by Corrie Sakaluk – A PERSONAL REFLECTION
Over two months since the first Occupy Wall Street protest took place in New York City, and in the face of incredible police violence, protestors are still keeping to the courage of their convictions, holding their ground, and gathering daily.
What started on Wall Street has also spread far and wide: Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Cleveland, Orlando, Dallas, Kansas City, Portland, Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, Madison, London, Athens, Madrid, Barcelona, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Algiers, Tokyo, Sydney….I’m not sure if this is even all of them.
While I’ve heard many folks of various political stripes focus on criticizing the lack of clear demands of the Occupy movement, I have chosen to allow the bravery and persistence of these protestors to act as a source of hope and inspiration.
There is something about the Occupy movement that has tapped a global nerve. A nerve that has been on edge for a long time, perhaps. A nerve that has become worn with trying desperately to make ends meet, with trying to survive as regular working people in a time of ongoing economic crisis, with watching those at the top continue to get richer while we and our loved ones continue to struggle more and more. Our parents are working longer. For some of us, our grandparents are working longer! For those of us with families or families on the way, childcare costs are prohibitive. Most households are swimming in debts…or treading water…or possibly even drowning. According to the Bankruptcy Canada website, every year in Canada over 100,000 Canadians file for personal bankruptcy or file a consumer report.
I have personally tried to consolidate my debt on two different occasions in the past two years. Both times I was employed full-time and one time I also had a co-signer. One time I had both a full-time and a part-time job. All I wanted was to put all my debt in one place, and pay it off at a lower rate of interest with one monthly payment instead of several. I was rejected both times. The very institutions that I am expected to care about the survival of aren’t willing or able, under this economic system, in these economic circumstances, to help me in any meaningful way at all. And I’m left with no options. They tell me a low-interest credit card has a rate of 11% (that’s when they’re making money off me), but that a high-interest savings account has an interest rate of around 3% (that’s when I’m making money off my own money). Isn’t 3 lower than 11? Sometimes I’d rather keep my money in a box under my bed. And I get a lot of emotional relief when I let the scene at the end of the movie Fight Club replay in my head (complete with that great Pixies tune in the background). I imagine there are many others out there who feel as frustrated and option-less as me. So what if we don’t know EXACTLY what to do about it. We’re trying to do something, and we’re trying to figure it out as we go along. And we have a right to freedom of assembly don’t we?
I don’t begrudge people sensing something is wrong, sensing that something is unjust and coming together to express that and try to figure it out more, without yet having all the answers. And sticking to that in the face of varying degrees of state repression, from legal evictions and arrests as we’ve seen in Toronto so far, to the extreme police brutality that has been well-documented in California and other places, takes a lot of courage.
To those who complain about not being able to walk their dogs in an empty park each day, I say: sweetie, that’s not a good enough reason to prevent people from gathering there to peacefully express their concerns about increasing social inequality. And I say this as a loving dog-owner.
Walk around them. Or better yet why don’t you go talk to them and find out why they think it’s important to be there. As a last resort you can always find another dog-walking route if it’s really that disturbing for you. But perhaps ask yourself why it disturbs you so much.
Could it be that what the Occupy protestors have to say has some truth to it, and you want to forget about all that in an effort to convince yourself that everything is hunky dory? Because the last I checked, the verdict is still out on whether the entire European economic system is going to collapse as a result of the failures of the very institutions that the Occupy movement is pointing the finger at. I think it’s being referred to as the “global financial meltdown” by various mainstream news sources.
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