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Health & Fitness

Occupy Detroit Begins Friday

What is this "Occupy" movement about?

If you are confused by that sound you hear coming from “Occupy Wall Street,” that’s because it is the voice of authentic American radicalism.  It sounds strange because that voice has been near-silent for a very long time.

Occupy Wall Street started a couple of weeks ago when several dozen idealistic 20-somethings took over a park in downtown Manhattan a few hundred feet from Wall Street.  These wonderful children, with their piercings and unkempt facial hair, their hand-made signs, costumes, plastic tarps and sleeping bags, have sparked a national “Occupy” movement.

By the way, Occupy Detroit begins this Friday, at Grand Circus Park downtown.  You can find more on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=199722403430135, or simply Google “Occupy Detroit.”

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The Occupy movement has united around a simple idea—99% of us have been effectively shut out of decision-making, while 1% control the nation’s power and wealth.  This 1% stuffs its pockets with wealth even while their actions harm the rest of us—destroying our jobs, poisoning our air and water, launching disastrous wars, making education unaffordable, depriving the poor of food and shelter and health care.

If I knew nothing else about the Occupy movement I would know their immense value from their enemies.  The cable television chattering class is vilifying them.  The right-wing magazine “American Spectator” actually planted an agent provocateur to incite guards at the Smithsonian to pepper-spray a peaceful group of Occupy protesters.  Expect much more of this.  They will be ridiculed, pepper-sprayed, and red-baited.  And they will continue to grow.

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The disgust felt by these youth towards a political system corrupted by cash has led them to create their own participatory democracy.  All of their decisions are made by consensus.  Everyone has a voice.  This has sparked much guffawing from the Fox News crowd, the fact that these young people believe all persons have value and a voice that must be heard.  How Un-American!

The Occupiers are disgusted with us adults and our world, and they should be.  Our country has not been so steeped in cynicism and corruption since the Gilded Age, which not-coincidentally sparked the last great uprising of authentic American radicalism.

We do not teach or value history, so most of us never learned how our ancestors fought their battles against the 1%.  As a boy my paternal grandfather witnessed gun battles between striking workers and the National Guard in 19th century Saint Louis.  The memory left such an impression he would not let my father join the Boy Scouts—“because Boy Scouts leads to the National Guard, and if you join the National Guard we’ll be shooting at each other.”
 
Our ancestors fought, and their fighting, bleeding and dying created the American Dream of widely-shared wealth.  Stuff like affordable health care, decent wages, decent housing, and college education were wrenched from an unwilling 1% after decades of struggle.  Now the 1% has decided to pull it all back.  My generation has largely let them.  These young people—well, not so much!

If you are young, if you believe a better world is possible, then Occupy! Seize the ground, seize this moment, and hold it and run with it until justice and hope are restored to a cynical and corrupt nation. 

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