Letter to the Editor

Thankful for Occupy Wall Street effort

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

To the Editor:

In this season of thanksgiving I am writing in order to give thanks to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.

They have courageously called attention in a peaceful manner to the fraudulent and outright illegal activity that Wall Street and other corporate elites have perpetrated on the American people. They protest the failure of our government to punish the criminal corporations and the people that run them.

They protest against the fact that our government rewarded those organizations through bailouts without requiring them to change their business practices. And they have refused to allow either political party to co-opt their agenda because both parties have been accomplices in their crimes. In a word, Occupy Wall Street is our last hope for preventing America from becoming a corporate controlled police state.

Admittedly, the Tea Party started out protesting against the bailouts, and a few prominent Tea Party members and local Tea Party organizations have endorsed the OWS movement. Unfortunately, the bulk of the Tea Party quickly got co-opted by archconservative fundamentalist Christian Republicans and became a corporate-funded fake grassroots organization.

They no longer have any credibility as an organization working in the public interest. They are too busy claiming Obama is a Muslim Kenyan that is going to take their guns away.

So too, many conservatives angrily reject the OWS movement by saying that we should blame government not Wall Street. But it is Wall Street and its ilk that bought our federal government lock stock and barrel. Sure, Congress, Bush, and Obama share responsibility, but only because they sold their souls to Wall Street, the military industrial complex, energy companies and the health insurance industry to name a few.

It is important to understand that the politicians, pundits, and journalists blaming government instead of Wall Street and its ilk do so because they are shills for those organizations and they want to distract you from Wall Street's corruption. As such, they have no credibility.

Other conservatives mock the movement and tell the protesters to get a job. Many of the protesters do have jobs and protest in their off hours. But simple-minded exhortations to get a job are idiotic when in October 13.8 million people are officially listed as unemployed, but the economy officially created only 80,000 jobs in the month.

Once again, the people saying these things are shills trying to play on the emotions of working Americans and distract you from Wall Street's corruption. They have no credibility.

So thank you. Occupy Wall Street. I wish you the best. I hope you succeed in educating the American people. I hope your movement grows. I hope you persevere. And I hope your movement results in real reform that favors the public interest.

Bruce Sanders

Greencastle