Dear Editor
Recently, an interesting kind of grass-roots political development simply called, "Occupy Wall Street," is beginning to happen in the United States, and is even being noticed here in Canada. It started with a few university students camping out in the area of Wall Street in New York, but in just a few days has expanded into what appears to be a movement with more and more groups from all kinds of backgrounds joining in. The new methods of transmitting information, such as Facebook, Twitter and others may have had an effect on speeding up the process. Already hundreds have been arrested, supposedly blocking the Brooklyn Bridge.
So far, there hasn't been a clear central message about where this possible movement may be heading, but its various elements seem to be held together by anger as to where the few free-wheeling super-rich financiers and money-managers have been taking the rest of us. Naturally, Wall Street is the symbol for both the people and the activities they see as responsible.
Up to now, the hard-right movement, sponsored by the corporate elite, has, ironically, been a major beneficiary of the frustration and anger felt by ordinary people, especially in the United States, There, the Tea Party, largely bankrolled and organized by Wall Street brokers, has been supported by many of those frustrated, angered and fearful ordinary folk, looking for someone or something to blame. But now, with a new world-wide recession, or possibly even a depression, looming on the horizon, the global financial system managers may appear a more likely target.
Somehow, when the risky games the financial speculators have been playing start to come apart, as they did in 2008, the financial elite find a way to blame the victims and divert attention from themselves. Those working-poor folks who took out impossibly expensive mortgages to have a home of their own are pointed out as the main cause of the housing bubble fiasco, while the guys who actually invented the complicated and ultimately disastrous financial trickery that allowed them to sell and re-sell these unstable mortgage packages are left out of the blame game.
In Greece, those ordinary citizens who had reasonably well-paying jobs are losing everything, and have now become the ones who have to pay for the financial mess created by the still-rich speculators. And so on ...
But now, perhaps the time has come when, as Abraham Lincoln said, "... you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Maybe that's what "Occupy Wall Street" is all about.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
