Occupy Wall Street

I've been thinking about the Occupy Wall Street movement since it started and after reading Ben Brooks' take on the subject I'd like to share a few thoughts of my own.

I do agree with the underlying message(s) of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I think that anyone that cannot see the issue with a very very small percentage of Americans holding an extremely large, disproportionate amount of our country's wealth is just being ignorant and is uninformed.

This is not an issue of capitalism or anti-capitalism as has been argued by some opponents to the movement, it's an issue of brining notice to the fact that our systems are severely flawed and that is exactly what OWS has done.

Ben's says:

Because to me the message of the movement has always been clear, but — problematically — the end goal of the movement has always been elusive.

I agree with this. I think the over-arching message and end goal is foggy for the most part for most people. This is bad because it allows people that are against this movement, for whatever reason (*cough*Fox News*cough*), to attack it from about any angle and at least be able to make some partial justification. I wish the message were more unified, but I will say that I think we're going down that path. Lately it does feel like there is more clarity in what this movement is attempting to do. It's trying to raise awareness to the fact that income inequality is as loppsided as it has been since 1928 and that is a major problem.

As I see it, the biggest benefit to OWS is simply bringing the financial struggles of our country and it's core group of people (the 99%) back to the forefront and forcing the media to talk about it and legislators to do something about it. We hear political jargon all the time about how these things are being worked on, but then we see that our elected officials are wasting time reaffirming that our moto is still our moto instead of working on what is really important.

I'm skeptical that it can ever happen with what we've all seen lately, but it'd be nice that something be done for the better of the people and not for the benefit of our elected officials for a change of pace.