Why I Support the 99%

The 99% movement started with mostly young people, and contrary to what you hear on right wing radio and TV, this is not just about personal debt and job situations of a disenfranchised youth, though that plays a role. These pundits know it is about much more, but they want to denigrate the youth who put fire to these issues. If they can convince the general public this is about a bunch of kids “whining,” they will defuse the situation and avert the change they do not want. (Sound familiar to any of you who were adults in the 60’s?)


This is very much about change, and it is not just kids out there:

It is about taking the private money out of politics so that fat cats and corporations will no longer be able to buy politicians. It is about reducing the corporate tax loopholes because it feels wrong when a company gets a record-breaking multiple billions in profits, and somehow manages to avoid paying a penny in taxes - or even more offensive! - when they get a tax refund on top of their profits. It is about changing the tax code, so that a secretary doesn't pay a larger portion of his or her income in taxes than the CEO. It is a recognition that current tax rates for millionaires is at a 40 year low, and the politicians are still wanting to cut essential services to fund more tax breaks for the rich. It is acknowledging the sad truth that the income gap between the 1% at the top and the rest of us is widest it has been since the Great Depression, and every tax cut to millionaires adds to it, shifting even more of that wealth up to the top income bracket. It is about trying to find a way to hold some of these CEO’s and fund managers responsible for the crash that they caused with their greed and that the government permitted with its lack of regulation. It is about recognizing that we ARE our brother's keeper, in terms of the poor, the infirm, and the elderly. It is about recognizing that how we treat the 'least of these' defines who we are as a nation.

This movement is a multi-headed hydra and hard to attack because there is no single mouthpiece speaking for the whole. As one analyst pointed out, this is the first large-scale protest of the Internet age, and no one knows the “rules of engagement.” It may have started in NYC, but it has spread, and continues to spread, because the entire world is angry at the inequities in their own countries, how the rich just keep getting richer and the rest of us find stagnating wages when we are lucky enough to have work.

There isn’t a quick fix to this. The protest isn’t saying, “do this one thing.” It is saying, “fix the system!”