My views on Occupy and the uniting of the 99% a year later are probably not unlike a lot of others who may participate in sharing their opinions via this blogging exercise. In the beginning I was elated and that excitement soon turned to fear. Fear for these people who were camping out in New York. I was worried because of my mistrust of the US Government and their decisions where their own people are concerned. I then pondered whether or not if the entire Occupy movement had been set up by the CIA to see who was who and who was going to stand up. A way of them counting heads, you might say.
I was totally in favor of the entire movement in theory and I totally appreciated the science behind the movement. The people the world over need to wake up and see what is happening though. Still to this day there is a great number who are still asleep. These are the Sheople.
With Christmas fast approaching just after Occupy sprung up I was gripped with the thought of the notorious Santa Chair at the Shopping Center. I had thought how much this experience had grown in cost and package. This too had become another iconic money making tool and the prices were climbing beyond what some families could afford and in this case it was for the novelty of a visit to Santa.
My friend and I were shopping and Santa had left his post and gone off for a break , his chair was vacant. I maneuvered over the gold cord enclosure and sat in the chair feet up over the side of the big chair arms. My friend took photographs. We did this for the express reason of making a meme Occupy Santa. The commercialism of Christmas and the heartache that is caused because of lack of family finances is what highlighted this. Large corporations were the ones benefiting here and families were suffering year after year and going deeper into debt.
Doing this photograph was a little bit of light relief as, personally, I no longer take part in the Shopping Center Santa charade. I had given this up long before. My friends soon caught on to the idea. They had their own experiences. They had found that to go to our local tip was becoming an expense that was out of the ordinary peoples reach. We used to have a wonderful recycling depot but council decided it could make money and gave the contract up to others who became expensive and no one visited and the place went broke. So they did a meme of OCCUPY THE TIP. I did understand fully as soon as I saw this. We were being screwed here on the ground for the simple things.
Occupy The Tip by Lynne Sanders Braithwaite
With the passing of time I can see now that there has been a huge shift in the psyche of a section of people who were seriously unaware of the huge chasms of differences. This was a learning curve for these ones who have been so cocooned in luxury.
There are people who are just so filthy rich that it is absolutely ludicrous to think they have any idea. Never having any perception of what it is like to wait for anything they ever needed. It was all already there. Education for these rich unfortunates was taken care of. Housing issues are hilarious because to these people the issue is – which house, not what house?
Here in Australia the spot light shines squarely on Ms Gina Rinehart. A very very wealthy woman indeed. Her net worth is silly figures. All from digging the wealth of many people out of the ground and selling it. She inherited her wealth from her deceased father who was an infamous mining magnate. She has taken on his persona and has taken to looking down upon the workers in such a way that is more than outrageous, from anyone, let alone her.
A month ago in a media conference she announced her stance on how Gina sees it all. She said that Australians should work for $2.00 a day and that we should stop going out. That was how Gina Rinehart, one of the wealthiest woman in the entire world said we would overcome being poor. Her views were not well received as you could imagine. The woman had clearly lost touch. Her next comment was that she was going to source her workforce for the Australian mines from Africa because they will work for $2.00 a day. Why and how does she get to even voice this is what I wonder. A great and formidable reason for Occupy in Australia
Occupy Wall Street (Photo credit: InSapphoWeTrust)
Strange woman, how could anyone in their right and sane mind even have any respect for any of her views on anything now given that tirade. The future is dim when this is the marking stick she is already holding up.
The marking stick I speak of is the way in which the ordinary 99% are viewed by these wealthy elite. These people feed off the people in such a way that its almost like a constant harvest on us all. It is well known that the 1% own forty percent of the wealth
Australia bears a huge divide in the workforce alone with out all of the other financial setbacks experienced. We call it the working poor. These working poor are so tied up with debt. Their income is from low paying jobs. The dream to ever be debt free has long gone and the light at the end of that working tunnel has almost been snuffed out by endless cycle of debts.
Some of those debts are not from mad spending sprees at Christmas (although a lot is) some of this is because the little guy gets nailed each time there are changes in the legislation. All the taxes change. Systems change. People are bound up in confusion trying to master yet another system of the ways things must be done.
The governments both state and federal appear to have no conscience anymore. When it comes to big business, it is clear that the these governing bodies interests are centered fairly and squarely around the economic forecasts and trade agreements. Large corporations which are in turn owned by the super rich just keep churning out their ecocide and genocide using cunning tactics through business. While hiding behind big business, the rich are wiping out the countries natural beauty all for the big bucks of mining and all without conscience.
There exist huge tax breaks for rich as apposed to the poorer working and what tax breaks they are given. The working man is sick of this. The occupy movement has highlighted a lot for us in Australia, more needs to happen still. We clearly see we should not follow the American way of doing things and should we, then this is our future in this country also.
If you don’t have a personal net wealth of at least 30 million dollars then you are not part of the 1%. Just being well off does not cut it. The kind of wealth we are speaking of in this description lets a lot of people off the hook who were feeling guilty. Guilt being the operative word here as it seems that the 1% feel no guilt.
So feeling guilty automatically discounts you from the 1% also. The world is not in a safe place with these major players having so much power to manipulate an entire generation of people with the incremental rubbish constantly peddled out to make their faceless companies more and more money.
Across the board, and by this I mean the world over, we are waking up. This has been a long and frustrating haul. It is clear we were all brainwashed in a fashion. We can see this happened so slowly so as to become good little slaves and always remain so in the workforce. This workforce controlled primarily through debt and interest rates and wage levels. And so like good people should they get tied to a debt for a mortgage. This mortgage is fraught with interests rates that can make or break a family. Is that freedom?
I don’t think it is freedom. Although there will be plenty who argue that I am severely disillusioned with my thoughts on this. You may say this, my track record for predicting such things shows otherwise.
This is the sort of thing that Occupy represents to me. An entire movement of people the world over who are in this boat together and together we recognize we do have power. Crisis brings change and the financial crisis that brought this movement about was bound to occur. This crisis has brought change and some of this is positive. Some of it isn’t as we see bridging this divide a difficult and insurmountable task at best.
Images @ Melonpopzdropz Flickr
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