Why We Fight

Attywood, at Philly.com has a post today entitled “Why we fight” regarding the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. He begins with the simple statement, “This is what the Oakland cops are fighting to protect,” and links to a New York Times article which itself begins, “The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades…” and goes on to discuss income and wealth inequality.

This illustrates the problem I have with “Occupy Wall Street.” There is much that is going badly in this nation, and what we choose to protest is about money. We're fighting for our fair share of the money. The money inequality is unjust, and how it came about is even more unjust. It certainly merits protest, but Wall Street is the beneficiary of that injustice, and not the perpetrator of it. We should protest those who perpetrate injustice.

The perpetrators of that injustice are the legislators we elected and who betrayed a duty they owed to us, and the financial injustice they created is not the greatest damage they have done to this nation. We ignore the other damage at our peril, because these traitors are destroying the moral fiber of this nation in many ways. The entire social fabric of our nation is at stake, and we pick the fight over our fair share of the money.

We're not fighting for rights of privacy guaranteed under the constitution.
We're not fighting to put an end to the lives of our young people being
thrown away on the ash heap of empire.
We're not fighting for equality of health care.
We’re not fighting for a righteous immigration and naturalization policy.
We're not fighting for equal justice in the courts regardless of race or
financial status.
We’re not fighting to close Guantanamo and end military tribunals.
We’re not fighting to end fraud and waste in nation building overseas.
We’re not fighting to break up “too big to fail” and restore real financial
regulation that protects small investors and retirement funds.
We’re not fighting for an end to cronyism and nepotism in government.
We’re not fighting for an end to the assassination of our citizens without
due process of law.

If we were fighting for any of these things the battle would be in Washington and the movement would be to “Occupy Washington,” not Wall Street, but we’re not fighting for these things. We're fighting for our fair share of the money. Of course we are. Money is what America is all about.