They sign their messages, ‘I am the 99%’. Tthe message of the site is immediately clear: while our society’s richest one per cent enjoys a hugely disproportionate share of wealth and income, the economy has left the vast majority of us behind.
"These stories only reinforce the message of the occupations. For if you’re working nearly all of your waking hours, we think you deserve healthcare. We want you to be free of crippling debt. In fact, we want these things for those who work 40 hours per week. We believe a just society should allow you to spend time with your children.
In large part, the difference between the two blogs is not the description of our economic plight. It’s whether individuals have recognized their personal struggles as part of something larger.
Those who have joined the #Occupy movement are not whining. They are drawing strength from shared experience. They are laying bare the failure of a system. And they are doing something to change it.
Their signature is not merely a denunciation of economic inequality. It is an assertion of a solution: true democracy and collective action. It is a statement of power. We are the 99 per cent."
Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website: DemocracyUprising.com.
to read Mark Engler's article published in: The New Internationalist, December 1, 2011, click on
http://www.newint.org/columns/mark-engler/2011/12/01/why-americas-ninety-nine-per-cent-have-rebelled/
Original: Why America's 99% have rebelled