“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…’
-- Kriss Kristoffenson, ‘Me and Bobby Mcgee’
By Dan Bodine
Unusual, it is. The turn of events. All during the Arab Spring uprisings, beat-up friends kept nudging me, Think something could happen here in the U.S. like that? / Naw, I said. The Republicans and Corporate Right have got us locked down, screwed and tattooed; no way!
Hee, hee. But maybe not. Sunday I was shocked to read on CNN that over 700 “Occupy Wall Street” protestors had been arrested for blocking the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Who are these yaahoos? was my first thought? Tweeters, I soon learned.
Inspired by the Arab Spring protests, CNN reported, “Crowds have taken up residence in the park in New York’s financial district (too), calling for 20,000 people to flood the area for a ‘few months.’” And nationwide protests are spreading to other cities.
A ‘few months?!!’ I thought. Hell’s bells, that’ll strip the hollies from tea partiers’ Christmas cash registers!
Indeed, Santa Claus could’ve done come and gone by then and nary a gift left for any of ‘em! And maybe millions more good folks cheated of Christmas, too, if this thing really spreads. Including collateral-damaged Tea Party minions! Maybe even kick the Dallas Cowboys off holiday-season TV! Sheesh!! These idiots know what they’re doing!?!
Hee, hee. Maybe so. Could social minimalism, radical capitalism‘s fiendish bastard brat, possibly choke on its own tainted Christmas eggnog this year?
“The protest campaign…began in July with the launch of a simple campaign website calling for a march and a sit-in at the New York Stock Exchange,” CNN reported. “Over the past two weeks, demonstrations have addressed various issues, including police brutality, union busting and the economy.”
Further headlines and statistics further point to the cause of the unrest:
** The economiccollapse.com blog reports another huge wave of store closings and layoffs s coming. The parent company of Payless stores has announced that it will be permanently closing 475 stores. Borders is in the process of closing every single one of its 399 stores. Also, Bank of America has just announced that it will be closing about 600 branches, and that could result in the loss of about 30,000 good jobs.
** With Wall Street CEOs tipsy with earnings and the nation’s banks sorely linked to what appears to be an oncoming domino default in the European market, is there any big-time reason to fear another 2008 collapse? Yes!
** Barring a Christmas Miracle and a large percentage of the current unemployed finding meaningful work before the end of the year, come January another 6.2 million Americans will come to the end of their unemployment rope benefits. Big-time cutoffs already coming!
Following this string further, this morning comes news via Saving the Dream--OurFuture.org, that over a thousand activists will gather in Washington this week as part of a skull session to plans the protest’s next stage: A national day of action on November 17 calling for jobs, not budget cuts (especially Social Security), from Congress.
And if that doesn’t work, there ain’t logically but one thing left, Jethro: Shut down Christmas! Let’s all have a merry, merry…
“The American dream was built on a broad middle class, grounded on the promise that with hard work, you could build a family, have a good job that would afford health care, retirement security, a home, a better education for your kids,” wrote Robert Borosage in OurFuture.org. “The great challenge was to open the door to that dream to those who had been locked out – minorities under segregation, women suffering from discrimination, new immigrants.
“Now that dream is disappearing (along) with the middle class. Americans have been demanding change. In 2008, as the economy cratered, we elected a president with a mandate for change, Democratic majorities in both houses, and the most progressive Speaker of the House in our history. Yet the president’s reforms – pre-compromised for the most part – were diluted, delayed, and disemboweled. The entrenched corporate interests, spending billions to array legions of lobbyists, protected their privileges and subsidies.
“Voters responded by punishing Democrats. Yet the Tea Party Republicans who were defenders of Medicare and scourges of Wall Street on the campaign trail sought to gut Medicare and reopen Wall Street’s casino once in office.”
And this, then, is the result. A mean, yaahoo dog with its back to the wall. No where else to go for help; nothing else to lose. Who’s to say, sic ‘em, Fido?!
Oh, Lord, Jethro! Tell me it ain’t so! Po-Leeze tell me it ain’t so!
Hum along, ya’ll…Christmas bells, fairy tales…
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