The Power of Indignation

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“I have only the power of my indignation,
the power of my convictions.”
Danielle Mitterrand

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is stirring and awakening the people’s righteous indignation throughout the nation.  Its call to action is germinating and sprouting like wild flowers (hopefully perennial ones) from Wall Street to the universities and from the ghettoes all the way to the suburbs.  It’s this response of the people that clearly demonstrates the potential it has to radicalize the masses and to find solutions to the prevailing crisis created by Wall Street and the politicians who control the reins of government.

The people are responding because OWS has clearly identified the problems affecting them and the culprits responsible for the crisis and the prevailing pernicious conditions. According to OWS, what are the main problems and who has caused them?  They are: 1). the inequality in the distribution of wealth – one percent controls it and 99 percent has none; 2).  the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands; 3). the skulduggery of Wall St.; 4). the corruption of the politicians who control the reins of the government; 5). the government’s inability and refusal to resolve the economic crisis; and 6). the workers, the elderly, parts of the middle class, the minority communities and  the young people who find their dreams deferred and sabotaged.

There’s an organic relationship between Wall Street and the politicians who are in control of the government.  The former controls the finances the politicians need to be elected, and thus determines who’s going to win.  The politician who gets elected owes his seat to Wall St.  or is a big money person whose interest is the same as the others honchos on Wall St.  For the politicians, their most important task is to defend the interest of Wall St.  A good example of the relationship is how the government dealt with the demands of the corporations that were “too big to fail.”  Wall St. claimed there was an economic melt down and that the government had to bail out the corporations that were too big to fail.  The government’s response was immediate.  Billions of dollars were dispensed and the politicians had no qualms or hesitation in answering Wall St. demands.

One of the corporations that the government bailed out was General Motors.  At no moment did the politicians mention the fact that while GM in the U.S. was going broke in China it was one of the most profitable U.S. corporations.  If that was the case, then why not use the money it was generating in China to bail itself out? What’s most interesting about the bail out is that the bulk of the billions of dollars sent to Wall St. ended up in the pockets of the bankers and of the CEO’s of the big corporations.

While the politicians were bailing out the big corporations, the problems of the millions of families who were facing foreclosure, the millions of workers who were unemployed, the students who owed almost a trillion dollars in student loans and couldn’t pay  were totally ignored by them.
The politicians seats were safe because Wall St. was doing what it had to do to protect them.  It had the finances, the lobbying groups, the think tanks, the media and such nepharious entities like the Tea Party and ALEC -American Legislative Exchange Council to make sure the status quo would not be changed at all.  For example, ALEC made sure the neo-liberal legislations needed would be enacted at all levels of government.  That’s how anti-immigration, union busting, and anti-public funding laws were being passed at the state and federal levels.

Fortunately, the OWS movement responded and has seized the moment.  It is challenging the status quo and mobilizing the people.  Instead of idleness, there is movement.  And the movement has the potential to create the necessary changes in the political structure and to find solutions that will lead to a better distribution of wealth and for there to be a more just and better system.  If you aren’t a supporter of OWS or a righteously indignated person, become an occupier.  If you want a better and more just world dare to struggle for it.  Dare to struggle, dare to win. En resistencia y lucha, OLR.

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