Ron Paul is not for the 99%
The Occupy Movement is about Economic Justice not Economics (reblog this)
I’m watching feeds from OccupyStream, watching the Global Revolution feed, and they just ran a lengthy clip of some conservative white guy in a military cap and gray t-shirt yelling about the depreciating dollar. Please do no make this about The Dollar. Economic justice is not about currency stability and the federal reserve. Economic Justice is about redistributing wealth. That white guy needed a little lesson about privilege. Someone should have taken the mic next and, without insulting him, taught him a lesson about the reality for most Americans who don’t have dollars to invest. It’s not hard to speak about this.
For example, you can say something like this to a conservative yelling about the dollar bill:
The country is not broke. The US is not in financial trouble. There are trillions of dollars in corporate wealth being hoarded and over a trillion, at least, held in the Federal Reserve—in other words, being hoarded. Productivity is at an all time high and hiring at an all time low. Corporations are hoarding wealth by redistributing wealth, those dollar bills, to the wealthiest business owners and banks are sitting on cash. The problem is not the dollar. The problem is inequality. Let’s not focus on the cash, let’s focus on people and the problems with democracy that encourages us to ignore inequalities and access in favor of an unregulated economic system called capitalism.
Ok. I wrote that in just a few seconds. The above paragraph should go without saying. Obviously, there are upset conservatives in the US, too. But they shouldn’t alter the focus from justice to economics. We focus on economics and privilege is going to seep quickly into the Occupy movement. White conservatives and crass libertarians are getting their greedy fucking hands into the messaging of the movement and Occupy leadership, though they should permit people to speak, need to put such comments in perspective for the participants and observers. Immediately. Anyone like that conservative white guy I mentioned speaks and he should be followed by somebody putting that economic argument about the dollar into perspective.
Let’s get some leadership behind this. No talking about The Dollar. We should be addressing the students, the unemployed, the poor, single parents, the uninsured, Women (for fuck’s sake, women are always ignored by organic movements like this,) black America (which has been hit so hard by the recent economic crisis.) There are so many more social woes than the stability of the dollar. So many ways to make this about people.
As Slavoj Zizek was correct to point out earlier this week, the movement is about democracy not capitalism. His point, though he didn’t state it clearly for American audiences who don’t talk about these things too often: Capitalism is an economic system; Democracy is a political system. We are working together on one demand. There is a singular demand. A movement issue. It’s called EQUALITY.
