So, What's Up with the “Occupy / 99%” Movement? Is a “League of Non-Voters” Coming? Is Music Playing a Role?

    
A GUIDE special feature...
    
    
[If you began reading this in the Acoustic Americana Music Guide's news feature edition of November 11, 2011, then scroll down to pick up where you left off. It's clearly marked.]
    
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SO, WHAT'S UP WITH THE “OCCUPY / 99%” MOVEMENT?
    IS A “LEAGUE OF NON-VOTERS” COMING? IS MUSIC PLAYING A ROLE?
    
    This protest movement is different in its modes of expression. From the “people's microphone,” the group repetition of every word from every person who speaks at the podium (the unforeseen consequence of New York City officials banning microphones and amplifiers) – to the instant, global ability to communicate and silently organize via social media and the unlikely associations that brings. Early on, this had “Arab Spring”-like indications of something rolling and gathering inertia on its own internal energy. It seemed a growing gathering fed by a wellspring so formidable that the eventual magnitude of its size and capability of its adherents scared .the hell out of those determined to control change for their own ends.
    
    But the weather is getting colder. And problems have begun to arise. Uniquely, the movement chose to be leaderless. That opened it up to other problems. It could be co-opted i in any given community to pursue an agenda not compatible with participants everywhere else. And the movement seems stuck on that “Occupy” moniker that now seems apt to describe ratty deployments of dirty-looking tents. All-in-all, it would do better to change its name everywhere to “The 99% Movement.” That could help refocus and regain what once seemed coherent, but is far less so as the weeks drag on and the crazy-quilt of participants becomes more diverse and ragged with a plethora of fragmented fringe-movement messages.
    
    Is it a political or an economic or a social justice movement? Yes. The absence of a sound-byte identity and simple mission statement has made it easy for politicians to trivialize, and that adds to the frustrations of the movement's participants with politicians who ignore them. It's not a scenario to gain political influence or a seat at the table.
    
DISENFRANCHISEMENT, AND OPTING-OUT OF VOTING ?
    
    Could the masses that comprise the 99%, in and out of the movement, be induced by manipulators to feel deeper disillusionment, and “guided” to see no point in one thing in particular – voting? Yes. Carefully examine the many public opinion polls and the trends are already clear.
    
    Young voters, who finally participated in big numbers in 2008, helped elect Barack Obama. For the first time since 18-year-olds got voting rights in the early '70s, people under 30 made a decisive difference in a presidential election.
    
    As a group, and far beyond the Occupy movement, young people are not inspired to vote this time around. And they are not alone.
    
    Without a zealous Tea Party Republican nominee, the teabaggers may stay home. On the opposite side, the absence of a coherent, innovative Democratic Party agenda being pursued by the White House means that progressives may stay home. All the signs are there.
    
    The wealthy can spend money to support their agenda or simply to seed mistrust among others. It's happened before. They could simply make the downtrodden more disillusioned. Disillusioned enough to disenfranchise themselves.
    
    An ultimate irony is coming: during the Civil Rights Movement, the disenfranchised fought for their rights to vote. Now, disillusioned masses might, in droves, give up entirely on the notion of bothering to vote. Why? They may see voting as a useless act that their opponents will cynically co-opt to legitimize an election in which all supposedly participated equally. But with organized efforts to disenfranchise voters, particularly in minority communities and districts, it's already evident that we do not have a level playing field.
    
    Organized disenfranchisement should make every American angry enough to fight for the votes of all to be counted. But it isn't. The seeds have been carefully cultivated to make us fear the intrusion of “those people,” those who “have no business voting,” whether they are suspected of being illegal immigrants or convicted felons or simply too stupid to cancel-out the votes of the informed.
    
    The net effect isn't to make everyone fight for their rights. More people than ever are simply disgusted and sensing futility. Add those who have invested their emotional energy in movements that have not succeeded, whether teabaggers or 99 percenters, and you have an unprecedented number who just don't see any point in paying attention anymore to bloviating, do-nothing politicians.
    
    Dylan Ratigan, TV host and creator of a “Get money out of politics” website, has been presenting evidence. His data shows that 94% of the time, in any election for any office, the candidate with the most money wins. And who has the money to purchase their politicians?
    
    It's shocking but not surprising. Former California Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh famously said three decades ago that “Money is the mother's milk of politics.” Will Rogers remarked in the 1920s about voting for politicians that, “It only encourages them.” He also observed, “We have the finest government money can buy.”
    
A “LEAGUE OF NON-VOTERS” - ?
    
    We may soon be governed by people who literally do not represent us, because too many of us see no point in fighting the overwhelming spending by corporations that purchase politicians to do things their way. With that conclusion reached, why vote?
    
    It's not individual or group apathy. It would be an intentional act, driven by entrenched and widespread disgust. It's the electoral equivalent of a sit-in. It will be tantamount to an organized “League of Non-Voters.”
    
    And while that will bring hoots of celebration in all those big, black-glassed corporate headquarters towers, it's not good for America. How many of us will see government as legitimate when it is elected by a decreasing minority who vote their personal interests, while everyone else perceives the futility of trying to make a difference for the common good?
    
    It's conceivable that someone will see an opportunity to get in front of this phenomenon and actually organize “The League of Non-Voters.” It could be a powerful tool for either side. It would work like this: “We won't vote for you, or for anybody, or for or against anything, unless and until you start doing what we want, advocating what we want, proposing serious measures and plans and legislation to accomplish what we want, looking out for us, working for our needs and interests, instead of the greedy desires of the corporations and rich special interests who bought you and your favor. Go ahead, keep working only for them, and we will simply stop acknowledging your authority or your legitimacy. If you wish to be irrelevant to us, we will make you irrelevant to us.”
    
    It could be the ultimate expression of “Speaking truth to power,” or in the '60s phrase, bringing “Power to the People.” It could also get very, very ugly. But it may be time.
    
    We find ourselves less hopeful. But...
    
ONE GOOD, PROTEST SONG ?
    
    Artists, throughout history, have been the ones to inspire action and fortitude with enduring images and poetic and powerful words and moving songs, and to create epistles of courage when things appear hopeless.
    
    Seems like one, good protest song could make a difference, doesn't it?
    
    Those songs are being written and performed. Recording artists, some on major folk labels, are contributing revenues from sales of their songs to the ubiquitous, if intentionally leaderless “Occupy” movement.
    
    A recent Red House Records press release began with the words, “In solidarity with the 'Occupy Wall Street' protestors, Americana songwriter Pieta Brown is offering her song 'I Want It Back'...”
    
I DREAMED I SAW JOE HILL LAST NIGHT...
    
    There's a well-timed new book on Joe Hill, the 1914 labor organizer. He was made famous by Joan Baez when she sang at Woodstock, “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you or me, says I 'But Joe, you're ten years dead,' 'I never died,' said he, 'I never died,' said he.”
    
    Hill was accused of murder amidst labor strife, tried and executed by firing squad. The new book by William M. Adler, “The Man Who Never Died,” presents new evidence that Hill was innocent and framed by the Robber Barons to scare-off the labor organizers. Those were dangerous times. At stake was whether a wealthy few would wield the bulk of the power in society, and be able to keep the deck stacked for themselves. Do our times mirror those?
    
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[If you started reading in the November 11 edition of The Guide's News Features,
    
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WHITHER THE “OCCUPY” MOVEMENT'S MESSAGE ?
    
    On Wednesday, L.A. Times reporter David Lazarus, speaking on KPCC, said, “The Occupy site is essentially just across the street from where I work at the Times. It's changed. It doesn't look like a political demonstration anymore. There are a lot of homeless there now. Frankly, it looks like Hooverville.”
    
    Hooverville was the name given to any of the many – far too many – encampments of dispossessed people, all over America, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. They were self-named because President Herbert Hoover was pursuing policies to protect wealth, rather than help the dispossessed masses.
    
    L.A. Police Chief Charley Beck quickly challenged Lazarus. Remark, saying, “That's true of the South Lawn [at City Hall]. The North Lawn is very much a political demonstration.”
    
    Lazarus went on to note changes in the movement's outward expressions. The media, in general, has gone through a series of evolutions, equivocations, and reinterpretations of the Occupy movement, aside from the unrelenting attack and fear mongering by Fox News.
    
    Meanwhile, powerful opponents of the array of “occupy” sites seem to believe the fervor will be chilled and eventually frozen by the arriving winter. If that happens, what will it portend?
    
    History is filled with examples of people who became outraged over various injustices – real or perceived – and who, once they vented their spleens, left the stage. Sometimes they sulked away, resigned to the futility of trying to change things. (Some, from hopeless bitterness, have brought tragic change where no other kind seemed possible to them.) Sometimes they left after gaining a sense of empowerment simply by participating in a group (“misery loves company”), and evolved to console themselves in the notion that “We certainly showed THEM!” Once in awhile, movements achieve some measure of the change they seek.
    
THE ROLE OF PROTEST SONGS IN SOCIO-POLITICAL MOVEMENTS
    
    Past movements have given us a rich legacy in song, often more evocative of lamentation than celebration. Protests don't often produce a Magna Carta. We usually get a Whiskey Rebellion. Sometimes, what starts as Equalte, Liberte, Fraternite, becomes a Reign of Terror.
    
    Even the Abolitionists and the Union Army got an Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves only in areas controlled by the Confederacy, and not in areas controlled by the North: “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free, His truth goes marching on” – but it only marched-on in places the singers didn't already control. There are political equivocations that the songs do not include.
    
    The songs were key. The movements that history remembers? They all had that one thing in common: they gave us music that defined their struggles and their times and shaped how we continue to see them today. Contradictions and hypocrisies are forgotten. Music distills and simplifies and unifies the message and defines the meaning we hold in our time.
    
    Sometimes, movements were successful when they were easy to polarize, like Civil Rights for African-Americans in the South, and less successful where they were more difficult to focus, like school busing to achieve racial integration in Boston. “We Shall Overcome” remains a plaintive anthem of achievement and a reminder that not every need for justice has been fulfilled.
    
DID MUSIC END THE VIETNAM WAR ?
    
    Some movements celebrate their key roles in changing things, when in fact their influence is questionable. Take the '60s antiwar movement and the eventual realization that Vietnam was a black hole that would devour whatever resources – including blood – that were poured into it.
    
    There is evidence that the military itself threw in the towel because discipline had broken-down. It was broken so badly that the generals feared the troops could not effectively oppose a Soviet attack across the Berlin Wall. The argument goes, that's why the military hastened to expunge Vietnam-era draftees and go to an all-volunteer force. But none of that is society's perception. We all believe that protests succeeded in ending the Vietnam War. And it's the music that confirms that impression and leaves no room for other interpretations.
    
    Country Joe McDonald's “Fixin' to Die Rag” resonates with those who took part in the protests – or the war – of that era, but not with anyone younger. Bob Dylan's “Masters of War” was contemporary with Vietnam, and is timeless, but it's less known than Neil Young's “Ohio.” The latter can be sung even by young people, though its lyrics about the Kent State University massacre are far more esoteric – “Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin,' we're finally on our own. This summer I hear them calling, 'Four dead in Ohio.'”
    
    Admit it. You knew those lyrics. Do you know the Dylan song's lyrics? Dylan's song cuts right to the heart of war profiteers that never go away, regardless of the era. Perhaps it was too general for the specific role we wish music to have in ending that war.
    
WILL A SONG DEFINE THE “OCCUPY” MOVEMENT?
    
    At this point, you're expecting to read , “All the Occupy / 99% Movement needs is one, good, iconic song.” But we doubt it. First, what kind of song would it be? Another angry, “f-everybody” rap? Some pop-electronica composition filled with random Outer-Limits hoots and intentionally distorted lyrical expressions that don't resemble the human voice and can't be sung by a crowd in a park? And even if an “occupy anthem” took the form of one of those – which is probably a requirement for commercial radio airplay – would the big, corporate-mega-giant, radio empire deign to play anything expressing sentiments against the ultra-rich, ultra-powerful 1% who control their station's megagiant owner?
    
    Go to an Occupy site and, among MANY other things, you'll hear a few people playing instruments, chiefly six-strings, and singing songs that may or may not have a coherent context of why the people are there. But they are not center stage. They don't draw a crowd.
    
    It appears to be a function of one thing, very retro and very now, operating in an odd yet comfortable mix – of technology. There's the “human microphone” that relays every word from each person who takes the makeshift podium, because amplifiers were banned from the beginning in the movement's New York park. THAT has functioned to replace the participatory need for group singing of choruses of protest / organizing songs. Along with it is the opposite end of the technology spectrum – the web and its ever-present social media.
    
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
    
    Perhaps everything has changed. Perhaps no good songs will rise to define and inspire and drive this movement.
    
    If that's the case, is it because the internet's social media, in myriad forms, has taken over? Therein lies a whole new set of implications. Individuals join together in growing numbers while their actual experience is literally contained in the palm of each individual's hand. It's no longer the sense of group action in anything like the way it was. It's a very solitary experience. People “friend” each other without knowing anything about one another except some singularity or other. You like dogs. He or she likes dogs. Well, Hitler liked dogs. Unfriend him.
    
    Point is, temporary associations align instantly because of social media, and are just as quickly ignored or forgotten or severed. (Artists experience this all the time, with fan lists that can deliver a capacity audience or leave you wondering why the room was empty.)
    
    Anything powered by social media offers no indication of depth of feeling or commitment or sheer “stick-to-it-iveness.” It's a profound difference. And it manifests in simple profundity: You don't learn the lyrics of a protest song's chorus, it isn't part of a shared experience, so you don't find yourself making the cognitive connection by singing it and feeling empowered by it forever after.
    
IF IT'S NOT FOLLOWING A SUCCESSFUL MODEL, WILL IT SUCCEED?
    
    Perhaps an enterprising artist needs to do a protest song for the movement with large lyrics for the smartphone screen to enable singalongs, and hope it goes viral at the Occupy sites. It might work, enabling each person to read the words and sing them together. Maybe try it first with “Lean on Me” as a good ice-breaker to build group unity and get them singing together.
    
    Without its own “theme song,” is the Occupy / 99% Movement a passing phenomenon?
    
    We don't think so, and here's why: (a) too many people are hurting; (b) many of us perceive it's largely because we were ripped-off; (c) we are disgusted with institutions we trusted because we were victimized rather than protected by them; (d) we, liberal or conservative alike, believe that “too big to fail” is too big to safely exist if it can hold us hostage and do it to us again.
    
    Only part of all this is overtly political. Yes, approval ratings for Congress are at an all-time low. For the first time ever, we, the people, hate our OWN member of Congress and U.S. Senators regardless of what state we live in, regardless of what political party we joined. An unnamed Republican would beat President Obama in a hypothetical election, but any specific Republican nominee has varying, but real, problems in any poll, because none of us like any of them, either. Plus, we, the people, hate “the bankers,” and are at last leaving our over-merged inheritor of the bank where we opened our account 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. There's much more, but that's where it starts feeling really personal, rather than political.
    
    Too many of us can't get a job. We can't get a loan. We can't afford the extortion at the gas station. We don't see a bright future. And too many politicians tell us we must become austere and cut and reduce everything, especially our expectations, because we can't expect the job-creator corporations to pay any taxes. That's not a message that artists are likely to accept, since so many of us have been fighting and working to return an arts and music curriculum to the public schools and to get art funding for public spaces. The politicians don't even try to tell us that less is more. We can see that less is just less for us and more for the rich, and we're supposed to accept that as the way things are, even as the poor get poorer, the middle class diminishes, and the rich continue to become super-rich.
    
    Time to remember what James Carville famously told Presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992: “It's the economy, stupid.” And in a bad economy, it's no longer political. It's intensely, often terrifyingly, personal.
    
    That's why we don't believe the Occupy / 99% Movement will dissolve over the winter, whether or not somebody writes a great song that defines and inspires it. It may go home, but it will not dissolve. It may choose to refuse to vote for politicians who offer only tepid measures, but that won't constitute political apathy.
    
WHAT WOULD KILL THE MOVEMENT ?
    
    There are those with motives and opportunities. The apparently unlimited power of the giant “corporate people” could sabotage the movement by using fear. The Supreme Court changed everything when it decided that corporations are immortal people who have formidable rights and freedoms that us mere mortal people do not have. The corporations or the rich could take a page from their predecessor Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, and hire agitators to infiltrate the movement just as they infiltrated the efforts of early union organizers in Joe Hill's day.
    
    Today's Robber Barons could infiltrate the very same social media the movement uses; they could disseminate just about anything about anybody to create uncertainty and mistrust and ultimately, FEAR. They could use social media to make Occupy / 99% participants believe deadly violence was about to be directed against them, in hopes of inciting a violent response from peaceful protestors. That was done by those in power in Iran and Syria and Egypt and Libya.
    
    It's not far-fetched. With more primitive technology, the FBI did it to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, though that movement's resolve remained resolute. Still, lies about Dr. Martin Luther King remain truths in the consciousness of some whites and Hispanics of that generation, because they were scared and scarred by the sabotage tactics.
    
DO MOVEMENTS SURVIVE SABOTAGE ?
    
    The Civil Rights marchers had TV news cameras that showed the nation, each night, the reaction by entrenched institutional racism – police dog attacks and fire hoses used to suppress marchers. The marchers kept their courage singing some very effective, very moving, very enduring songs.
    
    We have cell phone video cameras and – until they shut-off the cell sites – we can upload images immediately to the web and the world. There are ways to keep the truth alive.
    
    We also have corporate-controlled big media, television and radio and newspapers and news magazines. Still, there are individual journalists who want to find the truth. We have an internet where money buys dominant access to cyberscape, a universe so plagued and littered with ads and the power of advertiser dollars that it is no longer the open range of the wild west. There are formidable opponents.
    
    So much is very different than any previous protest movement or organizers for change encountered. Social media is still so revolutionary that we cannot depend on its anonymous participants to actually show up or to share the passion and stick around when the chips arwe down. But it's been a long time since the majority sensed it was in such dire straits, and that their oppressors were conspiring to undermine what little power they still had. Things will not get better in time to placate those who have already voiced their passionate disapproval.
    
    The Robber Barons of the first Gilded Age took-out Joe Hill and others like him, but the need to organize and unionize grew anyway. If enough people are hurting, they find a way to prevail.
    
    Perhaps there's still a chance for that one, good protest song...
    
    
    
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Received via hotmail...
    
Not everybody in the media tries to spin everything against the 99%ers. Martin Breshear characterized [the UC Davis] pepper spray hosing of quietly sitting student protesters by police in full riot gear. He said the police looked “as casual as someone using bug spray in their garden.” Every time I see it I get sick. This isn't America anymore.
    
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Received via hotmail...
    
Here's what's behind the UC Davis assault by police on peaceful student demonstrators.

In 2005, tuition on any campus of the UC system was about $5,000 a year. It is now about $13,000. If the proposed fee increases go through, it will be almost $23,000 within three years. Whenever UC students gather to protest on any campus, they face action from campus police. What happened at Davis isn't the first example of campus police attacking students, In 2009, they beat students with batons, swinging them like baseball bats.

I'm a mom and I try to plan for my kids' futures. Given the trends, by the time my daughter and then my son are ready for college, only the rich will be able to afford to go. (Plus, now I must question whether I might get my kids killed if I allow them to attend a UC school.)

I heard you speak once a long time ago. You said that University of California tuition was essentially free before Governor Ronald Reagan got ahold of it. You traced what has happened since. You said you wondered if we were headed for a time when the rich would be the only ones whose kids got higher education, because they didn't want their privileged dumb kid to have to work for your smart poor kid. You wondered if they would starve public schools so only private schools could prepare kids for college. It all shocked me and that's why I remember it. Looks like you were right.

The protectors of the 1% keep yelling about class warfare every time somebody brings something like this up. What they're doing is the real class warfare. I think they would bring back slavery if they could get away with it. Maybe they already have. At least economic slavery.

I think I need to take action. I'm going to call my kids' school. It's a public elementary school. I'll ask about volunteering in the classroom to help the kids and take some load off their teachers. I'm unemployed with absolutely no prospects anyhow, so I should try to do some good for the educational opportunities for the next generation of some of us beleaguered 99%-ers.
    
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Received via hotmail...
    
I'm horrified and angry and I'm shaking. Occupy protestors, people kneeling down with plastic handcuffs on, all lined up like the way the Nazis shot the Jews in the back of the head. This time the political prisoners were shot in the face by robocop police from a big bug spray bottle of pepper spray. It wasn't a “spray.” It was a hard, full on, wide garden hose stream of dark orange pepper spray blasted into each face. Then the cops hosed each of them again, from in front and reaching over their shoulders, from behind. It was not simply a show of force and power. It was sadistic and unbelievable. Inexcusable and completely unwarranted. Some of the people seem not to have been able to breathe after it was done to them.

Watch it yourself on youtube: go to “police pepper spray protestors” and for sure watch the short, 1:05 one by “asucd” first, just to see what happened and to prepare yourself for more. Then, you must watch the 8:34 one by “terrydatiger” to see the entire ugly, horrible truth.

When you watch the longer one, you'll see that police just left after achieving nothing, making it all too clear they had no reason to assault the protestors in the first place.

Maybe not enough police have been laid off yet. Who else is trying to remind the police that they are part of the 99% too?
- Chris P.
    
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Is it that bad? Time to dig a hole and push the whole stinking, rotten mess into it! No wait! Wall Street already dug the hole and filled it up with our money!
- Sue
    
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Don't we always hear that terrorists inflict harm and do it casually with no hint of humanity? Those university police [who hosed students with pepper spray] must be prosecuted under federal anti-terrorist laws. If the system wants to try to regain any credibility at all, those police must be prosecuted!!!!!
- Meg
    
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I saw on the news where Occupy demonstrators were being attacked by police with pepper spray. But not anything like you've ever seen before. Uniformed thugs, peaceful demonstrators that get attacked again and again. I don't know how the kids kept their cool. I could not have.
- Benny
    
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Start the revolution. As long as protestors stay peaceful and the system does not, it proves everything the protestors are telling us--the rich have become too powerful and need to be stopped. What happened today at UC Davis is this movement's Red October aboard the Battleship Potemkin.
- Cali
    
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The 1% has a new champion. Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is a lying sack of sh*t, saying protestors brought things down on themselves. He is a mean, vindictive little man who is obsessed with power. He admits to making $300,000 as a lobbyist but says he isn't a lobbyist, when he really made $3 million! He has a $100,000 expense account at Tiffany's. He says school janitors should be fired and students should learn to clean up after themselves.

He is a huge hipocrit who has taught at a university and should know, if anybody of his generation should, that the students at UC Davis were PEACEFUL and did not deserve to be assaulted by anybody, much less the police that are on that campus ONLY to protect students. The revolution is here. This was Lexington and Concord. The web is how Paul Revere is making his ride. I'm so pissed I can't see straight.
- Jason
    
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This weekend, CNN is airing “Why Your Vote Might Not Matter.” It's on Sunday at 5 PM PST, 8 PM EST. After enough people see this, your prediction for a League of Nonvoters will probably come into being.
- Lisa
    
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[expletive] Newt Gingrich! He says: “These people need to go get a job right after they get a bath.” What an a**hole! The point is there ARE'NT any jobs you ignorant mother [expletive]! And a bath? Since my home was foreclosed on and I moved into my car I take my baths at the gym! But Newt doesn't know about any of that since he made all that money as a “historian” lobbying congress after they threw him out for ethics violations. Vile ignorant mother [expletive]!
- DtimesDayR_a_changing
    
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John Kerry this morning on Meet the Press said (I'm paraphrasing), said,
“I drive by Arlington Cemetery every day, where I have attended funerals for soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I think every time, are we conducting ourselves in a way that's worthy of their sacrifice?. And then I hear about some pledge taken by some members of congress, a pledge to a LOBBYIST, not to raise taxes no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get for people in need in this country?”
Is there any wonder why we're all occupiers in our hearts, even if our little poorly paying jobs keep us all from going there?
- Lindy
    
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I am so glad my friend sent me the links to read what you've been writing. I just got through this one. Still digesting it. Much here 2 consider! I do think u r right in your analysis. U have me ready 2 believe many will B non voters as a CONSCIOUS CHOICE, not from apathy.
- Rick
    
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Received via hotmail...
    
I'll tell you what will make everybody vote. Newt Gingrich.

He's saying that participants in the occupy movement are getting restrooms paid for by the taxpayer and they need to be charged to use them. Are you going to charge by the square of toilet paper, Newt? Do you charge to use portapotties at your campaign rallies?

Your campaign donations are protected free speech and people who attend your rallies get to sh*t for free because they come to hear your free speech.

Free speech? Yours is paid for by your hidden donors.

My free speech has no corporate sponsor dictating the agenda. It's just me. So mine isn't protected enough to provide attendees a place to pee, but yours is?

I'm going to start calling him 'Pay to Pee Newt.' The champion of Bladder Capitalism.
- Anne S.
    
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New Rolling Stone, just out, has 2 strong stories on Occupy and 1 must-read on how the Repudlicans became the party of the rich. Still, youve been out in front of this ahead of everybody and I don't know how you did that. I guess because so many artists are involved you had your finger on the pulse. Keep it up!
- Astrid
    
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CNN just announced a special, “Why Your Vote Might Not Matter” on this Sunday evening. Check the time where you live.
- Lisa
    
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The sh*t hit the fan again today with the cops in cities everywhere. The occupy people are all signing individual pledges of nonviolence and where there is violence it is coming from the cops. What about the right to peacefully redress for grievances? The whole system is broken.
    
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So like I have no desire to get a sleeping bag and go live in the park. That kept me from trying to understand the people who do. Until I thought maybe they really do not want to live in the park but maybe they have no place else to go. Then I started thinking they were mostly homeless people who traded their shopping carts for free tents and only a few radicals were behind all this. But I was wrong. Almost all of us are in the 99%, and any of us in this 99% are only a paycheck or two away from having no place else to go. I need to go spend some time with the demonstrators and listen to what they are saying. Thank you for helping me see that.
- CJ
    
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These people are ACTIVISTS. You think THEY would form a “League of Non Voters??? It's inconceivable they would choose not to vote just to make their point!!! The rest of us yeah, we need to be motivated by something to vote. But any activists on either side will always vote!
- Bill B.
    
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My husband watches Fox News all the time. It makes me sick. I'm going to buy a tv for another room. I have been watching youtube and getting my news from the Internet and I can't believe all the stupid malicious lies Fox tells about the Occupy protests. I made my husband listen while I read him your feature. The only part he liked was your speculation that protestors may form a nonvoters league. That made him very happy. I wanted to hit him with a rolling pin like in the old comic strip. He drives a 12 year old car. Wait till it breaks down and I tell him I won't go along with financing a new one because the economy is too scarey and I'm not willing to go into that much debt and risk losing our house to the bank. He's like a lot of people. This needs to be personal for them. But every day that goes by, for more of them, it is.
- Beth
    
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So the Budget Supercommittee will probably fail and everything will get cut. Cuts would cripple the economy except it's already crawling on its hands and knees.

Only good thing is people will get even more disgusted that congress does NOTHING to help anyone in the 99% and we'll either vote to throw them all out or we let them know it isn't worth our time and effort to vote at all. They are choosing to make themselves irrelevant.

Obama better watch out or he will lose because nobody in Washington is giving any of us a reason to vote.

You are probably right about a league of nonvoters whether anybody actually organizes it or it just happens that way.
- Leo
    
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This is about recalling Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, where the first Occupy movement started, to fight for worker's rights. This is about standing up for worker's rights everywhere, at a time when the far right thinks they can let their rich friends drop everybody's health insurance and benefits and paid vacation and pension plans. Don't fool yourself, that's what they will do if we do not stop them. The benefits your father's job had will be a footnote in the history books if we do not stop what they're trying to take from us.
- On Wisconsin! Wendy
    
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I posted earlier but when I read this to my friend just now she said something so good that I knew I needed to share it and add more.

She reminded me of the decision in Bush v. Gore, when the Supreme Court made Bush president in 2000. The basis for the decision was that no one's vote anywhere can count more than anyone else's vote. They applied that to recounting votes in some counties in Florida, and said it couldn't be allowed because not all votes in that state were being recounted.

Her reason for bringing it up? You talk about the efforts to disenfranchise voters in many parts of the country, in time to keep their votes from being counted in the 2012 election. As she says, “since nobody's vote can count more than anyone else's, if any other Americans' votes are being denied them, then our votes cannot be allowed to count, either.” She says “THAT could be why a LEAGUE OF NON-VOTERS becomes a rallying cry.”

My addition: after watching the 60 Minutes segment on how members of Congress are all on the take with inside information for stock deals, there are multiple reasons to take a pledge not to vote for any of them. If someone else doesn't start the “League,” I just might.
- Hal
    
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I used to find freedom on my surfboard. Now I wonder if there is any freedom or if all an illusion.
- Seth
    
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Not all rich people are predators. Not all Occupiers are homeless who would be living in the parks anyway. I'm one looking for a better way than we are seeing. People need to stop seeing everything as one extreme or another.

Too many want to villify everyone else and the news media helps them do it so they have something to cover.

I'm racking up huge debts going to school to make the world a better place. Is anyone in charge of anything going to give me a chance to do that? Or would they only employ me with my new degree to make them money no matter how much damage it does? Or will they hire me at all, unless I go overseas where they sent all the American jobs, and work there for next to nothing?

There has got to be a better way and the Occupy Movement seems to be the only ones who are saying that.
    
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It's not just our politics that's broken. Our whole sick society is broken. Is it ethical if I stand at the bottom of a freeway offramp with a sign that says “I need to eat, please help,” and I take the money and go buy a keg for a party? Well isn't that what Wall Street did with our bailout money?
- Otis
    
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What I know I learned from horses:

1. Anything that trickles-down is something you do NOT want.

2. The top one percent of what's in the water trough when it's warm is dead bugs and scum and if you don't get it off there, it fouls the other 99 percent of the trough.

3. The top one percent of what's in the water trough when it's cold is a hard crust of ice that must be broken so the horses can get to the life sustaining water.

So you think there's anything good about top one percents or trickle-downs? Then you're in for getting your lips froze to the ice. Or a mouthful of dead bugs. While something trickles on you from above that will make you smell really bad and draw lots of flies.
- Pete
    
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It's difficult for me to write this. I just made it through Veterans Day and it's such a sham. I was deployed in Iraq and in Afghanistan and I still can't talk about what I saw. I come home and all these politicians talk about how they owe us a debt for protecting the American homeland and the American way. If what I see happening here is the American way it just makes me so sick and makes me cry more again. If any of you value the sacrifices made by our Veterans and the people we still have there now, then stop using everything as an excuse to buy more stuff all the time and an excuse for the rich to make more and more and more money. You don't need all this stuff and you don't need unlimited money. Try living at a forward fire control base for awhile and see how much sh*t you really need to have. More and more and more money is all about trying to gain power over everything, isn't it? If we want to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, how can we allow money to purchase our politics?
- an American Soldier
    
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You go, Larry the Editor! When I read your take on important things it makes me realize that the artist's perspective on the biggest issues just isn't out there anywhere else. You obviously research and get the facts and you always present them so they hit home with artists! Thank You!
    
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    I am mad at Barrack Obama and feel he has let down the entire Progressive movement. I wasn't even thinking about whether I was going to bother to vote in 2012. Now I think I won't and if that makes me the first member of the League of Non-Voters, that's fine. It will be a conscious choice not to endorse the so-so option of Obama and the Democrats in the face of truly evil options with the clown show of Republicans.

I am remembering the quote, 'To do nothing in the face of a crisis is to take a position.' For me, Obama isn't doing enough. Why should I make it ok for him not to do more?

Not voting IS taking a stand. It's not a case of my doing nothing. I am taking that position and letting others know that I won't allow our leaders to take halfway measures in a crisis and vote for them like that is all they need to do. It's not.
    
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I think you're on George McCalip's list but I don't see here what he wrote that is so very smart.

George asks how many shares of stock Mitt Romney owns. If Mitt owns any then he needs to be arrested for Federal Civil Rights Law violations.

How's that?

Because the Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and the 12th Amendment to the Constitution makes it illegal for one person to own another. Gee, then owning stock is owning a person.

Send all the fatcat stock manipulators to Federal prison!
    
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Occupy has been around two months and has no leaders. They accomplish more for the people than the government that's been around 200 years. If Occupy fails, we all fail.
    
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Hey, you were duped. The guy who posted a comment through blogspot put in links to other stuff! Better to take all the comments in email so you can edit and moderate! (I know, I am a site moderator...)
- Leti
    
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The Occupy movement is very much at risk of being infiltrated. You do well to remind everyone how the early trade union movement was often penetrated by hired troublemakers. I expect we will see that happen, that a rock or a bottle or something with a smoke trail will seem to come from protestors and that will be all the authorities need to open fire. I pray we don't have a Kent State Massacre.
- Liz
    
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Everything the Occupiers do is out in the open and everyone can participate. Everything in Washington is done behind closed doors, like this 'Super Committee' thing. The occupiers take donations of food and blankets and sleeping bags and tents for flesh and blood people. In Washington, they take donations of big money from corporate people that are not alive and don't care if you are, either. Interesting contrast, isn't it?
- Sam
    
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The very idea of your “league of non voters” is really really bad. Can't you see that is exactly what the far right wingers have been trying to make happen, where nobody but THEM votes? I really hope you have not planted a seed with this. The only chance we stand is to mobilize more votes than they can buy.
- James C.
    
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I really liked it that you brought out how the military itself made the government end the Vietnam War because discipline had completely broken down and the military could not have stopped the Russians from invading West Germany. The old guys who were leftist protestors are so full of themselves taking credit for ending the war. I can't tell where the flower children of the 60's gave us anything but a drug infestation that continues to cost a fortune trying to fight. The unending no-win war in Vietnam became the unending war on drugs that we are still losing today at great expense. Legalize whatever people want to do to themselves and then we will be a free country. And the drug people will be too out of it to compete with the rest of us for the good jobs. Then the 99% will split into an effective part and a hopeless part. One part will be healthy and capable and able to change society, and the other part will be dope heads who are too disgusted to want to play a part in society anyway.
- Roy
    
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You always make me think and because you write for us artists I always get drawn in and read what you write about politics or problems. You always bring ideas for something better. I don't always agree with you, but I always appreciate you!!!
- Kate
    
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I thought we were done with loudmouth hippies after they all died of drug overdoses in the 60's and 70's. I know times are bad but I remember something an old lady said back then – “If you picket it won't heal.”
- Robert
    
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“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night” too. You didn't write about Sacco and Vanzetti though, who were also executed because they were protestors of big capitalism. I don't know what to wish for. If the movement grows then we will repeat history as the power structure gets scared and imprisons everybody in it (or worse). The movement may be trying to protect its people by not selecting leaders, but the power structure may decide whoever they arrest is a leader of the movement, just so they can get a high profile trial and accuse those individuals of whatever crimes they dream up. So maybe I wish the movement would melt away, just to protect a lot of people from having that happen to them. But if these people don't stay and stand up for the rest of us, who will?
- with them in spirit, Eddie
    
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Check it out
I'm checking out
Won't buy your corporate sh*t
Won't punch your clock
With no time to rock
Your three piece suit don't fit.
I want my food
Without barrels of crude
Required to get it here
I'm locally grown
I'm not a clone
Don't need imported beer.
Globalization
Is fornication
The wealthy are on top
The New World Order's
Trade across borders
Makes innovation stop.
Mc-this Mc-that
Mc-franchise hat
One-size-fits-all success
McMansion rich
And if life's a bitch
It isn't their distress.
They're Cadillacs and caviar
We have no gas for mortgaged cars
They're sacred rich one percent
We're long-term unemployed
Their stock went up they're overjoyed
We're not sure how we'll pay the rent.
Yes we're the bottom 99
The ones the bailouts left behind.
    
    
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Our money lost and met no need
And not a single prosecution
For the trillions they put in solution
And drank to toast their never-ending greed
    
    
This is what we wrote on the bus the other day. I know we wanted a line about how they made pizza into a vegetable, and we need to include record unemployment for record lengths of time. I give it to you, Larry, to finish or pass along for more co-writers. Maybe when it's finished it could be that song for the movement!
- Jay
    
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Hmmm. Non-voting as a way to make a statement? At first I thought no way!

Then...

I see this now as me doing something (voting) can make it ok for them in Congress to keep doing nothing.

But me doing nothing (not voting) shows that it's not ok for them to do nothing more than they are doing. Which is basically nothing.

Time to look at it differently. I'm not the one doing nothing if I'm voicing my disapproval of them doing nothing. That is me, doing something.

When will they do something, and I mean something REAL, not just talk and posture?
- Ellen
    
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Corporate America is abusing their retail store employees by making them all work big sales on Thanksgiving. Many big stores and at least one entire mall are opening at midnight on Thanksgiving with their “biggest sales of the year.” What happened to the special holiday we are supposed to spend in quiet contemplation and gratitude of friends and family, of all our blessings? Thanksgiving is not a celebration of corporate marketing. Shame! I'm going to keep track of what stores do that and I will never set foot in any of them again. I challenge others to do the same. Give us back our holidays!
- Monica
    
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Let's get something straight for the mainstream media out there. It's the GOP candidates that look like a Star Trek Convention, not the Occupy protestors. The media needs to wake up to that. You have it right. I wish the others did. All you can do is try. I heard you say once that “one does what one can.” Some can, and do, more than the rest of us. Thanks.
- Elijah
    
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You MUST be getting lots of comments and replies to this. It's the best one yet! Maybe you're behind in getting things moderated or something? I've been wondering how you can get through all the email you must get every day, being so involved in so much music. Just make sure you have time to get to some good gigs!
- Paul
    
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Stop subjecting us to this stuff about radicals. I subscribed so I could find out about music events. I'll get my REAL news from Fox News. Thank you.
    
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So are you advocating a League of Non-Voters? or just saying it could happen? I'm not clear on that. If you aren't the one declaring you are for it then I will. It's time and it might be the only thing they will understand.

If I vote, that is an act that has the appearance of doing something that matters.

But it isn't doing anything that matters, because Citizens United means that big corporate PAC money buys election outcomes and they would just use my vote in statistics to make it look like one more person participated and approves the outcome.

I don't approve of a damn thing that they're doing. They only care about protecting the rich and look where that's gotten us. I'm not going to do anything that could be used by them to look like I support them in any way.
- Carl
    
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Please post all the links for the things you have written that cover Occupy Wall Street. I think you even wrote about this before the encampment happened. I just remember that everything I read from you always seemed to be days or weeks ahead of every body else who has covered what it's about.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: the Acoustic Americana Music Guide's weekly News Features lists all the url's for recent editions, at the end of each issue. We've added the urls for all the Occupy / economic collapse / political obstructionist -related pieces we've run in the Guide since the middle of the summer. You are correct that we have been on top of this since before the first occupation began, and a considerable presence of artists was in the forefront and continues to be there.]
    
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I'm not sure I'm ready to decide that my vote doesn't matter. No, that's not your point, I know. I mean I'm not sure that withholding my vote is more effective than casting it, even if I will be voting for the lesser of two evils.
- Luc
    
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I guess everything comes down to this “super” committee of twelve that will try to replace a gridlocked congress. I want to be hopeful but I'm not. No matter what, the whole game is being played using the conservative's referees and it's on their home court. If the (not-so) “super” committee fails, then it triggers a bunch of big cuts. That's all the conservatives talk about all the time. Somebody needs to me how cuts will stimulate the economy and put people to work. As you have written, there isn't one single example in history of that working. Ever.
- Lou
    
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So, like why aren't you writing for something BIG?! Or maybe anything big is too much part of that's already too big (as in too big to fail) and they're afraid of you? (as in what you write could threaten the big rich interests and their agendas?)
- Abbie
    
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I am an artist. Too embarrassed to share my name. I hope my experiences are NOT what the 99% has. But I think some of you might. So I am sharing so you will know.

I was injured over a year ago. Not where you sue somebody and cash in. Just injured and can't work as much. No health insurance.

I qualified for low cost care. County hospital. Long waits. All day. Never sure of getting what I needed. But stick with it and you do. For awhile.

I used up my small savings. I couldn't get any work. I could only work some. Not all the time with my injury. Too many unemployed are able to do whatever a boss wants. They get work and I don't.

I had to apply for food stamps. It's like a supermarket debit card for food only, no soap or toilet paper, nothing already cooked, like ready to eat chicken. You can buy candy and awful processed things but no real food that's already cooked. They asked a lot of questions when I got this food stamp debit card. Their questions told them I had nothing left so they signed me up for welfare. Its called General Relief. Embarrassing, like I said.

They told me to get my medical changed from low cost to free. I really needed that to happen.

It was all really embarrassing. But--I had hope of things getting better and a lot less worry.

Then the county cancelled my medical completely when I tried to change it from low cost to free. I had to reapply and its a mess and I don't know what's going to happen.

They had made me apply for Social Security Disability and I was turned down. I am not old but they said that doesnt matter. You couldnt live off it even if you got it. But I told them I want to work as much as I can and I was turned down. Its an all or nothing thing. You want to work as much as you can and you wont qualify to get anything. Depressing. Not at all empowering.

Then they messed up the whole thing with the General Relief and cancelled it. They said I never sent them some form they never gave me. They cut my Food Stamps because they said they had to pay themselves back for the General Relief I already received.

Now I owe them money. I still owe rent and utilities and car insurance and internet connection like everybody else. But everybody isnt injured and struggling just to get out of a chair or bed every morning and feeling worse because theres no job to go to.

Im hurt--not worthless. They are wearing me down with all this. Its messed up. Surprise! You didnt do something so gotcha. Maybe they do this to make people quit trying because the goverment is broke too--just dont bother us and be homeless and pick through trash.

I never thought it could happen to me. It is happening right now. Its wearing me down. Its embarrasing just to have to go apply. To take anything. It gets way worse when they accuse you of taking something you shouldnt have got that they already gave you. No matter how bad you need it they decide to just take it back so you have nothing. No way to live. They probably congradulate themselves for stopping welfare fraud so they can report that and look good.

We are real people out here. I want to write a song that tells it like is. It hurts too much. Im too depressed and embarassed to let anybody know its me.

My ex has our baby and isn't buging me for money but she says the state will because she needs help too. She makes so little working 3 jobs that day care or babysitters take almost everything. There isnt enough left over for her to pay her bills. I could babysit but she doesnt want me around since we broke up. Besides she lives far away and I couldnt afford the gas.

I used to play soccer and baseball. Now when I just stand up very long I hurt for days. I can't play guitar anymore and have to sell it and that hurts most of all.

I am depressed. I think if this is the way life is going to be now than I don't think I want it. I see all these ads for JG Wentworth cash now but I can't get anything from them. They take all your money and give you back part of it. You need to be a trust fund baby and have money to get money. My friend says its predatory capitalism and most of the country now is the same.

I think we may have a riot or something. I see the OWS [Occupy Wall Street] people on tv. I'd go camp with them if I wasn't hurt and hurting. Maybe I'll end up with them when I can't pay rent. I plan to live in my car soon. I wish it wasn't becoming winter. I'm selling my guitar to friend who will pay me a little more than its worth because she feels sorry for me. That hurts too but I need the money so I say God bless her.

I know I am not alone with my story. Bad and sad stories probably come from people in OWS and occupy everywhere else all the time. I have come to really resent the rich 1% who get richer while so many suffer and I mean really suffer with pain and bills and no work and no money and just no hope. People want a chance. Getting hurt shouldnt take away your chances in life.

I want to tell you not to expect the goverment will help you much because it is already broke from war and giving money to corporations that want us to stay in places we blow up forever because thats how they make their money. I think the 1% is the politicians too because they get money back from what the goverment gives to the rich corporation fat cats. They are told what to do. The whole political thing is a bad joke but Im not laughing and none of them are hurting. Obama cant do anything so he doesnt much try and the Republicans just screw with everybody except the rich. They all screw the economy so theyre the ones who make all the money. Politicians suck.

I dont want to see a riot because a lot of people will get hurt like I am now and they will just get screwed with and be like I am. I wont be surprised if the fat cats start the riot so they can blame it on the OWS people and get them all shot or jailed to make them go away. I think you are right when you talk about them infiltrating the OWS movement to get bomb throwers in there and give them an excuse to shoot everybody. But if they do it wont work because there are too many people now with nothing left to lose.

Something is going to happen. There are more people every day like me who lose hope and dont have anything else to lose. I could never be violent but there are people who already are. Something is going to happen. I hope things change in time for me and for everybody but I dont think they will.
    
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I am surprised where you went with this but I shouldn't be. I don't think I want to read your reviews anymore because I just don't like the way you think. The whole Occupy Wall Street and it's spawn is class warfare and these people just need to grow up and accept that the rich have always had it their way and they always will. The only thing the rest of us can do is work hard enough to get rich and join them. Ron Paul is right.
    
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Have things ever been this outta whack? Not in my lifetime. Maybe for my grandparents in the depression. That would seem to mean we need things to be done now, like what got the country out of the depression. But they are all arguing about how to spend less and there is no way that will create even one single job for anybody. Are they stupid or just bought by the billionaires to make sure the super rich won't pay any taxes?
- Worried and Scared
    
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I always thought I hated politics and I never really could say why. Now I know exactly why. I don't just want a plague on both party's houses, I want them to collapse from the rot that's in them. I read things like what you wrote and I never would have before. I read them knbow because we are thinking of having a baby and I want to get an idea what kind of world my child would live in. It's not looking too bright, is it?
    
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I need to think about this. I don't know know whether to thank you or curse you! I was so ready to simplify everything: Republicans are greedy bastards who behave like complete idiots and have a rogue's gallery of candidates. Democrats could f*ck-up a wet dream but at least talk like they want to do things for people. But both parties are so corrupt, so on the take. I need to think about all this a lot. Dammit.
- Enrico
    
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I want to tell you that you can make me mad as hell and give me hope all at the same time. I don't know if you are good for my stress level, but I feel much better informed when I read your stuff. I am better prepared to read and watch other reports if I have seen yours first. Thank you, I guess?!
:)
- Marlie
    
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I want Obama to stop negotiating with the people who are screwing us. He needs to draw sharp battle lines and stand up to the enemy. I know, I shouldn't be sounding like a want a war, but that's what this is. It's a war for our future. Obama must stop with all this awful compromise, because that makes it a question only of how much the bad guys win. And anyone who steals from the poor and gives to the rich is a bad guy, period. If Obama doesn't want to really fight for us, and he just keeps giving ground a little at a time, I will join that League of Non Voters. I just can't support a serial compromiser who eventually gives it all away. I, for one, have had it!
    
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I'm glad to see artists speaking out and standing up. Too many artists are so self absorbed and only worried about gaining fame.
- Dave
    
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I am very depressed any time I think of what is happening and how nobody in charge wants to stop it. Why do we elect these people if they don't look out for what we need? Why do they even want to be elected except to do good? Unless it's just to gain more power and more money fro themselves? I think it must come down to one or the other. I know issues are complex, but that isn't. Either they are there for US--I mean “us” and “U.S.”, or they are there for power and money. Show me some who are for the first thing and I'll volunteer and work for them, because they are working for us. But if you can only show me the others, taking more power for the 1%, I am in the League of Non-Voters and I will work to spread THAT cause.
- Norm
    
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I am an immigrant (a legal one) who came here for everything the country represented to me growing up in my home country. I came for freedom and opportunity and I was proud to become an American citizen. And if you noticed that I am using past tense, you are right. I don't completely understand what is happening here, but I don't like it. Sometimes it scares me. My husband is American and he is worried, too. But he only speaks English like most Americans, and I know he would not leave. I am not so sure for me, otherwise. I think it would be better to raise my child in my home country, even with all the problems there. I am not telling you what country that is because I don't want this to be about that. I hope you will read this and realize that what you have here has inspired people all over the world for many generations, but you could lose what makes it special. You could lose it so fast. Maybe you are losing it now. If America is mostly about money and power, then I was wrong in all I ever believed made you special. I am crying as I type this.
    
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Larry, get off this “poltikal” thing. I know you used to be a political journalist or columnist or something, but this is a MUSIC GUIDE, not a politics guide. I know you'll say you are letting us know about what artists are doing and this occupy mess is full of artists. But I don't care. If I like somebody's music I don't want it ruined for me to learn they are a radical wacko. Remember what happened with the Dixie Chicks? Tell these protester artists to “Shut Up and Sing.”
- Ron
    
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I am in the 1%. At least I am in terms of wealth and income. But I am not in any 1% that the Republicans are trying to protect from paying a fair share of taxes.

I am suddenly aware that there is a certain level of discomfort writing about this in this context. I started to think I would write that I am very busy and it is quite unusual for me to comment on a blog or write a letter to the editor of a newspaper.

But that would be disingenuous. I have more than my share of free time compared with a nine to five worker. I get to hit the links and the tennis court once or twice a week. I can accept a golf challenge on Maui if I want.

I am grateful for what my wealth allows me to do. Perhaps Thanksgiving being close is what is motivating me here. I am thankful and grateful that I live in a nation where I had the opportunity to be successful.

But I will not forget where I came from. I can't imagine what it's like now for someone with no health insurance. When I was on my way up, a doctor visit cost me maybe $15. Now it's what, $150 or more?

I can't imagine where I would be if my real estate investments had collapsed when I was buying and rehabbing and selling properties. I'd have been ruined.

I most certainly do know what has happened to the typical home value now, and how the average homeowner is underwater.

I don't know how anyone can aspire to achieve wealth now the way I did. The opportunities are not all gone, but they are greatly changed and anyone who is honest must acknowledge they are not what they were.

That has made some that I know fearful and anxious to hold on to what they have.

I disagree with them. I look at the modest tax rates that I paid during the Clinton years and have no hesitancy saying I did quite well then. I look back before my time to the nearly 90% tax rates paid by the most affluent class during the Eisenhower years.

I don't want to pay that kind of rate (who would?) but if my country got in so much trouble that it needed me to do that, I would. I am outraged by anybody who is doing well and thinks that entitles them to a free ride or preferential treatment. If you've been here where you can do well, shame on you (to borrow the protestors' phrase) if you believe you are entitled to the lowest tax rate.

So I have a clear message for Grover Norquist and the Republicans he holds hostage with his stupid pledge to never raise taxes, no matter what.

I am prepared to pay higher taxes for the good of the country. Anyone who can afford it and isn't happy to pay more is neither responsible to the society that lets them enjoy their wealth, nor in touch with the decay and decline that has already set in because the nation is broke.

I would rather see THIS pledge: that we never abandon extending opportunities to the poorest of our citizens, no matter what. I would rather see a pledge that we protect Medicare and provide health care coverage and a liveable Social Security retirement to all our citizens, no matter what. I would rather see a pledge that we never undermine our safeguards of the environment, no matter what.

All Americans who are wealthy should not be cast as the enemy of ordinary people any more than our hard working government workers should be seen as our enemy. This talk of class warfare must stop. We must realize that we are all in this together, no matter what, and we all share responsibilities for the operation and future of a society that must work for the benefit of all, with opportunities for all, NO MATTER WHAT.

Finally, if someone is a thief, that person must be vigorously prosecuted and compensation sought from their assets for their victims, no matter what, whether they are wearing a bandana mask or they are a banker or broker carrying a briefcase on Wall Street. It's time we remembered that America stands for the principle of equal justice under the law, equal justice FOR ALL, no matter what. Thank you.
- a malcontented 1 percenter
    
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I never thought I would see a replay of the social strife of the 60s. I never thought our national leaders would be stupid enough to let anything happen that would bring us back to the climate of anger and frustration and subjugation and oppression and inequality. But they have. I almost wonder if certain interests are glad to see it, figuring in a cold calculation that they can take the White House in 2012 if they can keep the dissatisfaction and dissent going long enough. Your League of Non Voters could play into their hands and I don't want to see anything that let's the 1% win and do more harm to the 99%. Still, I think you may be right that the dispossessed may go in that direction because they do not find any allies or refuge in anyone in power in politics. Even if others don't see it that way, all should ask if what is happening is good for the country? And then they should ask if their answer was the same when the Tea Party protested and carried guns to protest and shout-down elected officials who were trying to hold town hall meetings?
- Lanie
    
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I'm not proud to be American right now, as a breathing person with a hurting heart surrounded by heartless immortal corporate “persons.” I don't care if the occupiers are a little nutty. I don't know if they are, only that much of the media acts like they are. I'm with the occupiers anyway because I sure as hell am not part of the rich 1%! I am part of the 99%, and I guess I need to stand with the rest of my 99%!
- Sala
    
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Do I need to get love beads and let my hair grow and wear John Lennon glasses, or is this movement “Come as you are?” Whatever it is, sign me up. I've had it with the arrogance of Wall Street thieves and foreclosing Simon Legree bankers and rich pols who keep them from being prosecuted for stealing from us, and I've had it that we can't even say things like that at public demonstrations without getting arrested. I was too young for the protests of the sixties. I should be too old for this, but I don't have any choice. This is about all of us, my retirement as much as your chance for a college education you can afford, my hope to buy a motorhome and travel a little when I retire as much as your desire to have good transit so we're not permanently addicted to expensive oil, my desire for my grandkids to breathe clean air as much as your desire to breathe it now. I'm tired of getting ripped off and I'm old enough to remember a time when this would not have been tolerated. They would all have been in prison if they had tried to do this 30 or 40 years ago and that's where they should be now.
- Frank
    
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This really comes down to Inclusive = all of us in the 99%, and Exclusive = the 1%. They belong to exclusive country clubs and receive exclusive privileges designed to make them feel better than the rest of us. They're not just richer with more power to buy things than the rest of us have. I'm saying they think they are better than the rest of us. They are elitists. They seem to believe they have a right to hand-down all their wealth within their families and not pay any inheritance tax. That looks too much like feudal lords in their castles. What happened to “all men are created equal?” If you start out powerful because you were born rich, you will believe you are better than others. It isn't right. They change the argument however they need to to make themselves sound justified. Like this “job creators” crap. They only create jobs in places where they can exploit people for very low wages. Why should we give them big tax breaks to send our jobs overseas and leave us unemployed?
- Les
    
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Damn, this makes me mad! You try to show us some direction (at least give direction for those who write songs, but I don't). You try to give us some hope but what is happening is inexorably miserable. I am committed to peace as I have always been. But I remember the old rock song: “If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would pay!” Not very peacenik, is it?
- Hal
    
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I started reading this and I got too bogged-down. Keep it shorter.
    
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My entire view of the occupy protests has changed. I thought they were a mix of spoiled brat malcontents and longtime homeless getting aboard for a free meal ticket and a free tent. You have been confronting me with statistics and implications of what they mean and what the future is likely to look like if things keep going the way they are. I think I've read everything you've written since Occupy Wall St. first began...
    
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I hope Elizabeth Warren gets elected to the U.S. Senate. We need at least ONE person in there who is solidly for us in the 99%. Along with Bernie Sanders, of course. Interesting, isn't it, that the 99% might get 2% of the Senate representing us, while the 1% has maybe the other 98% doing what they want them to do? If not for voting for her, I would take the pledge for 'the league of nonvoters'!
- Becky in Upstate NY
    
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More music, less talk. You've been away from radio too long or you would know that.
- Earl
    
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I hope this helps frame the debate. It's thoughtful and it should.
- Cissy
    
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I hope the whole Occupy Movement reads this. Not reads my comment, but reads what you wrote.

For that matter, I hope all those d*ckhead Republicans read it, too, so they can see what kind of “family values” country with non-taxpaying “empowered job creators” they have left us with.
- Ernie
    
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It always takes me two or three sittings to read one of these dissertations from you, but I always find myself doing it. This time you took me through a lot of points I didn't understand before and slapped me up side the head with the league of nonvoters idea. Will we come to that? Have we?
- Michael
    
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I think you are right. I mean I agree with everything you say here. I had already decided that I do not plan to vote and that is not because of apathy. It is as you say - a deliberate choice. You expressed what I have been feeling. They have taken away my choices every way they can and now they expect me to make their charade look good and look like it is open and fair? It is all bought and paid for by corporations, especially since Citizens United. Us human, non-corporate real citizens need to really get united and “just say no” every way we can. For me, that will include not voting for any of them to keep protecting their rich corporate friends and benefactors. They are supposed to be OUR benefactors and they are not, even when so many of us are in such terrible need after they passed laws that allowed their friends to pillage the economy.
- Gino
    
    
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