KeebleTalk: Starlit Evening: Oakland Prostitution and Californ...

KeebleTalk: Starlit Evening: Oakland Prostitution and Californ...: I've lived in the Bay Area for the last 15 years. It is a home to me in the same way Oxnard, Pine Bluff, and Atlanta now are. I am accu...

KeebleTalk: Brief Portrait of a Woman: Tell My Story

KeebleTalk: Brief Portrait of a Woman: Tell My Story: ESE NE TEKREMA "the teeth and the tongue" symbol of friendship and interdependence I met Carol when I returned to Atlanta, to college, ...

KeebleTalk: Why Black Girls Leave Home: an Argument for My Dau...

KeebleTalk: Why Black Girls Leave Home: an Argument for My Dau...: Ever read Gwendolyn Brooks' " Sadie and Maud?" In the poem, published in 1963, Brooks presents Maud as a mouse of a woman who chooses ...

KeebleTalk: What This Is All About: Why I Joined The Occupy W...

KeebleTalk: What This Is All About: Why I Joined The Occupy W...: This morning I watched as CNN and other mainstream media outlets clumsily attempted to analyze the nature of the Occupy Wall Street Mov...

What This Is All About: Why I Joined The Occupy Wall Street Movement

     This morning I watched as CNN and other mainstream media outlets clumsily attempted to analyze the nature of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.   Ali Velshi, CNN's frenetic money man, propped up 4 commentators, 3 bald men with glasses, and one woman with hair and no glasses, to try to explain why Americans have felt the need to camp out, donate blankets, blow horns, call and respond, build blisters on their feet, sing songs of freedom, go to jail, and shut down streets with their bodies in growing waves from one city to another. The woman, admitted the unorganized group may have a point.  Joblessness has remained steady.  But baffled,  Velshi, discredited the Americans on the street saying they were unfocused.  "What is it that they want?" he said.  The Tea Party Movement, he said, had a focus; government was too big and Obamacare offended them.  Ali Velshi reminds me of the woman in the New York subway station I stood in this summer, as I waited in line to get directions back to the airport.
     About five of us stood dripping in what had to be at least 115 degree subterranean heat, trying to get service while she finished her lunch.  I could feel the air-conditioning waft through the portal through which she was supposed to exchange train tickets, change and directions to those of us suspended in her line.  She then answered a phone call on her cell phone without acknowledging us.  I was too tired and hot to get my blood up, but the others in line cursed her.  I understood why, but I had a long haul and needed to remain chilled.
     Ali Velshi's refusal to see the pain and recognize his likeness to the folks on the street, determined to be heard, determined to exact change, reminds me of that woman; she had made it and was on the other side of the glass looking at a group of stoolies who needed her assistance to move forward.
     She derived some sort of power from our helplessness.  Our need for her assistance was weakness.  She was well-favored, somehow, there on the other side of the glass.  She would take her time, separated as she was from needing anyone or anything, having her needs met, in that moment: her self-sufficiency righteously manifest.  That is the dream adopted by many here:  I will one day need no one, my self-sufficiency, in the form of capital success, waits for me just on the other side of overcoming this next hurdle.  That is part of the promise of America. Another part is that if I work hard, I should be able to feed my family, clothe my children, get a decent education, and afford to go to doctor or dentist when the need arises.  That is the promise--work hard, overcome a few hurdles,  and earn financial security.  Yet, undeniably, as Noam Chomsky says, over the last 30 years, the hurdles have become more and more erect against working people throughout America as the power of Corporations has increasingly corrupted our society.
     What I know, what Ali Velshi probably knows, but must deny, and what I knew as I waited for that woman to give me directions back to the airport, is that we are intrinsically bound to each other.  I to each other human, American and not.  We breathe the same air, we have the same needs, including the need for each other.  Truth be told, one day she may need my help as I needed hers that day. That is because we are human.
     Humans are not corporations and corporations are not human.
     And although American laws treat corporations with the same rights afforded U. S.
citizens, (following the Civil War, the 14th, 15th and 16th Amendments to the Constitution, aimed at empowering newly freed African Americans, were used by US Corporations to increase their civic power), we know them as beasts, uninterested in our well-being, content with their own survival, increasing their stranglehold on our Democracy and invariably on our lives.  These ideas are not abstract.  Those people gathered on the street know the concrete consequences of corporations having too much influence upon on our lives and upon our Democracy:

1)  Before Barack Obama even set foot in office, U. S. banks had been bailed out with the promise that tax payers would reap the benefits of this wise decision.
2)  After Barack Obama introduced Healthcare Reform, the Public Option was taken off the table, thereby providing a huge win/win for the Healthcare Industry on the backs of American taxpayers who by 2014 will be required to purchase private insurance if not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
3)  In the winter of 2010, the White House took the Bush Tax Cuts for millionaires off the table when negotiating to continue unemployment insurance for those without jobs.
4)  In the summer of 2011, the U.S. Congress and the White House allowed The Tea Party and its billionaire backers to blackmail the world's economies, refusing to raise taxes on the nation's wealthiest taxpayers.

5)  Since 2001, The United States has spent  $1, 264, 185, 917, 303  on Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

6)  10.9 million American mortgages are underwater, with no hope of help from the Federal Government.  

7)  National unemployment now stands at 9.1%.

8)  The mortgage crises caused African Americans the biggest loss of wealth in U.S. history.  

9)  52 million Americans lack health insurance.  

10)  Student loan debt has overcome credit card debt at $946 billion dollars.   

11)  January 2010, U.S. Supreme Court votes 5-4 to remove limitations on corporate financing of political campaigns.  
12)  99% of us suffer the consequences of Wall Street manipulation and greed, while the richest 1% of us  suffer NOTHING--in fact are rewarded with our hard earned tax dollars. 

So, for Ali Velshi and the rest of the corporately funded commentators seeking a short, simple answer for a complex world problem:  Corporate Greed.  Americans want corporations out of our government.  Corporations, which we know must constantly increase their profits, must be regulated.  Our government has an obligation to govern and to protect its citizens from further abuse.  The People are exhausted and hungry.  Go to any neighborhood in this country and find the same sentiment:  we want corporations out of our pockets and we want our government to stand with us.  We must have balance.  We demand balance.  We see ourselves at a precipice.  If you do not see it, close your eyes, turn down the AC and listen.  It is like a roll of thunder.