Occupy The Rich
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
Today something happened I never would have expected. I found myself agreeing with Steve Forbes.
In an interview today the billionaire and one time presidential candidate intimated that the Occupy Wall street protestors were protesting in the wrong place.
I couldn’t agree more.
Of course Steve - “Mr. Flat Tax” – Forbes ruined it by going on to say the place protestors should be is the Halls of Congress… ostensibly to convince law makers to remove the few rules and regulations that allow him and his cronies to amass huge fortunes on the backs of hard working middle class workers.
Though I empathize and support the “Occupy Movement,” I’m also in agreement with those who think most of the protests are symbolic, undirected, and largely ineffectual, in part because they are “occupying” the wrong place. If the 99% really wants to affect change, they should take their protest to those truly responsible for their misery.
In other words, they should camp out on Steve Forbes’ lawn.
Plopping yourself down in the middle of Wall Street and chaining yourself to a lamp post might make you feel revolutionarily righteous. But it’s not going to do squat about changing the fundamental reasons you are homeless, jobless, and without healthcare. Why?
The 1% don’t care about you.
Why should they? They don’t even see you. At best you are an annoyance, like a wad of gum stuck to their shoe. You can keep marching in the streets all you want. You can join hands and wail about injustice till you’re blue in the face. It’s not going to do a thing to get assholes like Steve Forbes out of their plush country club comfort zones.
But if we start showing up on their lawns, if we can paint a color picture for the media of the disparity of wealth between young unemployed black men and white, entitled, Trust fund babies like Forbes, then and only then will we start to make them take notice and possibly change their behavior.
84 year old Dorli Rainey of Seattle got her 15 minutes of fame – in the form of an apology from the mayor and an interview with Keith Olbermann – when she was pepper-sprayed at a Seattle street protest. But imagine how much more effective that incident would have been if she had been sprayed on the grounds of the Koch brother’s Estate?
The sad picture of Ms. Rainey dripping with peppery goo that went viral was an effective symbol of police brutality and excess. But I can’t help but think the protest against Karl Rove – who was heckled recently at a speech he tried to give at the University of Virginia – was much more efficacious.
In my opinion, this is the direction the occupy movement should take. If you are suffering because of inequality and injustice, rather than meaningless confrontations with urban police in riot gear, why not take the protest to those who are responsible for your misery. Instead of protesting Bank of America at one of their branch offices, why not take the fight directly to the fat cats who own Bank of America?
The Koch Brothers made news with their secretive database of millionaires whom they can tap for campaign cash in 2012.
Why don’t we make our own database. A list of billionaires whom we can hound by showing up on their doorsteps till they stop acting like Oligarchic Emperors, till they quit hoarding all the money, and till they quit using their piles of cash to subvert the electoral will of the people?
The 1% need computers to compile their database. Ours can be more low tech. All we need to do is look for the mansions and country clubs.
By the Way, Make sure to check out Firedoglake’s effort to get warm clothes to occupiers: go to: https://donate.firedoglake.com/weatherize/contribute
