Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Peter Lemkin]

The youth of OWS Say "It's the system stupid!"
Posted by Denver Progressive in General Discussion
Fri Dec 09th 2011, 08:53 PM
As the ruling class of this country continue to scratch their heads in public about the Occupy Wall Street movement, most of us regular folks had seen this movement coming for sometime now. Young Americans have joined OWS, not just because there is a high unemployment rate in this country, and not just because they go from one job interview to the next, practically losing the ability to feel the disappointment of yet another rejection. No, they joined the OWS movement because they are losing hope that the American system can still successfully work for them and their futures.

At a time in these young peoples lives when society should be encouraging them to dream big and work hard while leaving a crack open in the door of opportunity, they are being told in subtle and not so subtle ways that they should seriously lower their expectations. They are basically being asked to embrace a new downsized version of the American dream where the mantra is to settle for less. Young Americans are hearing messages like "Don't bother owning a home when you can rent" and "you must settle for a lesser job with less pay, because your labor is a dime a dozen in the new global economy." This is a far cry from the "own your own home" and "through hard work, the sky's the limit" messages that their parents received just a generation ago.

And although the prospects of attaining the American dream is dwindling, what is expected of young men and women today has not changed whatsoever. They are still expected to take care of themselves and their families while paying off an enormous amount of debt, including student loans which serve as an anchor, impeding their ability to compete with those who do not have these burdens. And they are expected to do all of this without a decent job to do it with. It reminds me a bit of a modern-day version of indentured servitude, but unlike the indentured servants of the past, the youth of today don't even have a way to work themselves out of their debt.

Many young Americans who support the OWS movement don't trust corporations, and eye them with suspicion for colluding with their government and corrupting the political process. Young people are even less trusting of America's corporate capitalistic system, and really, who can blame them? These kids see all around them the evidence of a system that far too often values profits over the well-being of people. In fact, many at OWS have shared the feeling that American capitalism has altogether failed them by making profits off of their parents and grandparents, whose labor and consumerism built this country, and then turning around and abandoning them for cheaper labor found elsewhere.

Young Americans who are lucky enough to have jobs, often experience a reduction in their hours and benefits, while having to take on more work for the same or even less pay. They have seen coworkers who were experienced and loyal employees get dropped and replaced by new workers who are paid much less for the same position. Young Americans have watched corporations use ugly tactics in the past, like forcing their parents and grandparents into early retirement. And more recently,these young people have witnessed the little bit of wealth that their parents and grandparents had acquired over their lifetime get drained away when they lost their homes and life savings, all while the corporations reported record earnings and the big banks got rescued.

The youth of this country has realized that American capitalism doesn't work for them, they work for it. They can see that American corporations know no loyalty to the American workers who built them up. They know now that these corporations will move on to the next desperate population that's willing to work for next to nothing. When you consider this, you can understand why these young adults question why they should be forced to work in, and remain loyal to a system where all but the minority come out on the losing end. Yet this is something that is rarely ever talked about in the main stream media. It's almost as if there are no other possible alternative systems but our own to speak of.

The youth, along with the rest of America, are locked into a dysfunctional system that allows the privileged few to control and distribute all of the resources and rewards that this country produces, while keeping a disproportionate amount for themselves. When you consider that Young people are generally at the bottom of this system, it's not really not difficult to understand why you hear them throwing that socialism word so often. Trust the American system after what they have seen? They'd be blind fools to do so. But thankfully, America's youth are far from fools, and education, along with social networking and the internet in general have opened them up to the other ways that people work and live in the world. Unlike some older generations, who often associated the word socialism with Soviet Russia and fear, today's youth views socialism with less negatively and they are less afraid it then they are for their own uncertain futures in the system they are stuck in now.

Many young Americans see the economic injustices and moral failures of American capitalism, and no longer believe that the system we have in place can allow them to achieve a better life than their parents had. This is one of the reasons why young American's have looked elsewhere for answers, and in doing so, they experimented in creating their own micro societies at Occupy Wall Streets all across the country. The OWS system, is composed of direct democracy and values equality over all. It is a system that much more closely resembles socialism then it does capitalism, and it is also one of OWS's greatest successes. Through these micro societies, OWS showed themselves and America that the system they created can be truly representative of the will of the people, while also being morally responsible. A claim that American capitalism can't yet make.

Politicians beware, the young people of this country, many of whom make up a good percentage the OWS movement, want more than your typical political talk and band-aid solutions. These patriotic Americans want to change the whole system to more closely resemble the one that they have created. Some within the OWS movement, some say that if implemented in America, a system like theirs could allow for capitalism in some form if it were properly regulated and non predatory. Others say they would prefer not to have capitalism, because the powerful always find a way to strip away regulations. Either way, the one thing everyone can agree on is that the energy that the OWS movement has produced, the same energy that young people are tapping into, is so powerful that it not only leaves the ruling class shaking in their boots, but it also makes them extremely dangerous as they are willing to use any means necessary to make sure that change doesn't happen.

As they did with movements of the late 1960's, the ruling class is beginning to show its disdain for the OWS movement, because it challenges their and their supremacy. And if we have learned anything from the struggles of the 60's, it's that when the ruling class gets agitated, two things tend to happen: 1)the words "dirty hippie" reemerge, and 2) There is an intensification of aggression toward the young people who are trying to change the system. Once the powers that be come to realize that no matter how much money and force they throw at trying to counter the OWS movement, they simply cannot not stop it, we will see that increased aggression occur.

In the end, the reason that OWS is so revolutionary is simply because those who have created it, lived it and support it, believe that they have created a fluid and admittedly imperfect, but altogether better system of living than the one they were born into. And once you see and experience something better than what you had before, you never want go back to the old. So, the OWS movement will continue to evolve in a fight for its survival, and young Americans will rightly go on occupying and practicing civil disobedience until they see a system in place that will allow them and their fellow citizens to live a decent life, while giving them a renewed sense of hope for their futures. And to that I say solidarity forever!