating the same problem by driving up the cost of overtime for city employees like PD, CD, and FD. Small business store owners are freaking out because there are damages and people are washing in their bathrooms (no showers mind you), and losing money because the protestors seem to be brown bagging it or the organizers are providing food, and buying merchandise, and the general public is afraid to go through the area. #Epiccrazies.

That's a great question!! This article really helped me with this question. =)

http://www.daveramsey.com/article/dear-occupy-wall-street...

I hope it helps.

I think if they could hold a job fair in the middle of this insanity they'd come out with a lot of people who can be working or looking for jobs instead of protesting for weeks on end.

They are protesting the significant influence the wealthier 1% have over this country and the impact this has to the 99% who have less influence. They don't have a list of demands or cohesive objectives as far as I can tell. The protests in the different areas each of a little different take on it.

I think, it started off as protesting the greed and monopoly of wealth by the 1%. So greedy corporations (think about all those bad mortgages, etc) and people who are uber rich like the CEO of Chase. People are mad they don't have jobs, the economy still sucks and it's hard to get ahead.

My local news station did a story on this and interviewed 20 different people from the local occupation about why they were doing this. They got 20 different answers. Go figure.

Thank you for asking this! I've been wondering the same thing. It does remind me of school - if you have the question, ask it, cause others probably do too!

I'm somewhat sympathetic to their cause. So many large companies seem to have thrown all ethics into the trash.

It's really disturbing to see so many jobs shipped overseas rather than paying decent wages over here. I guess it would be one thing if the company really needed to cut costs in order to keep afloat. But then you read that the CEO and other top execs of that company made MILLIONS in annual compensation. I mean, come on - there are only 24 hours in a day. Does the CEO really work THAT much harder than his secretary in any given day that he earns so many times more than what she does? Or any other worker for that matter?

As for Wall Street, it has become all about the annual bonus. Some of these guys do anything and everything they can, including fraud, just to pump up their numbers so that they can bring home a huge bonus at the end of every year. There's no long-range planning, no encouragement of slow, wise investment anymore. I don't so much fault the stockbrokers as their bosses, who set up the system this way and subtly wink at unethical, greedy behavior. This get-rich-quick mentality is poisonous. Think Enron. Or even this whole home mortgage mess.

OK, let me get off my soapbox now and return to MY work - coffee break is over! ;)

I know as much as you, so I'm interested to read your responses, as well.

What Jaimee K said...amen to some clarity! Very well written article and realistic.

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/first_official_sta...

start there. good luck! It's an interesting and wild ride.

Like any protest, there are a number of things.

In this case, I think the main theme is the 99% vs. the 1%.

I had to laugh, I felt the same way, and I work in downtown Chicago where they march every day. I asked one of the protesters what they were about. The answer "I am not sure, just had nothing to do today" I had to laugh.

I did ask someone else and they said it varies from city to city and there seem to be a lot of little groups joining together all with different complaints.

The one in Chicago at least to what I can gather doesn't seem too organized with one theme/protest but a bunch of different ones.

This is a pretty fantastic 60 second explanation of the Occupy/(un)Occupy movement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhrwmJcsfT0

This is Kieth Olbermann Reading the Occupy Wall Street statement which explains what they are protesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8o3peQq79Q&feature=pl...

This is The Ninety-nine Percent Declaration:
https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/

To me, it's a song without a melody. There are a few main themes, but mainly financial inequality (the 99% vs 1%). I agree with some issues I've heard, and I disagree with other things. They all want SOMETHING, which is why they're there, but there's no specific collective thought. I have a lot of respect for people who stand up for their beliefs, no matter what side, but I just wish they could do it with more common sense, respect and dignity....because crapping on police cars? Dressing as zombies? Trampling on the local businesses? Really??