A Few Joyce Words - A Little Pre-OCCUPIED
A LITTLE PRE-OCCUPIED
For weeks now, Wall Street has been occupied like a bastion of port-a-johns at a Dixie-land county fair featuring Randy Travis and a tractor pull. Cities nationwide have joined the fracas in telling the top-earning 1% of Americans that we want our money back.
The sign hung in the windows of a New York corporate office declaring “We are the 1%” was meant to stick it to the mass of protesters, the 99% that aren’t billionaires. The sign was taken down almost immediately when the business honchos got wind of it. Not wanting to fuel the fire they simply replaced it with a sticky note that read, “No Refunds”.
Most of the “occupiers” are young and unemployed, seeking a better opportunity. Many though are middle-aged or even elderly and just as fed up. What probably started as a couple of IT guys who found themselves suddenly homeless warring with a married couple or retirees who’s benefits ran out over the rights to NYC dumpsters, only to find it was loaded with shredded finance documents instead of old Chinese food cartons that has turned into an international rash of protest demonstrations.
Fox News contributors recently charged that this Occupy movement was a left-winger political ploy by Obama to cast out the Republicans in the next election. It’s more likely however that the president was crank calling senators at 2 a.m. one morning and got the wrong number.
After screaming “Pass it today!” in reference to his jobs bill, Obama immediately (and in a hushed voice) apologized for waking the 33 year-old out of work call center manager who was forced to drop out of her master’s program at the local university where she was studying to be a teacher, and told her there was a demonstration brewing around the corner she should go join and quickly hung up when Michelle startled him:
”Who the hell you whispering to at 2 in the mornin’? I know who it better not be…!”
While republicans and the 1%’ers would love to have us believe the occupiers were somehow rallied by the Dems and that Obama’s sympathizing with them was merely a late-coming public acknowledgement of his own orchestration, the fact remains the people are fed up. They don’t need to be told who took their money and jobs anymore than they need to be told to watch out for white-shirts with badges who carry billy clubs and mace and attack peaceful assemblies like a scene out of “Gangs of New York.”
“They’re gonna vote against Tammany Hall? Where’s my machete and mustache wax?”
Still, for all that has and will be said about who is to blame for the protests, not enough is being said about who is to blame for the need to protest. Not since Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement have there been this many scribbled shards of cardboard and bloodied long haired scalps in our city streets. Our government is charged with corruption and selling out the lower class. Our businesses are disbanding unions and refusing to hire us because, gasp, we want to be paid for the work that we do. And the Republican’s refuse to act on any solution proposed or supported by the “Muslim” from Kenya who slept through the senate and escaped Chicago politics without a prison sentence that is currently “occupying” the presidency. What are we supposed to do other than protest and cause a scene; wait politely in single file doing the pee-pee dance until the latch on the blue and white port-a-potty door turns from occupied-red to unoccupied green? Do you realize how bad it’s going to smell in there by that time?
