#OWS is a political movement

It is difficult to know if real change will come as a direct result of the occupy movement. The media spouts off memes like the protesters have no demands or lack organizational skills. In reality far too many things are wrong in our world and the movement encapsulates the anger coming from people worldwide.

Youth who have recently graduated from college with mortgage size loans without a home and no job are pissed about being lied to all their life.

Environmentalists are tired of seeing the earth destroyed from profit.

Middle class Americans are falling into poverty while Republicans and corporate Democrats want to slash social safety net programs to cut the deficit.

More are even angrier at record corporate profits with massive layoffs and CEO’s earning millions of dollars in bonuses. Like this:

The CEO of Gannett, Craig Dubow, is quitting for health reasons, but his golden years will be very comfortable: He stands to collect as much as $37 million in retirement and disability benefits. During his five years as CEO, Gannett’s stock price dropped from $72 to $10, and the company laid off hundreds of journalists, including people I know to have been very good journalists. I’m pretty sure that none of the fired journalists received a $37 million retirement package. I’m not even sure if collectively, all the journalists fired by Dubow’s company received $37 million.

And the media claims it doesn’t understand this movement. Actually, the media is clueless about it because the corporate owned media is just one one of the many targets of the occupy movement. They have failed their most basic duties in order to take in higher profits for the companies like GE, Comcast, News Corp and Time Warner.

The economic injustice millions of Americans face has long stifled our voices and it is only now that we’ve witnessed the complete sell-out of both parties that people are resorting to the streets. I have seen people on Twitter and elsewhere call Occupy Wall Street a social movement. To see Occupy Wall Street and the hundreds of support groups popping up around world as anything other than a political movement is to not fully understand the grasp politics exert on our lives.

Everything in the demands of the occupy movement (various locations have various demands) fall in line with political policy. Each goal would require legislation or amendments to the Constitution. In addition, the organizing of these occupations is a direct result of human to human contact with the expression of frustration of primarily economic problems. Organizing is inherently a political skill set.

We are political animals in our most basic levels. We have hierarchies, follow leadership and good ideas. We draw consensus and move forward from there with the minority pushing back against it. Or in our present case we have rich powerful interests controlling the consensus and the majority finally pushing back on a larger scale.

The political calculus of the powers that be and the movement itself will determine how much longer is can or must go on as well as its success. Will Wall Street be reined in, will the one’s who crashed the economy be held accountable, will taxes on the rich increase, will democratically elected leaders respond to every day people’s concerns… hell, will we finally see a jobs bill come out of D.C.?

No one knows the answers to those questions. What we can know rests on the movement growing until one of two things happen: At least some of the demands being met or until an infiltrator causes violence.  Yes, I am serious. An infiltrator from the American Spectator did just this the other day in D.C. Causing violence would thwart the movement and probably stop it cold.