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bipartisan, conservative, democrat, liberal, occupy, occupy together, occupy wall street, politics, republican, tea party
I don’t expect us to get along. Not about everything. On the social issues…nah. I’m always gonna be pro-choice and some of you will always be anti-choice, and there’s probably not anything we can do to reconcile that. When it comes to the Occupy Movement, however, I think we’re standing on commoner-ground than we may think.
James Sinclair made this (slightly silly) venn diagram, and it illustrates my point pretty well. We have two increasingly passionate groups of citizens on either side of a single argument, and we’re doing a disservice to everyone by polarizing.
My friends and I disagree on this topic. One friend, in particular, is of the opinion that libertarians and “tea baggers” will only sabotage the OWS movement if they’re allowed to participate. I couldn’t disagree more. We’re talking 99% vs 1% here, and by definition that 99% means almost exactly all of us.
Yes, I think the vast majority of Tea Partiers seem silly. I think a great number of them appear to be bigoted, small-minded and uninformed. Many of them want to point the finger at the OWS movement and decry “dirty hippie”, or even worse, “tech-wielding college student!”. Horrors.
But here’s the thing. We all agree that we need major change. A major overhaul. The system is what we’re all fighting to change, and if we could stop being so g.d. divisive for a moment, people, we would surely find common footing to produce some real changes that we can all feel proud of.
Rejecting the viewpoint of the opposing citizenry cannot become the sole focus of any movement. That’s a non-starter and we’ll cancel each other out. While we’re beating each other over the head with our clever poster board signs, the corruptions we’re passionate about dismantling will continue to do their profit-hungry bidding right beneath our noses. And the shame will be on all of us.
Solidarity is what will win this movement for everyone. Stand together.
Sources & related reading:
- http://knowledgeproblem.com/2011/10/10/a-political-economy-model-for-occupy-wall-street/
- http://howconservativesdrovemeaway.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-vs-tea-party.html
taken from Facebook, shared by Jason Faber and originally by Bastiat Institute
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Yes. You are exactly right, and govt corruption is he core tenet of OWS. We don’t want a handout, sorry bill o’reilly, we want justice and an opportunity to succeed. And we want corporate lobbying criminalized.