99 Problems (At Least)

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Is there still a rap against the OWS movement for being ill-defined? It seems I’m still hearing this, even though the fact that one could pretty much paste all the sections of The New York Times to a wall and play “Pin the Tail on the OWS Concern” and a majority of the time you’d stick the pin right on a story the 99 percenters would take issue with. Just because there are unending problems within this country and across the globe doesn’t mean a movement’s attempt to address many of them is misguided or should be dismissed for a lack of clarity.

Anyway, The Nation’s collected a few of the ideas from the 99 percent in a nice forum. Here’s what the editors had to say:

The astonishing growth of Occupy Wall Street reflects a widespread understanding that our political system has failed to address the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. As William Greider points outin this issue, the housing foreclosure crisis continues to smother the economy, and yet both parties are, for the most part, standing with the banks in denying adequate relief for millions of underwater homeowners. There’s no shortage of smart policy proposals to address the crises that beset us, on everything from housing to fair taxation to corporate governance, student loans and racial justice. The problem is that our politicians are primarily answerable to the 1 percent, who fund their campaigns. The OWS movement is already a success for having raised all these issues–explored in the articles presented here.

There it is again: The OWS movement has already succeeded, because just a few short months ago much of the press wasn’t talking about all of the things they’re talking about now. Check out The Nation’s forum, including Sam Pizzigati’s “OWS Revives the Struggle for Economic Equality,” Rinku Sen: “Race and Occupy Wall Street,” and much more. 

Source: The Nation

Image by Jagz Mario, licensed under Creative Commons.

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