I've been following with sort of one eye the movement calling themselves Occupy Wall Street - hoping for the best and expecting the worst... I was disappointed when so few people turned out that first day. Yet as more and more people join the protest, I find myself beginning to feel with hope. Perhaps this is the time that change will come.
Perhaps people have become tired - not of capitalism but of greed, where you only look out for number one and turn a blind eye to all your struggling fellow countrymen. Does it matter, after all, if they don't have a job, don't have money to pay the rent or their utility bills never mind buying food ??? Does it matter if they can't afford health insurance or have a 'pre exisiting condition' that disqualifies them from being covered by health insurance ??? If they do have health insurance, does it matter if they end up in the hospital and then go bankrupt from paying their medical bills; f they lose their car, house, livelihood ??? Because, after all, we are working, we are bringing money in to provide for ourselves and our family, we can afford healthcare, we make the laws...
It grieves me to see the people we have voted into office forget the ordinary people who put them there: the moms and dads, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, coworkers... Suddenly it's all about the almighty dollar, self comfort, self promotion, self aggrandizement.... 'I' is on the throne and we have left the 'us' and 'they' and 'we' behind... Suddenly, if our fellow countrymen look different than us, if they speak differently, if they believe differently, if they live differently, if they earn less money, if they don't conform to our ideas of how they should be then we leave them behind to wallow in their misery, we cast them out of sight and out of mind, we trod them beneath the heel of our indifference, we hold them in contempt and disgust....
How much better to be 'All For One' and 'One For All' - to let love and compassion and bravery lead, to reach out and pull someone up rather than abandoning them.... To care, to be concerned, to burn with a desire to improve someone's life.... America was founded on the ideals that ALL are created equal, that ALL deserve the right to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness; that ALL deserve justice, that if the government becomes apathetic, tyrannical, despotic, cruel, unjust then the people have a right to rebel and institute a NEW government.
To see the banks donate to the police so the police might try to crush the protest against the banks - that DISGUSTS me !! That has no place in a democracy or a republic - it is part and parcel of a dictatorship - a corporate dictatorship but a dictatorship nonetheless... To see the financiers roll in wealth and power while the people who give them their money starve, die from ill health or exposure to the elements, lose their money and any sort of quality of life - that is as bad as the cruelest of the Roman emperors - or any other monarch or tsar or despot - oppressing their subjects. To slowly come to see that wealth and comfort and power seem to matter more to those in office than the people they have been elected to serve boggles my minds and breaks my heart....
My heart is with those protesting for justice, for equality, for fairness, for their voice to be heard. Let us rise up with them and give strength to their arms, courage to their hearts, swiftness to their feet. Let us add our numbers to theirs and link our minds and hearts and arms in solidarity. To freedom !!!!
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