It's been a long time since I've posted here, but I wanted to share a response a friend of mine had to the latest backlash to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters / The 99% Movement, because it was just -too- good not to share.
What is this backlash?
Meet The 53%. Who are they? The term 53% refers to the people who are actually paying taxes for themselves and the rest of the country.
The 53% is a group of responsible young people organizing across the country. However, this group is not camping out in parks around the country and demanding the entire capitalist system be destroyed. These men and women have jobs (most of them work at more than one job in order to make ends meet), but they are talking about attending the Minneapolis Occupy Wall St. protest scheduled for today – Friday, October 7th.
Words cannot describe how angry this kind of response makes me -- and with seeming sincerity! If someone can walk up to me and say 'I work two jobs to make ends meet; I'm doing it -RIGHT-' I'm going to look at them like they just sprouted a fern bush from their left nostril. That's not doing it right! THAT MEANS THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. We are not SUPPOSED to be working two or three jobs to simply survive, whatever George w. Bush and others like him might believe (Uniquely American my ass...is IS uniquely American now, thanks to you and yours, you piece of...)
But I'd like to post a response to this little counter-protest that really resonated with me and I felt should be shared. This is for you, "53%":
I am sick and tired of these motherfucking ignorant assholes spewing their motherfucking ignorant messages all over these protests. Or the whole subject of debt and class and how completely broken our economic system is.
The people who are protesting? Are not lazy. The people who don’t have jobs? Are not lazy. The people who have jobs and still can’t make ends meet? Are not lazy.
My best friend who is working to put herself through community college, which she hates, by the way, but has to attend because her family can’t afford to send her anywhere else? Who is brilliant and a great student and being forced to shell out money for a writing class where she’s being taught how to use goddamn quotation marks, because she can’t afford to go anywhere better? Is not lazy. My father, who has spent most of his life working and providing for our family and recently lost his job because he told his boss he’d test positive for marijuana because he has cancer? Who is now on unemployment and going to lose that soon and has huge medical expenses because he has a chronic, terminal illness? Is not lazy. My mother, who, most days, works literally from when she gets up to go into the office until she goes to bed, with brief breaks to get dinner, who still hasn’t paid off her student debt, who currently owes twice as much as her loans were in the first place because of interest? Is not. Fucking. Lazy.
These people are the ninety-nine percent. They’re the people you’re saying don’t have jobs because they’re lazy, or want to dismantle capitalism and be hippy-dippy socialist tree huggers who go around on a bead and shiny rock system, who you accuse of wanting to play drums and smoke pot all day, who you think are overreacting and whining and just not working hard enough.
If you have a job and you’re able to provide for yourself, congratulations. Really. That’s a fucking accomplishment. You are so incredibly lucky. You’re lucky enough to live in an area that has jobs available that pay enough to pay your rent, and lucky enough to either own a car or live where you can walk, ride a bike, take a bus, or take the subway to work, and lucky enough to be relatively certain of your job security, and lucky enough to not have any major health issues that are a constant drain on your money, and lucky enough that you haven’t had any emergencies come up that suddenly mean you’re out of money. If you have debt, which you probably do, you’re able to make your payments and still have enough left over to live on. You don’t have to choose between rent, food, utilities, and your credit rating. You’re so fucking lucky, and it’s not because the government is helping you.
The corporations are not on your side. You middle class people who are talking about the lazy poor people, the lazy unemployed people, the lazy protesters? The corporations are not on your side. They aren’t going to congratulate you for paying your taxes and having a job and keeping afloat. They’re not going to help you because you’re such a good citizen. They are going to grab you by the neck and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until they have gotten every last cent they possibly can out of you. They’re not going to stop until you’re with the people who can’t get a job and can’t pay rent and can’t eat and have nowhere to go. They’re not going to stop until all of us are with those people, because that’s the only thing that will finally prevent them from profiting off of you.
The people who are protesting can see this. They’ve seen it, and lived it, and watched their friends and family live it. They’ve realized that it is monumentally, unspeakably unfair that this country’s economic system is set up to screw everyone but the most obscenely wealthy one. fucking. percent of the country until they have nothing left to give. And they’re tired of it, and they’re scared, and they’re hopeless, and they don’t know what they’re going to do or what they want changed or how it can be changed, but they know that something needs to give and they are sick and tired of it being them. They are angry and they’re doing something about it.
You can deride them and act smug and superior to them, but eventually, everyone below you is going to be exhausted and you’ll be the one working two jobs and still having to choose between paying your rent or making dinner this week or going to the doctor to get that pain in your chest that won’t go away checked out. And the only way, the only possible way this can end, is either by changing the way this country’s economy is set up or driving it into the ground. And if they choose the second one, if the one percent is so dead set on keeping all of the wealth and never budging, if the government lets it keep happening, if something doesn’t change, then this country is going to burn. America is going to go down in flaming riots, because when you take everything away from a group of people, when you strip them of their entire future, they don’t even have nothing left to lose. They have nothing. They’ve already lost. And all they can do is try to take the people who did it to them with them.
So, what do you want to do? Support and participate and actually understand the problem, or sit back and act like a smug jackass because you are lucky enough to not have to worry about it as immediately as the rest of these people? You’ll be up against the wall eventually, unless you’re part of the one percent, so do you want to go there fighting them or supporting them?
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http://edoro.tumblr.com/
I would like to state that I can understand the edict of 'hard work gets you somewhere' - I was raised by WWII era parents, who were themselves raised with the notion that if you just work hard and live within your means, you'll have enough. This is what I was raised on, and what I believed for the longest time.
What they worked from though was a sense of social, governmental and business ethics that are no longer around. I watched our farm dwindle over the years, watched their health get worse and worse, watch the bills stack higher and higher. When they died, almost everything in their life insurance and estate went to pay the medical bills for my father's failed surgery and my mother's failed cancer treatments and I barely had enough to bury them with. In the end, their beliefs got them nothing but a mountain of debt. I tried to live by those beliefs afterwards, but in thirteen years of attempting to gain myself a future, all I've done is keep abject poverty away by just about an arm's length.
In fact, right now I'm probably the most destitute I've ever been. Just got my first paycheck after 3 months of unemployment (entire thing went to rent it still didn't cover), with no electricity (4 weeks so far, about 6 more to go before I can pay the cost of getting it turned back on), dental and medical issues I certainly cannot afford to take care of and subsisting on about $5 of groceries a week because I need gas in my car to get to work more than I need food in my stomach. (I'm not even going to mention the student loans that gained me nothing but student loans -- many know that story.) The thing is? THIS IS NOT UNIQUE. This is not a unique, rare hard-luck story! This is happening all over the country, to people in every walk of life. It's happening to someone in your city right now.
The naysayers would believe I'm this way because I didn't work hard enough. Heh...motherfucker, I have done nothing but work. Sometimes I was lucky enough to save a bit -- and then something happened to take it all away. If you've never ended up losing everything you have saved at least once in your life, you ARE really really lucky in this country.
And you know what, I am STILL a hell of a lot better off than many of my brothers and sisters out there. It's ironic, even -- if I WERE in fact living out of my car, I'd have more money than I do WITH a roof over my head.
Things are not supposed to be this way.
And this country is starting to realize it.