If you’ve been following the coverage of “Occupy Wall Street,” you know that the people are angry. The people are so angry that the protest has continued all across the country. It has spread both large and small cities. Cities all over the country organized mass gatherings.
On Oct. 6, about 10,000 people gathered in downtown Portland to peacefully protest the corporate corruption that our country has been suffering through for years. The parks were covered in signs saying things like, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention,” “End the war, End the Fed,” “We are the 99%,” and “Close your bank account.”
Many people spoke of their financial struggles and lack of well-being. Even a policeman took the stage to express his concerns about the corporate greed.
Our generation, the people born between the years of 1980-1995, is bigger than the “Baby Boomers.” We are the strongest group of people in the nation right now, and we have the power to make the government listen.
We want justice from the 1% (the corporations). We want political and social equality. We want democracy back in America. What happens when we have children? What happens when we want to buy a house but can’t because we’re strapped with student loans? These are the loans that we have to pay to get an education to get a good job to barely keep us afloat in this suffering economy.
The current administration has sent the next three generations into a downward spiral. When the big banks, such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, go down, where is your money going to go? The wealthy and corporations pay less money in taxes than the middle and lower classes do.
According to the Declaration of the Occupation of New York, the government and corporations have spent and donated large amounts of money on politicians and their campaigns instead of programs that fund the people.
These large entities keep us dependent on oil and throw us around with the prices. The government makes laws that benefit the banks.
They purposely keep the people misinformed and fearful through control of the media. They have undermined the farms of America because of monopolization.
And through animal cruelty, torture and confinement, the government has profited and kept these practices secret from us. These are only a few of the grievances listed in the Declaration.
The government privatizes everything. Water bottles, for example, privatize a worldly resource and turn it into something that we pay for and think we “need.” While we can get water for free through our taps, we continue to purchase plastic water bottles that are a giant waste and threat to the environment. Why does the government do this? For a profit, of course.
Protests alone won’t change or solve the financial problems that our country is having, but they can spur a change. To begin our reform, we need to cleanse the government of corrupt leaders and restore democracy to America.
-Kelsey Sutton/copy chief
