I wanted to go down to Wall Street to participate in the protests, but I realized I have no money for transportation. I looked in my fridge and there is no food in it, but I have a fridge still, so at least I am not poor, right? I have been looking for work for some months now with no success, but when I look at the record profits Corporate America keeps banging out I realize that the super rich just don't give a damn. Their lives are going great and the rich seem to be totally insulated from the suffering and poverty they create among the other 99% of Americans, and that made me wonder to myself, if I were to go down to Wall Street and light myself on fire in protest, would these bastards even notice?
I am not really considering setting myself on fire, of course, but I wonder, what will it take to force the rich to invest in anything other than their own salaries? What will it take to shake these greedy pigs from their slumber? What will it take to make the super rich see that their greed is killing the rest of us? And how do we shove that in their faces and make them stop?
Today, when I woke up to the realization that even if I did get a job offer today, I have no way of even getting there, it made me think of the protestors downtown in Manhattan today, and of Mohamad Bouazizi, the Tunisian man who lit a match and sparked a revolution.
WHAT drives an ordinary man to burn himself to death?
That question has echoed across the Arab world and beyond in the weeks since an unemployed Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, doused himself with paint thinner and lit a match on Dec. 17. His desperate act set off street clashes that ultimately toppled the country’s autocratic ruler, and inspired nearly a dozen other men to set themselves on fire in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania.
~snip~
Mr. Bouazizi, a fruit vendor, set himself on fire in front of the local governor’s office after the authorities confiscated his fruit, beat him and refused to return his property. He is now seen as the instigator of a revolution that forced out President Zine el-Abidine Ben Aliafter 23 years of authoritarian rule. Mr. Bouazizi’s imitators hope to generate similar revolts in other Arab countries, where corruption and stifling autocracy have led to a similarly vast gulf between rulers and the ruled.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
A vast gulf between rulers and the ruled is exactly what we have in America today. Amidst all the Conservative cries of "Class War" can anyone name a single thing that the rich have sacrificed for the greater good since the year 2000? Or ever? Power concedes NOTHING unless forced to do so. Well I've got news for the super rich and the politicians and pundits who coddle them, this isn't class war, this is us asking you to pay your fucking taxes and invest in infrastructure and good paying jobs with good wages here in America like you are supposed to. This is us being nice. In the face of record income inequality in America, record profits for the rich and rising poverty for everyone else, my message to the "job outsourcers" is simple. This isn't class war. This is us, the working class, being nice. You don't want to make us angry, you wouldn't like us when we get angry.
Mr. Bouazizi makes me think of the Vietnam protestors who set themselves aflame in protest of an unjust war, and the men during the great depression who lost their lives fighting for the labor rights that we are being stripped of by Republicans as I write. Today we are living in an age that is much like a combination of the Vietnam era and the Great Depression, wars can always find funding even while the vast majority of Americans suffer, and all while a select few of the economic elite live in a Versailles style fantasy world of indulgence and decadence, where your biggest problems are paying your taxes out of the millions you have stolen in the rigged game that is Wall Street. Our jobs are being sent overseas and we are being told we must make do with less while the rich have never had it better. This can not go on. If it does, a point will come when a simple match could set off a raging fire, and if that happens, the greedy rich will have wished that they had just paid their taxes in the first place instead of "going on strike" or "going Galt" or whatever the hell it is they think they are doing.
The super rich are waging a siege war on the working class. They are trying to starve us out, in an effort to make the peasants accept a lower standard of living so that the rich can have it better than ever, and in starving us out, they are making us desperate, but a breaking point will come, a point when the peasants will have had enough if the super rich keep pushing us too far. I hope that moment doesn't come, but if the super rich will not take notice of the fuel they are adding to the fire on the streets below their high rise offices and penthouses they will have no one to blame but themselves.
UPDATE: Yahoo is censoring emails about the Wall Street protests.
Thinking about e-mailing your friends and neighbors about the protests against Wall Street happening right now? If you have a Yahoo e-mail account, think again. ThinkProgress has reviewed claims that Yahoo is censoring e-mails relating to the protest and found that after several attempts on multiple accounts, we too were prevented from sending messages about the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Economic freedom, the better to eat you with.
WTF?
Workers of the world, FIGHT BACK!
Peace and love to all
In desperation:
If you'd like to support my writing and help me out, please make a contribution via Paypal. . .
You can purchase your copy of "Americana: By Jesse LaGreca" by making a contribution of your choice to me with Paypal
You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca