First and foremost I sincerely hope that this movement keeps its head and remains non-violent. They will get no sympathy from the broad middle class if it gets violent, and without middle class support, the movement will flounder into political oblivion.
Second, I hope the movement will focus on the root problem of why, no matter who one votes for in America, nothing fundamental actually changes; wars go on, rights continue to evaporate in lieu of state security, the treasury continues to be emptied into the coffers of multinational banks as the economy continues to falter, the state continues its nearly libidinous incursion into our private lives. For this, the movement needs to stay in touch with their cousins occupying the great European bourse districts. Those citizens are focused on protesting the dominance corporate power has over their democratic governments which they believe is the direct cause of the current global economic cluster f*ck.
Likewise, it is slowly occurring to a broad American demographic that there has been a hijacking of American democracy and that control of the government no longer lies in the hands of the the American voter. The only dispute among this demographic seems to be who is the culprit: the government itself, or the financial clout of Wall Street which is said to have wrested control of the government from the voter? (There is evidence that many Americans from the far Right through the spectrum to the far Left are agreeing it is the latter, as shown by their distrust and anger at the Federal Reserve Bank, our central banking system, and the Bank’s possibly unconstitutional power to create money and then loan it to the American government, its questionable manipulation of the American money supply and in effect its markets in a supposedly free market system, its domineering role in the bailouts, and its refusal to be audited.)
The Occupiers obviously have laid the corpse of their grievances at the door of Wall Street and a growing number of Americans are quietly watching to see how this plays out, many in tentative, silent support.
Americans are awakening to the fact that we cannot have a democracy by the people and for the people with a mainstream press that spews infotainment in lieu of investigative reporting, a Washington lobbying structure that is weighted thoroughly on the side of the corporatocracy, and election campaign financing that converts perfectly good candidates into whores of an oligarchy.
Add to this an inefficient educational system that no longer teaches critical thinking, guaranteeing somnolent constituencies unequipped to derive fact from fallacy.
Change those things and we may get our democracy back.
For all practical purposes, there is only one political party in the United States and it has no interest in representing the people.
Our democracy has all but been stolen from us. Our elected representatives work for the interests of corporations that fund their campaigns and not for the citizens that elected them to office.
Not wanting a wealthy minority fueled by Wall Street capital to dominate our government does not necessarily make the Occupiers anti-capitalists any more than being anti-fascist in the 1930s automatically made a person a communist. Most Americans, if asked, would not want any entity other than the American voter to control their government, whether it be socialist, fascist, or purely corporate—none of which are run on the fundamental tenet of universal suffrage. Most Americans believe in Democracy. Most Americans don’t begrudge a person who becomes wealthy, whether it be through hard work or even inheritance, but when that individual along with like-minded peers unduly influence the government in order to maintain and perpetrate their wealth at the cost of the individual voter’s right to self determination, a line has been crossed. What the Occupiers are saying is that they believe there is a preponderance of evidence that this is the case.
What they are saying is simple and fundamental to American political beliefs”
Power to the People
No meaningful change—in any political direction— can happen without it.