Saturday, October 1, 2011

10/1/11 #OccupyChi Day 9

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It started a few months ago. It was just before I started my new job back home in Chicago. It came as a tweet from @AnonymousIRC. It was a re-tweet from @DOR about #OccupyWallStreet. Over the course of time we tweeted back and fourth about the the aims of the Days of Rage.

It was summed up in the phrase "One Citizen. One Vote One Dollar." The idea was simple: Get the corrupting influences out of the U.S. Government. Needless to say this got my attention. It was not a Socialist agenda. It was not a Fascist agenda. It was not an Anarchist agenda. It was the simple idea that the Corporations are corrupting the government of the United States, and polluting the environment of this Democratic Republic.

As I wrote in 2007 ...

There is little incentive to pull in the reins of these corporations when they feed funds into the coffers of elected officials because the election process is expensive. The election process is so costly because the air-time for television and radio even at the lowest rate as prescribed by law are prohibitively expensive. There is no public forum which is not owned by, or beholden to, corporations. While it is arguable that NPR, PRI, and PBS are independent, their draw is limited at best. The corporations fund the candidates who will best serve their needs, and then collect the funds donated through the media outlets which they own.

The media is fully supportive of the corporations, since they are owned by the corporations. The current pundits of the globalized economy tell us that if a person is “good enough” they will find rewarding employment, and through shrewd investments in the corporations be able to accumulate wealth.

Once again, the corporations are paying money to those whom they find acceptable, in the form of wages, and collecting the excess, after the bills are paid to the corporations, in the form of “investments.” This allows the individual to think they have a vested interest in the corporations. One might consider this a rather incestuous monetary scheme. If those investments were put together for the collective good of the community, it may have some ethical viability, however, the investments are going into the rather large paychecks and rewards of the corporations, and reinvested into what might be called colonial expansion at the expense of the local community (Wealth, Women, and War, p 19).

To date, this is the message that still remains at the forefront of the #OccupyWallStreet movement. However, the same media outlets which depend so much on the "incestuous money" game are doing everything they can to muddy the waters and smear the message.

I have spent some time at #OccupyChi, and as you can see from the videos, the message has not changed.

And on that note: there is now (9:07 PM CDT 10/01/11) an Official statement of Occupation from Occupy Wall Street.


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