Caught Up In the Madness

Hectic seems to be the best way to describe my life as of late, though that is never an excuse to not be productive.  I'm afraid I've plum run out of excuses, and thus befittingly abashed, I will create something for your and my amusement.  The time is right, the tide is rolling, and I am having just a ball riding it into shore.  I intended to give you next my family's grand Southern adventure, which I have been diligently penning by hand, I'll have you know, but I've been sidetracked by an incredible event that began in a small park near Wall Street.  The Occupy Wall Street Movement is sweeping wildly across the nation, and the frenzy seems to be swelling along with the crowds.  And I've been following it, thanks to the magic of Facebook (you bastards.) and the great folks I've had the honor of getting to know over the last few years, from its very beginning.  Social media, for all its faults and frustrations, has a distinct benefit protesters of the past did not have-they can link people of like minds far more rapid.  It's a blessing to be an activist today.  I would love to participate in their big Wall Street gathering, but for the time being, I'm relegated to being local grassroots.  There is going to be an Occupy Pittsburgh protest, and I will be there, finally among real people who share in the suffering we've all had to face.
I don't know the cultural status of all who may read these words.  Let me tell you what it's like on the front lines today, down here in the working class.  Every day we face a new terror, a new disaster in the making.  There is no safety net, no easing of anxiety.  For some of us, it's outstanding medical bills we can never pay, so we've given up and avoid our phones when collection agency numbers start showing up on the caller ID by the dozens daily.  For some of us, it's watching our meager jobs dry up more and more, should be be fortunate enough to even have a job, or, to be more precise, two very poor paying jobs with ungodly long hours and filthy conditions.  It's living in fear that one day we will come to work, only to be told the business was shutting down and relocating to some other country, and sent home with nothing but a fraction of our wages doled out to us by the unemployment office.  For some of us, it's going to interview after interview, day after day, for six months, a year, eighteen months, two years...longer...and having to be told over and over we are overqualified, over-educated, or out of work too long to be considered for hiring.  Meanwhile, we have such crushing financial debt from college, we have literally no hope of ever paying it off, even if we could get a job that paid more than McDonald's.  For some of us, it's trying to keep together our families, watching every day grind us down, every catastrophe take years off our lives.  It's watching our children struggle, with such a sense of hopelessness because there is nothing we can do to help.  For some, it's waiting for the day the sheriff shows up to evict us from our homes because we fell behind on a mortgage we barely understood in a system designed to make us fail from day one just to steal our homes out from under us.
We weren't meant to live this way, under constant threat of attack, of losing everything no matter how hard we work.  Not when you get a glimpse of the champagne wishes and caviar dreams set.  They just don't seem to understand what we peasants are so riled up about.  They already bought the government, and they already own the world, but it isn't enough for them.  They want to watch us suffer and die for their pleasure.  We have become a spectator sport for the obscenely wealthy.  They observe from afar as the throngs and dirty hordes fight like starving dogs for the scraps they left behind.  It's really just that simple.
Revolution is born of this kind of stuff, as history should have taught everyone.  It is a very bad idea to oppress the masses with the crushing weight of poverty and despair.  We are running out of things to lose, and we want to push back and we want justice and we want power restored to the common man, which is what government is for, I think.
It's hard to tell for sure what government has evolved into, given the way the world is headed today.  The Arab Spring and the European economic collapse, and the bankrupting of Iceland, Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy, all this was precipitated by bad government, corrupt leaders in cahoots with the moneyed peoples of the world.  If the governments of the world had to operate the way the poorest have to in order to survive, if we could take all the corrupted money out of the governments, what would that look like?  If all monies collected by, say, the U.S. government had to go back to the people to provide for the people, to benefit the nation as a whole instead of divvied up and given to bankers and investors and black holes and private contractors and speculators, what would our nation be?  Healthier, happier, more peaceful, more productive, self-sufficient, wealthier in general, or at least I tend to believe it would be.  I am not against governing at all.  There has to be some sort of body politic, so to say.  I am against governing by ownership class.  The bloated belly of the beast, the gluttonous piggy bank full of the world's wealth controls where the money goes, and that is the problem.  They self-regulate with our money.  And government can or will not do anything to stop it or change it, because of the money funnel directly to the politicians.  We've been left out of the loop, and it's starting to dawn on some of us, and really starting to piss some of us off.
We have a right to be treated as humanely as possible by who we work for.  We have a right to be heard, even if we haven't the dollars to buy air time.  We have a right to live free from the fear-driven economic policies of the richest one percent.  We have a right to have time with our loved ones who work so hard to provide the necessities and comforts for a good home.  We have a right to be as healthy as we can be, with access to proper medicines, tests, equipment, and procedures, in a system that does not create profit from the sick.  We have a right to seek higher education should we show the aptitude and desire to learn and become productive members of our society, without creating overwhelming debt and no hope for employment.  We have rights, because WE are people, and corporations are not, and corporations do not get to have the same entitlements or rights the people have, because corporations are not living beings; they are made up of living beings who have to struggle and sweat and fight it out in the trenches for next to nothing while the elite class sip and sup and drain the life out of the ninety-nine percent who made them so rich.
The tide of anger, of revolution, of hope and fear and desperation has begun its march across the sea of change, and once it hits the shore, we will see how well built the sand castles of the mighty are, or just how much money it will take to sop up the flood.
I'm ready to be part of this.  I speak for those who need a voice, for those too busy working, or too sick or weakened by illness, to be in the crowd.  I will be there for you, and I will represent us all, and I will do so with head held high.
Peace to us all,
Tanya