I was eating some strawberries for dinner, and I had some thoughts about the Occupy movement. I understand that the people in general – 99% of us – feel we’ve been disenfranchised because the wealth and resources of our country have been seized by the richest 1% of society.
If we are the 99% and they are the 1%, that’s 100%. So where do immigrant workers stand? I mean those who – with or without the appropriate paperwork – are here for honest work but not citizens. Are they in the 99% or the 1%? We know it’s not the latter. So who speaks for them? Are they welcome in the parks and at the barricades?
If not, then the 99% figure is inaccurate, isn’t it? It’s somewhat less than that.
It seems impossible to have a groundswell populist movement that stands for those whose contributions to the good of all have been stolen, but which leaves some of its own kind behind.
No movement can claim legitimacy of the majority against the few who are greedy and corrupt, if the movement itself feels superior to others. That’s just hypocrisy. You can’t claim the high ground of social justice, if some other poor slob is still picking your peaches or washing your car.
If it’s us against them, we must embrace the totality of all who are marginalized and exploited by corporations.
Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann and their ilk have called for killing fences and double walls. They have long used the “Illegal Immigration” issue has a mass hypnotic prop for distracting us from the real stealing that isn’t done by decent, hopeful, hungry workers in simple clothes but by overfed assholes in silk suits. It’s all been a hoax and a sham.
I say let the walls come down. Let the people of America embrace their brothers and sisters who are also the victims of greed. We need each other. Not for cheap lettuce but for the ultimate social justice of the land we should have inherited, and which has been cynically borne away.
Occupy the Border Crossings!
Occupy the Rio Grande!
squelch 