Occupy Thoughts

Watching the coverage and listening to the media mock and insult Occupy Wall Street movement and trying to discredit it a few things have hit me like a ton of bricks.

THERE IS NO LEADER
This is the easiest one to discredit, that is how things should be and how America was set up to be run. America is not supposed to have leaders, we are supposed to have representatives who speak for us. We don’t’ elect politicians to lead us we elect them as our voice, they work for us and their jobs used to be to vote how we wanted them to. Each Congressman is supposed to represent a district and vote on issues how the people in his district think he should, it shouldn’t be his decision and that’s part of the problem. Politicians who are elected to office think they get in to lead us and vote how they choose to vote, truth is they are elected to speak for the thousands of Americans who put them in office and to vote how we the people want. We need to get back to we the people having a voice in Washington D.C. not leaders who do what’s best for them and the rest of America be damned.

THERE IS NO MESSAGE
That’s because the movement has many messages, it is not a movement of one or two issues but is a movement where people can speak their minds and try and change things. The key message is equality, the average person just wants the same breaks that the rich and powerful receive. We don’t want a bailout or the government to hand us anything (except maybe healthcare) but they also shouldn’t be giving Exxon billions of dollars in tax credits or bailing out banks when they gamble all their money away. We are not socialists and the only socialism that I see in America is the one directed at the rich and powerful. This is a movement where anyone with any with any issues will be heard, whether it be Global Warming, Taxes, or the income gap. No voice is drowned out and everyone is given a fair chance to be heard.

IT’S THE LEFT WING VERSION OF THE TEA PARTY
The truth is that many in occupy movement have same issues as the tea party, unlike the tea party occupy wasn’t formed by a news channel and major financial backing from a right wing billionaire. If these two movements ignored all the negative media and just sit down and talked they would see that there is common ground and if the two movements ever joined politicians and news media all over the country would be scared to death.

COVERAGE
I would like to thank people like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and others who have given the movement a fair shot. People like Bill O’reilly who tow the company line have attacked the movement and went as far as calling it dead while not even giving it a shot or speaking to anyone involved. They make wild claims with no real evidence and if they had any “victims” of the occupiers like they claim you can bet they would have been on the air already.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
I think it has already changed the dialogue, thanks to the right wing of our government all we where talking about was cutting spending from middle class and poor people like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, college grants etc. but now we are talking about Jobs, cutting loopholes that rich people receive and even raising taxes for the rich while cutting taxes for the middle class. Yes there is negatives with the movement but lets not forget the original tea party was not peaceful and quiet, some times you have to break a few laws to change things for the better. BUT now I think it’s time for the movement to leave the streets and start working towards real change, start getting behind candidates, raising money to run TV commercials to get their points of view across and to become real players in Washington. Like it or not change will only come from Washington.