WE ARE THE 99%!

Why are people surprised by Occupy Wall Street and its success around the country? You have to be oblivious to our own, often violent history when there is a growing public perception about the unfairness of the economic system. That a group of 99ers, those whose unemployment insurance ran out, and young people, educated without jobs, started a protest on Wall Street seemed to catch the media by surprise and some bemusement. Commentators on the major networks at first played it down and treated it like just another fall nuisance. Ironically, the first coverage of the protests came after a rowdy group of teabaggers showed up to protest the protesters. Now the corporate media finally had some skin in the game. After all Fox developed the teabaggers and now CNN co-sponsors debates with them. So they are by definition newsworthy.

But it was the thuggishness of NYPD and their pepper-spraying a defenseless deaf woman that triggered Lawrence O'Donnell to start hammering on how the demonstrators were being treated. Somehow this incident and other police arrests have led to an underlying coverage about the demonstrations being marred by violence, even though none of the participants so far have been violent. Even while hundreds were being arrested, the New York Times business writer chortled on CNBC that there were no more than 80 at the demonstrations.

Yesterday, the NYPD arrested over 700 of the demonstrators for blocking the Brooklyn Bridge. The NYPD in honor of our special relationship with the United Kingdom "kettled" like in the word "kettle" the demonstrators, a new technique of crowd control which minimizes the chances that they might break out and run amok. I hate the word and the concept.

Aerial shots of the demonstrations reveal a massive turnout in New York City. Days after it began unions slowly and surely started to endorse them. After NYPD over-reacted in the first few days, a couple of hundred NYPD officers joined with the demonstrators in protest. Even a few Marines posted on Facebook their commitment to come to Wall Street in dress blues and stand with the demonstrators because "they don't fight for Wall Street."

For the first few days of Occupy Wall Street, leftwing commentators expressed confusion about the goals and purpose of the exercise. Sean Hannity shouted down a protestor saying they were all against "freedom". Yesterday, however, they released a communique listing their demands, which included anti-war slogans but an interesting mix of economic reforms demanded in the country. One particular demand is of interest--they called for a small fee to be placed on all stock trades to thwart speculation. This is an idea that has been around for the last several years and was supported by my late friend Doug Payne as a way to generate revenues from the massive amounts of stock trades on Wall Street every day. This idea is now gaining support among the pundit class also.

Occupy Wall Street has taken off in ways that are reminsicent of Tahir Square in Egypt. Nicholas Kristof writes about this in today's New York Times. Young activists are using all their internet tools to generate support and news about this movement like their colleagues in the Arab Spring. While the crowds haven't topped those in the Middle East, the movement has gone coast-to-coast and we even had an Occupy K Street here in Washington,D.C.

Two days ago, CNN published a poll that showed that only 15% of America believe that the federal government will do the right thing for Americans. This is the lowest such number since such polls began and it is a very eerie omen about America's confidence in its governing structures.

Along with the demands from Occupy Wall Street has come a video produced by the leftist organization, the Institute for Policy Studies. The video highlights the great disparity of wealth in this country, while pointedly highlighting how very wealthy as a country we are. The video lists 5 basic changes in our tax code, which would generate an additional $4 trillion in ten years. IPS advocates the millionaire tax, which would generate $231 billion in 2011, closing overseas tax shelters which would net $100 billion a year, closing corporate tax loopholes another $485 billion a year, modifying capital gains another $88 billion and another $150 billion from estate taxes.

You can see the video either at www.dailykos.com or www.inequality.org . It's well worth a watch.

IPS rarely has generated such a large audience for any of its policy proposals over the years so the fact it has hit a deep cord with these should be noted. As Warren Buffett said the other day, "There has been class warfare going on for the last twenty years. And my class has won."

It has been very rare in my lifetime that a movement has been created solely to protest the perceived injustice of our own economic system. While Martin Luther King's March on Washington was also about jobs, it is remembered for its elevation of basic civil rights to the central stage of our national debate. While Dr. King continued on with protests for striking workers and housing justice, this was downplayed at the time and almost airbrushed out of history since. You would then have to go back to the violent fights over union organizing in the 1920s and 1930s to capture such a unifocal effort on the economy.

President Obama's former adviser Van Jones promises a Progressive fall of activities protesting economic injustices. One wonders whether the Wisconsin demonstrations started this off. But it is not a phenomenon so easily dismissed. You can almost feel the discomfort coming from larger corporations such as Pfizer, Merck and Citibank as they start protesting the ramifications of the United Citizens case by the Supreme Court in 2010 that allowed corporate monies to swamp our political system. This only dramatized the inequalities in our current system at a time when the average American is feeling under seige.

So far the average American has been asked to give back repeatedly--whether it's collective bargaining rights, whether it's pensions or whether it's pay hikes. And yet there is a growing perception that this sacrifice is not shared. President Obama is trying to exploit this for suport of his legislative agenda but the unease is growing deeper and more systemtic. And we have a roster of Republicans egged on by the Tea Party demanding a rollback on all federal regulations on anything, the dismantling of all programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and the permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Put on top of that this persistant call to privatize everything ,including our prison system, and you can understand why the average American feels trapped.

The Occupy movement may morph into other areas of civil disobedience. I personally look forward to Americans adopting the Mexican technique of parachutists,where Mexicans would seize land and homes that were abandoned. I think this would dramatize the foreclosure crisis more than anything. But if you were serious and a corporation or a wealthy person, you should be concerned. A cornered animal is the most dangerous.

What started as an inside the Beltway argument over taxes has now launched a social movement that is focused on the great disparities of wealth in this country. This is a recipe for social unrest and upheaval. And we have seen this happen all over the world. Chris Christie stumbled over a concept in his speech at the Reagan Center "earned exceptionalism." America if it is to be perceived as exceptional must treat its own citizens more justly or else lose any influence over the larger world.