Workers are marching from Philadelphia to Washington as part of 'Operation Green Jobs.' (photo: unknown)
22 May 13
"You know how our government only listens to the lobbyists? Well, we're marching on the lobbyists."
've
spent most of this past week on a 150-mile march from Philly to DC with
unemployed workers and their families, called "Operation Green Jobs."
Whenever we come across anyone who asks us why we're doing it, I use the
above question and answer to explain our cause. And ten times out of
ten, they're 100% supportive. When you base your argument on the
unifying principle that special interest ownership of our government
must be opposed, people of all ideological backgrounds can agree.
On Tuesday night, our group stopped just outside of
Oxford, Pennsylvania, to rest until morning. I went to a nearby Turkey
Hill convenience store to charge my phone and use the bathroom. I ended
up talking to the night shift cashier about our march to DC demanding
good jobs, action on climate change, and an end to the crushing cuts
that are closing schools that children in our group are marching to
save. The cashier nodded and said, "Yeah, if Obama keeps up all this gun
control stuff, I don't think this country will last much longer."
Now, I personally believe that we should at least try
to make it harder for the mentally unstable to have access to guns, but I
chose not to get into that with this guy. Instead I said, "Forget about
all that. The banks and the lobbyists own this government, and they use
it as a vehicle to take the rest of what little we have left to pad
their already fattened pockets. Before we talk about doing anything
else, we've gotta stop that first. Nah mean?"
The guy nodded thoroughly and shook my hand.
"I wish you all the best, brother. I wish I could march with you."
We have to learn to set aside our pet issues like gun
control and abortion, which are only used by the media and the
politicians to keep people divided. When we set those issues aside, we
can find common ground and have class solidarity across all ideological
borders. And once we have class solidarity and the 99 percent of
Americans are united against the plutocrats, then the imperial structure
of the United States will crumble like dominoes.
The plutocrats have class solidarity. As a solidified,
unified class, the plutocrats have been able to buy armies of lobbyists
to influence policy, counting on the fact that Congress listens to
money first and people second. Evidence of this is seen in the Powell Memo,
written in 1971 by a corporate lawyer to the president of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, outlining how corporations should take over
academia, the media, the government, and culture itself. The plutocrats
have been able to rapidly redistribute wealth from the many to the few.
The 6 Waltons who own Walmart make as much in 3 minutes of DIVIDENDS as
one of their hourly minimum-wage employees makes in an entire year,
amassing more wealth than 41.5% of the nation. Now, they're gunning for our retirement money through slick PR campaigns like Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson's "Fix the Debt" scam. Ironically, they're paying broke college students to make their theft appeal to the millennial generation.
Whether we identify as a Democrat or a Republican, or
an Occupy Wall Streeter or a Tea Partier, must now be irrelevant if
we're to succeed in upending the plutocracy's control over society. When
we find ourselves in an argument with someone of a similar economic
situation over something not relative to our economic situations, we
have to check ourselves, step back, and find common ground over the
plight of our class struggle.
Yes, this is a class war. And like Warren Buffett said, his class is winning. The class war's tactics and strategy are exemplified by radical fascist administrations like those of Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Chris Christie in New Jersey, Tom Corbett
in Pennsylvania, and others. They collectively redistribute public
assets to their wealthy sponsors in the form of budget cuts for one and
tax breaks for the other. While their excuse is "job creation," that
agenda is demonstrably false.
Dismantling public institutions will only
lead to job losses – Wisconsin has ranked near the bottom in job creation since Scott Walker took the oath of office. Tom Corbett blamed Pennsylvania's high unemployment on his own people, saying they're all too high on drugs to get jobs. This is the language of class warfare.
So yes, we'll march to DC and make our voices heard in
the halls of government. But they're merely the puppets – the ones
pulling the strings are corporate lobbying groups like the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce. So when Americans of all ideological leanings see us on the
road and ask what we're doing, we'll tell them we're marching on the
lobbyists. And no matter how they voted, they'll be with us. Follow our
march's progress at http://shut-the-chamber.tumblr.com.
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