Last Day of Spring Training, April 27, 2012, Liberty Square
Photo: Stacy Lanyon
The issues that Occupy was talking about are the issues that I’m consumed with, essentially, but what got me directly involved was that one of the four young women who was pepper sprayed was one of my parishioners. I’m an Episcopal priest. This was on September 24th. I came down immediately, and that immediately made me realize that I needed to be involved. The issues that concern me are all the issues of economic inequality, the income disparity, the non-accountability in relation to the mortgage crisis, the wars that have been going on, lack of progressive taxation, student indentured scholarship, the student loans, on and on. There are so many things, polarization in the political sphere, corporatization of the political arena, all those issues.
The slogan, “We are the 99%” was a strategy in order to raise awareness about wealth inequality and disparity in the country, which most people don’t know, and it’s a cliché at this point to say that this is a movement for the 100%, but this movement, in my mind, represents an intervention by people of conscience in the country to articulate social and economic ills, primarily economic ills that need to be raised now because it’s really only going to get worse. This is a concern about the 100% of us, it is a holistic concern for all.
If you look at the erosion of our safety net, there are so many issues like that that are becoming exacerbated, and it’s also important because dissent and public voice to raise awareness about it or anything else, is becoming marginalized. There’s no space for it. That’s what the clearing of the parks was, an eradication of public protest, and it is not a coincidence that the reason given for it was hygiene. That begs one to ask, hygiene of what and for whom?
Until mainstream America starts to recognize to what extent being a politically conscious animal in this country is becoming increasingly scarce, until that becomes a mainstream realization, we’re in kind of a very dangerous situation. The citizen concerned for the common good is becoming endangered. You might say the whole idea of a common good is under regular assault.
What’s happening now is we don’t know whether this is the movement or the precursor of the movement. Is this the preface to the story? I don’t know. It’s important to me because it’s to the health to the whole country. It’s not just the country, but this pushes out into global issues. This manner of economic life based on both the bottom line and unending growth is unsustainable, and whatever is unsustainable is unjust.
I am not a Utopian, so I don’t have a view in the United States of some kind of Utopian society. I’m fine with representative forms of government. What I hope this brings about is getting money out of politics in the sense that there is some accountability or awareness raised that money in our politics is eroding the foundations of democracy, or perhaps the desire to see this change represents a waking dream that there ever was or could be a politics absent of massive manipulations by wealth.
For sure we need accountability in our economic environment. Again, I hope it starts raising awareness of something that we’ve lost sight of, which is the common good, that there is something such as the common good in this country, common good and common ground. We should judge our collective quality of life by where the “least of these” in society stand and are afforded a living, a chance and opportunity, and we should narrow the distance between the high rhetoric and political ideals in the United States allowing ordinary people to have a chance and a say in the institutions that govern and direct their lives.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
The slogan, “We are the 99%” was a strategy in order to raise awareness about wealth inequality and disparity in the country, which most people don’t know, and it’s a cliché at this point to say that this is a movement for the 100%, but this movement, in my mind, represents an intervention by people of conscience in the country to articulate social and economic ills, primarily economic ills that need to be raised now because it’s really only going to get worse. This is a concern about the 100% of us, it is a holistic concern for all.
If you look at the erosion of our safety net, there are so many issues like that that are becoming exacerbated, and it’s also important because dissent and public voice to raise awareness about it or anything else, is becoming marginalized. There’s no space for it. That’s what the clearing of the parks was, an eradication of public protest, and it is not a coincidence that the reason given for it was hygiene. That begs one to ask, hygiene of what and for whom?
Until mainstream America starts to recognize to what extent being a politically conscious animal in this country is becoming increasingly scarce, until that becomes a mainstream realization, we’re in kind of a very dangerous situation. The citizen concerned for the common good is becoming endangered. You might say the whole idea of a common good is under regular assault.
What’s happening now is we don’t know whether this is the movement or the precursor of the movement. Is this the preface to the story? I don’t know. It’s important to me because it’s to the health to the whole country. It’s not just the country, but this pushes out into global issues. This manner of economic life based on both the bottom line and unending growth is unsustainable, and whatever is unsustainable is unjust.
I am not a Utopian, so I don’t have a view in the United States of some kind of Utopian society. I’m fine with representative forms of government. What I hope this brings about is getting money out of politics in the sense that there is some accountability or awareness raised that money in our politics is eroding the foundations of democracy, or perhaps the desire to see this change represents a waking dream that there ever was or could be a politics absent of massive manipulations by wealth.
For sure we need accountability in our economic environment. Again, I hope it starts raising awareness of something that we’ve lost sight of, which is the common good, that there is something such as the common good in this country, common good and common ground. We should judge our collective quality of life by where the “least of these” in society stand and are afforded a living, a chance and opportunity, and we should narrow the distance between the high rhetoric and political ideals in the United States allowing ordinary people to have a chance and a say in the institutions that govern and direct their lives.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/