Disclaimer: I didn’t grow up a poor kid. I didn’t grow up a rich kid. I grew up comfortably; a white male from a good family. My grandparents were farmers, police officers, factory workers, and delivery people. My parents are teachers. Through their hard work and generosity, I was able to attend Villanova University. Thanks to Villanova, I was able to obtain a good job. I believe in democracy and the freedoms our country was founded on. I believe that if a government chooses to control its people by way of law, it must be for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. I believe that an American should be able to rise from the depths of poverty and attain happiness. I believe in the American Dream.
The human experience can be encapsulated into three identifying categories: race, class, and gender. No one chooses to be born into any specific group. You open your eyes and life has already cast you into the system. From day one, your forehead is stamped in permanent ink. Black, White, Asian. Male, Female, Other. Lower-class, middle-class, upper-class. This is what we are made of.
As we mature, we realize that these classifications don’t just define what we look like, how we pee, and where we sleep. The classifications are a part of a societal network that has been molded and formed to decide our place in the world. Most blacks born in America in the early 1800s were automatically slaves. Females in the early 1900s were automatically housewives, trophies for their hard-working husbands. It wasn’t until someone cleared their throat and spoke up that these oppressive customs were challenged. I’m sure many people, black and white, thought Rosa Parks was crazy for not giving up her seat on that bus at the time. What if she obliged the bus driver and moved to the back of the bus? What if women never got out from behind the stove to protest the system?
We may never know what justice will be brought about when we speak our minds, but we know what justice will emerge when we don’t; none.
This is where my anger and frustration comes with the 53% group. If you didn’t know, the 53% represents the percentage of Americans that pay income tax. The 53% group is anti-Occupy and thinks the movement is pointless and useless. These are some of the things they have to say.
The 53% say Those Occupy people are just lazy! Look at them in their filth!
Laziness is not a trait limited to the occupy people. I have met lazy people from every walk of life. In my building at work, there is a guy from another company that we call “the clogger”. For at least an hour every day he waddles into the two-stall men’s room and drops his pants. Instead of dropping anchor he opens a book and proceeds to read a novel on the hopper instead of working. (We can tell from the book’s shadows and the page turning sounds, not spying) Many times he locks himself in stall while others are forced to prairie-dog it back to the office. He “clogs” up the bathroom. Back to my point, there are lazy, useless people everywhere. The Occupy movement probably has more useless people than useful, but bystanders shouldn’t discredit the movement on those grounds.
The 53% say I worked 194 hours a week for 22 years at minimum wage, and I ain’t asking for a handout! Get a job!”
Good for you. You are a causality of the system, and are annoyed that your generation wasn’t strong enough to protect and support your hard work. You are no different than the old, wrinkled women from the 50’s that scoffed at the women’s movement because “in their day” they cleaned and cooked for their men. That’s how it was and should be. The younger generation should go through the same oppression, they say.
The 53% say No one forced you to take mortgages you couldn’t pay!
No they didn’t, but most people with families prefer to live on their own in their own house after getting married instead of living with their parents until they are 40 when they finally have enough money to purchase a house. But that’s the only way for most people.
I’m not saying that one cannot rise up from the social class they are born into. I’m saying the American Dream is a fading star, a dimming ray of light. It is harder for lower-class kids to obtain a decent education, get a decent job, and start a decent business. The system is collapsing around them, confining them in their class prison.
We have passed the Civil Rights Act, a landmark legislation that outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women. America made it so that being born a woman or a black didn’t confine you to a pigeonholed, underprivileged life. Race, check. Gender, check. Class?
Class has never been an issue to policy makers. Class is capitalism’s leftover mashed potatoes. It is what it is. You are born into a class and it’s up to you to trade the blue collar for a white. Fine. Sounds good. American way.
The problem arises when the “system” lends itself to corporations and big business.
Take my friend Joe Schmo. He is born middle class. He takes over his father’s hardware store after his Dad retires. He makes an honest living at first. As time progresses, Joe Schmo’s hardware store is no longer able to compete with Lowe’s and Home Depot because the economic climate in the country has allowed them to gobble up market share. He can’t compete with their prices. Joe closes up shop and takes a job with his former enemy, Lowe’s. He has steady employment, good benefits, but little opportunity and incentive for pay increases at first. He works his ass off and eventually gets a few promotions and is making a decent living. He puts a down payment on a house, marries his babe, and has a kid or two. He does this because he is a good worker and is confident in himself and his country. He buys the house because that’s the only way he can become a homeowner in the current system.
In 2008, the economy collapses. Joe is still doing a great job at Lowe’s, but the company’s stock price is tanking. To satisfy shareholders and the balance sheet, the CEO of Lowe’s orders a “cost cutting” of the company. The bosses look to trim payroll and, in turn, fire our friend Joe. Joe is now stuck with a big mortgage and couple hungry kids. Joe finds work at Home Depot, but it is well under what he was being paid previously. He spends almost all of his paycheck on the mortgage and saves very little. When his kids graduate high school, Joe won’t have a penny to give them for college. In lieu of going into serious debt, Joe’s kids decide to forego college and work at a department store like their Daddy. They were born middle-class and their kids will be too. The chains that bind us.
Someone once told me government’s main purpose is to protect those with property from those without property. Think about it. If you agree with this, then you will understand the inertial forces that drive the two poles further and further away like opposing magnets. There is more security for the “have’s” and more desperation for the “have-nots”.
I don’t have a solution. But I can see a problem and I am identifying it. Maybe if I speak up and others speak up, then someone with a solution will change things.
