I just watched the raid of OccupySF. What a sad night for the occupiers. The cops broke everything up, ripped tents apart, tossed everything in a garbage truck. I don't know what gives them the right to steal people's possessions. It's not right. The things that the MSM will report as x number of pounds of "trash" is actually real people's personal property. For some it was everything they had left. I saw a perfectly good bicycle get thrown in the "trash." They took all the stuff from the kitchen that was giving away over one thousand meals each day. They threw away the medical tent and everything in the medical tent. They took the books in the library and the protesters "university." Some people undoubtedly had medications that they need in those tents or in backpacks, which were also thrown away. All of that stuff will be called garbage by the MSM later today. But it wasn't just "garbage" like the MSM will undoubtedly say it was.
I am so angry now that I am ready to start asking to borrow a wheelchair, pack up my medications and go to the shutdown of the Port of Oakland on December 12th. I am a disabled person who can't get disability to save my life-- literally. I don't take morphine as a recreational drug. I take it because I am in that much pain, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I have asthma and if the OPD beats me, tear gasses me or pepper sprays me, I will likely die. This is a cause for which I am willing to be a martyr. That's how much this movement means to me.
If we occupiers are successful it means that taxes will be collected more fairly, it means that politics will be demonetized, it means that politicians will once again work for the people they represent as opposed to the highest bidder. Success means single-payer health care and the elimination of life-long FREE health care for politicians. Success means that corporations are not people. Success means that the pay-scale in corporate America will treat workers more fairly and that CEOs will not be earning 3,000 times what the average worker in their company gets paid. Success means the end of outsourcing jobs outside of America. Success means that people will not have to go into life-long debt to go to college. Success means new laws for Wall Street and fairness for banking customers. Success means that our food supply will not be controlled by Monsanto and that genetically modified foods will not be allowed in the food chain. Success means that animals intended for food will be treated humanely. Success means that people will be treated humanely and fairly. Success means that my son and his children, if he chooses to have any, WILL have a chance to have a better life than I have had.
When I married my son's father he was a Laborer's Union member who worked as a hard rock driller and blaster. Yes, he blew things up for a living. Specifically, a mountain. The rock he helped to produce was used for both rip-rapping (a method of averting erosion in rivers) which the environmentalists hated AND as "fish rock" meant to be used by fish, salmon specifically, for spawning, which was much LOVED by the environmentalists. The SAME rock. No, it doesn't make any sense.
When we got married in 1984 he was making $15.41 per hour. Pretty good wages for the time. Roughly five times minimum wage. Within six months he got a dollar an hour raise. This job required LOTS of overtime and 70 hour work weeks were not unusual. Luckily, we lived in a travel trailer at his job site during the week and on the weekends we went home to a peaceful mountain village.
We had no electricity at the quarry, nor did we have running water. I had to haul drinking water and ice for the huge ice chest we had. I could usually haul enough water to last a couple of days. I had to drive 20 minutes into town every day for ice. In winter it was freezing. In summer it was unbearably hot, some days it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit. No A/C. But it wasn't a wholly bad place to live. The wildlife was amazing.
Bald eagles and peregrine falcons hunted by day and bats by the millions swarmed the skies in the evenings. The bats would fly so close that I could feel the wind generated by their wings. The quarry was virtually on the bank of Deer Creek and the cool water was particularly nice on those hot days. The water was filled with fish and there were beavers, turtles and all sorts of snakes-- particularly rattlesnakes. I kept my broom just outside the door so that I could sweep the step and under the step before walking outside. I had to if I didn't want to be bitten. It was a hard way to live, but for that kind of money, you put up with it. It seemed fair.
My now ex-husband usually does gold mine work now because the types of projects that used the rock he produced at the quarry are no longer being done. The pay rate for mine work is much higher because it's hazard pay. Were he working the same quarry job he would only be getting paid about five dollars an hour more than he made way back then. He has 28 more years of experience now and working in a mine is MUCH more dangerous, but he only makes about twice as much as he did back then. Unfortunately, this is non-union job that he took because it pays more. Even so, it hasn't really kept pace with the cost of living.
The point of my trip down memory lane is that it still felt like a middle class person could get ahead back then. It doesn't feel that way anymore and that's a shameful situation for America. That is why I support the Occupy Movement.
(Updated on 12/11 to add tags.)
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