Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Nader to Occupy: Help Raise the Minimum Wage
The Occupy movement may be able to forge a powerful alliance with millions of working men and women around a national call to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour. The drive to establish new encampments, while important, is going to be long and difficult. The ongoing efforts to stand up to the foreclosure and mortgage crisis, the marches to hold Wall Street accountable, the protests against stop-and-frisk policies in New York City or police brutality in Oakland, while vital, do not draw the numbers into the streets across the country needed to loosen the grip of the corporate state.
Occupy Albany protester Bradley Russell holds a sign during the People’s State-of-the-State at Academy Park in Albany, N.Y. on Jan. 3. The rally focused on the need to address hunger in New York and to raise the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour. (AP / Mike Groll)
Some 70 percent of the public supports raising the minimum wage. This is an issue that resonates across political, ethnic, religious and cultural lines. It exposes the vast disparities in wealth and the gross inequalities imposed by our corporate oligarchy. The political elite during this election year, which needs to toss a few scraps to the voting public, might be pressured to respond. The two leading Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, say they support the minimum wage (although only Romney has called for indexing the minimum wage). Barack Obama promised during his 2008 election campaign to press to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011, a promise that, like many others, he has ignored. But the ground is fertile.
“The 24-hour encampments, largely on public property, broke through,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke of the Occupy movement a few days ago. “These encampments jolted the consciousness of the nation. But people began asking after a number of weeks what’s next. Once the movement lost the encampments it did not have a second-strike readiness, which should be the raising of the minimum wage to $10 an hour.”
The federal minimum wage of $7.25, adjusted for inflation, is $2.75 lower than it was in 1968 when worker productivity was about half of what it is today. There has been a steady decline in real wages for low-income workers. Meanwhile, corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s, whose workforce earns the minimum wage or slightly above it, have enjoyed massive profits. Executive salaries, along with prices, have soared even as worker salaries have stagnated or declined. But the call to raise the minimum wage is not only a matter of economic justice. The infusion of tens of billions of dollars into the hands of the working class would increase tax revenue, open up new jobs and lift consumer spending.
There are numerous groups, including the AFL-CIO, whose leaders dutifully pay lip service to raising the minimum wage but have refused to mobilize to fight for it. Rank-and-file workers, once they had a place and a movement willing to agitate on their behalf, would shame union bosses into joining them. There are 535 congressional offices scattered throughout the country. These congressional offices, Nader suggests, could provide the focal point for sustained local protests.
“You could get leading think tanks, like the Economic Policy Institute, the AFL-CIO, member unions, especially unions like the California Nurses Association, which has been very aggressive on this, and a bevy of academics such as Dean Baker and professor Robert Pollin, along with groups such as the NAACP and La Raza, to back this,” Nader said. “There is potential for huge synergy. But it needs the jolt that can only come from the Occupy movement.”
“The Occupy movement arose by embracing a rejectionist attitude toward politics, but in the end that is lethal,” Nader said. “It is a form of ideological immolation. If they won’t turn on politics, politics will continue to turn on them. Politics means the power of government—local, state and national—and the ability of corporations to control departments and agencies and turn government against its own people. Not engaging in politics might have been a good preliminary tactic to gain credibility so they could avoid being tagged with some ‘-ism’ or some party, but it has worn out its purpose. The movement needs to become a champion for millions of low-income workers. This does not mean the Occupy movement should support a political party. It means it should go after both parties. It is only by going after the two main political parties that raising the minimum wage will get through Congress.”
Nader believes that the call to raise the minimum wage has the potential to divide the Republican Party, which has not been split on any major issue in Congress since Obama took office. He says that the economic suffering of low-income Americans is so severe that some Republican candidates running for office would be loath to ignore a groundswell in their districts calling for an increase in the minimum wage. But the pressure has to be exerted between now and the November elections. Once the elections are concluded, nothing will be passed that is not orchestrated, funded and authored by corporate lobbyists.
Past campaigns to raise the minimum wage have proved very popular. ACORN, in 2004, organized a statewide referendum in Florida to raise the minimum wage by a dollar. Once the proposal was on the ballot, corporate forces launched a lavishly funded assault against the initiative. The battle to defeat the measure was spearheaded by fast food corporations such as McDonald’s and Burger King as well as chain stores such as Walmart and Kmart. There was no money to fund ads to counter the corporate propaganda or support the proposal. The initiative, despite the public relations onslaught, won by 71 percent. To placate his corporate backers, the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, refused to support the ballot initiative although he desperately needed Florida to win the election.
“How much political courage does it take to stand up for guys making $7.25 an hour while the head of Walmart is making $11,000 an hour?” Nader asked. “What medieval period had that kind of wealth disparity?”
“This campaign, if successful, would make the Occupy movement the chief movement in the country,” Nader said. “It would be a movement that got something done. It could build on this.”
“The end of the encampments could be an unintended blessing,” Nader went on. “The movement no longer has to deal with daily housekeeping, sanitation, the occasional fights and bickering and the poor and homeless who were urged to go there by police. It can develop a laser-beam focus on the first stage of the recovery of the American worker.”
“To be able to spearhead a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO, minority groups and local community groups will show that the movement can leverage power,” Nader said. “It has not shown this so far. The most accessible bastion of corporate power, the most sensitive of the three branches of government, is the legislature, and not just Congress, but state legislatures. This is a winnable issue. It fulfills the 99 percent motto. And the movement can be very effective because it has developed a unique ability to carry out daily demonstrations. If the movement can get the minimum wage raised it will gain enormous power. Who has gotten anything on the progressive agenda through Congress in the last few years? A victory would permit the Occupy movement to fill this power vacuum. Once you win a battle in Congress you produce a penumbra of power. This penumbra stops bad things from happening. It curtails the arrogance of the Republican Party. It empowers new and fresh leadership.”
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
117 Comments so far
Show AllOnce again, "The Working Poor" is the buzzword.
What about those who are too old, too sick, too injured to work?
We hurl ourselves over a cliff?
What about those on SSI? Does THAT ever get addressed? No? Why not?
NOBODY can live anywhere in this country on less than $700 a month! NOBODY can rent any decent place to live... not even a garage! .... on the amount that people on SSI or even the basic Social Security get per month.
WHY is that never an issue?
Because wealthy Americans hold the poor in contempt and poor Americans have accepted the great chain of being and the religious propaganda supporting it. The poor outnumber the rich by a great deal, yet they won't rise up in revolution. If each poor person shot one rich person, things would even out quickly.
Almost every stop light in my city has a homeless person begging for money or food. I watch who gives and who doesn't, and people in older cars much more often give money than the Beemers and Audis. Most rich people would drive over a poor person if they thought they could get away with it.
Good, so then it's solved.
Poor people are to blame, so we just let it stand.
Of course, that doesn't explain why "the working poor" deserve the support, but disabled poor do not.
How bout this... just give us the pills to remove ourselves, then you won't have to worry about us anymore?
Solved.
kanary: Who, besides yourself, in this discussion and article, has said "Poor people are to blame"?
How is proposing to support those working at a minumum wage tantamount to suggesting the disabled poor don't deserve more help?
I don't get your motives here. They don't seem constructive.
Why is it so hard to understand that when you leave people OUT of the "discussion"... when you ignore them, the policies reflect that, and life gets even harder?
What is the barrier to understanding that?
The focus of the article is on the Occupy movement. What's next? It is logically impossible to include EVERYONE in trying to determine what is the best strategy to galvanize the movement around some legislative agenda in the near term that could better the lives of the 99%. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?
Don't you see that ANY victory we win for the 99% will benefit everyone else in the 99%, at least indirectly, insofar as it galvanizes the movement? Your type of reasoning seems to amount to a zero-sum game. "Unless EVERYONE in the 99% is addressed equally, and all at the same time, everything gets harder for everyone." That way of thinking is a recipe for total movement failure. Is that what you want? Or do you a massive chip on your shoulder that you can't perceive that STRATEGY is necessary to get anywhere?
Response to Memory_Hole:
The point of the movement is to take care of people's needs, starting with those most left out. You talk as though the purpose of taking care of people's needs is for the good of the movement, and the good of the movement is for the purpose of a "legislative agenda."
Your assumption that we cannot take everyone into consideration, or take care of everyone, is counter to the purpose of the Occupy movement.
Your assumption that the goal should be "to galvanize the movement around some legislative agenda" is extremely limiting and an attempt to steer people's thinking about the movement in a covert and insidious way.
You ask where is the blame....
"The poor outnumber the rich by a great deal, yet they won't rise up in revolution."
WE are to blame because we "won't rise up in revolution."
Of course, we certainly don't have the support of the muddleclass, and we know that.
"It is logically impossible to include EVERYONE"
Thank you for your honesty. It is time to admit that it is a DECISION, a CHOICE, to leave out poor people. We SEE it, we KNOW it, and all the game playing serves nothing.
Poor people have been left out now for 40 years. The results have been clear. The poverty rate is rising, because we are left out. As long as that is OK with you, then we know where we stand.
"that could better the lives of the 99%."
Ah,NO. When you decide its prudent to leave out poor people, then you can't turn around and include us in your numbers. No.... that doesn't fly. You are for YOU and the rest of the muddleclass, so don't then put OUR numbers in it. Whatever proportion we are of the general population now, you subtract that from the 99%. Honesty matters.
"Don't you see that ANY victory we win for the 99% will benefit everyone else in the 99%,"
Then WHY has that not worked for the last 40 years? WHY has the muddleclass done well, when poor people have sunk lower and lower and lower. You chose NOT to notice that when you were doing well in the 90s. You were doing well, so you didn't want to see that we were sinking lower and lower.
You can't have it both ways,.
Why is that so hard for you to grasp?
We have endured centuries of disdain for the poor and blaming them for everything. It is important to raise awareness of poverty but as a long time activist saying these things over and over again, I have little hope this will happen tomorrow. However it IS time to recognize the issues of poverty in all its forms.
I understand that it seems the only way to have any sympathy is with people who work for a wage as somehow being more worthy of a decent income. However this is skewed thinking for a couple reasons ...
First of all it is about what is and is not "work". If we viewed non-paid work as actual work this is a beginning. Because if we viewed non-paid work and how much it saves communities, we would then be more supportive of it. At this time the *only* "work" is paid work when in fact a great deal of unpaid work is being done that is not considered. I have written whole screeds about this lack of recognition about elsewhere on Common Dreams as to what we think "work" is and what we believe work is not . Suffice it to say millions of people are performing "free" work at this time, which is saving $Billions of dollars and yet is not respected or supported ~ but it sure is assumed and depended upon as necessary.
Second, considering the disabled and unable to work folks is another thing. Just because they cannot work for a wage does not mean they are somehow supposed to be ostracized because they are not making some rich man richer by working for their pay or that they are not also contributing. For instance invisible to many, including many "progressives" thanks to the federal government, they are "saving" money by cutting funds to the states. So we now have "trickle down" taxing for which the poor pay the highest rates and thus make a greater sacrifice than any other class yet are the first to be cut when it comes to the services they need.
Third, why is this just up to the Occupy people? Why isn't every American talking about this stuff????
If we truly want to make a difference and make things better for all, we need to keep some of those things in mind when we speak about a livable income.
Hope this helps
Cat in Seattle
Thank you.
"Third, why is this just up to the Occupy people? Why isn't every American talking about this stuff????" -- Cat in Seattle
Exactly!!
I guess people who won't "rise up in revolution" just have what's coming to them, then?
Odd that you post that here when this article is yet another step by the liberal and progressive establishment to purge poor and homeless people from the movement, along with radicals, and to prevent any such uprising from occurring.
Tom: If memory serves me well, I seem to recall you stating that you are a practicing lawyer residing in Texas. Do you think this is a fitting statement for an "Officer of the court"?
" If each poor person shot one rich person, things would even out quickly."
That's a most unfortunate use of terms by one who must make words the currency of his trade.
Are you an agent provocateur posing as other in this forum?
Colorado, not Texas. I don't think it is a very provocative statement. People say it all the time. Barack Obama said he would assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki and he did.
The Declaration of Independence says it:
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." I don't think old TJ meant put flowers into the barrels of the red coats' muskets.
Many members of my family died in concentration camps. None of them resisted the Nazis, so they died like lambs to the slaughter. But in the Warsaw ghetto, the Jews who resisted had a higher survival rate than those who did not. The Sonderkommandos (Jews working in concentration camps dragging dead bodies out of the crematoria, etc) thought that by cooperating with the Nazis they would live, but almost all died. As Bruno Bettelheim points out, the one Sonderkommando group that revolted killed 70 SS.
As to armed resistance, Bettelheim said:
"There is little doubt that the [Jews], who were able to provide themselves with so much, could have provided themselves with a gun or two had they wished. They could have shot down one or two of the SS men who came for them. The loss of an SS with every Jew arrested would have noticeably hindered the functioning of the police state." Page xi, forward to Miklos Nyiszli's Auschwitz.
Too many people think that their good thoughts and words will magically change the world order and change the black hearts of our oppressors into beams of light.
I don't want every poor person to shoot a rich person, but I want every poor and rich person to know of the possibility.
Violence will come to the USA relatively soon, I believe. But it will come from the top in the form of massive police violence and surveillance. When white people start getting the same treatment from the police that black people have received for many decades, then Bettelheim's words will have meaning.
It is never an issue because the political discussion is dominated by egotistical and self-centered working age men, mostly "middle class" educated suburbanites, and by strivers and achieversof both genders and their sycophants and admirers.
Social Security never gets addressed? Since when? Have you not been reading the news for the last three years? Why not address the issues posed in the article rather than bringing up separate issues? What is your agenda here? If you have an alternative proposal to Nader's? Perhaps we demand a raise in Social Security across the board? I would certainly support LOWERING the retirement age to, say, 55 or 60. But that is not really the subject of the article. And there is no division between those working for minimum wage and those on Social Security. Why introduce needless division here?
How about we dig even deeper and ask the question: Why do most of us not consider it absurd that we should have to pay someone simply so that we may exist on the planet?
Sonmi451,
Good question. We need to get back to FDR's Four Freedoms and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. All deserve a job at a livable wage, retraining for the oft-necessary career changes, adequate medical care that is AFFORDABLE, and housing. The US lags behind the rest of the "developed" world in providing these basic entitlements that all who are truly civilized should welcome.
Instead of raising the minimum wage to $10 (which comes to $20,000 a year for a 40 hour work week), let's raise it to $20 or $40,000 a year, to give poor people a chance to raise families without both parents having to work two jobs.
I used to do a lot of negotiating and it usually works best when you set a high number to start. Ask for $20, compromise at $17.50. With public anger at a higher level than ever, the public will compare the minimum wage to the plutocrats' incomes, and know that the plutocrats can afford to pay the money.
tomcarberry:
As a long-time unemployed worker, I'd settle for the 10 if I could get it, but I really like where you're going with this.
This sort brings to mind the argument about US slavery and the need for reparations of some sort. For hundreds of years, the labor and wealth of African-Americans was stolen by the larger society. A minimum wage that is higher than a livable wage would recognize that reality somewhat, allowing African-Americans, who arfe disproportionaely poor and lack wealth, to move forward, if not catch-up.
Also, the vast majority of poor are women and their children, often working moms. The scheme you call for begins to (somewhat) address that reality.
Also, what many people fail to recognize is that wages are paid for work done. Inherently they carry a sense of human dignity and self-worth with them.
Remember tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!
Solidarity,
tj
"Also, what many people fail to recognize is that wages are paid for work done. Inherently they carry a sense of human dignity and self-worth with them."
So, those unable to work don't deserve dignity and self-worth.
Duly noted.
Please don't put words in others' mouths.
Thank You
Omission is CO-mission.
Leave us out, and we WILL speak up.
Or, you could include us from the get-go.
Your choice.
obviously "us" is not always apparent or relevant in every discussion, but blast away if you must. i don't see what it accomplishes myself. i hope it makes you feel good. in the real world, i seem to work pretty well with disabled people, have been poor myself often enough, and have and will fight for the rights of everybody but i don't really want to get in pissing matches here. or anywhere for that matter.
good luck in your work and life.
What we know of history is that there are many ways of dismissing people striving for justice. Objections to being ignored being termed "pissing matches" fits right in with that.
What I said was not inflammatory in any way. It was a call to RECOGNIZE and HEAR us.
Millions of people would settle for $10.
But you should never start negotiations by offering up the figure you would settle for. This is a chronic and fatal error made by liberals, over and over again.
The conservatives say $0, the liberals say $10. The compromise then is $5. In the next round the conservatives say $0, the liberals say $6, and we wind up with $3. In the next round the conservatives say $0, the liberals say $4, and we wind up with $2.
This is the way that the liberals, and the entire country, are steadily and inexorably pushed to the right.
So what can you do that's worth paying you $40,000 a year?
The issue is who decides that, and how.
There, now. I lobbed you a nice big fat one right out over the plate. Take your best swing.
You could love a child, or tend a garden. Both I think merit at least $40,000 a year.
Posted by J4zonian
Feb 29 2012 - 6:28pm
What do most people do to get their 40 or 200k? Generally, with exceptions of course, the more useless or destructive a job is the more people get paid for it. Thus, the person talking to people and helping them find what they need, the middle manager with no power except to enforce decisions from above, the person good at delaying and denying insurance claims made by deserving people, and the CEO who sets the direction and policies of the company are all cleverly arranged in an ascending order, getting paid more than the people below them actually doing more work and less damage.
The organic farmer has trouble making more than s/he pays out in debt; Hugh Grant, the CEO of Monsanto (need I say more?) made $12.4 million last year (down, boo hoo, from 12.7 the year before.) A trained monkey could make the same decisions he has and provide just as high profits (Cut workers, cut wages, attack unions, ship jobs overseas, fix it so farmers get on the biocide treadmill and can't get off and have to buy all their seeds from you, and oh yeah, patent and own everything in the world living and dead, and put all the company's money in lawyers and lobbyists. Keep the revolving door revolving. I think that about covers it. (To be fair, Monsanto did not do every one of those last year as far as I know, although other whorporations did, of course. Hugh Grant is a stand-in for his class in my scenario.))
World civilization and this country and everyone in it including Hugh Grant would be better off if we paid such people $40,000 a year to do nothing rather than paying them anything at all to perform the Gaiacidal mass murder-suicide that they toil diligently at year after year.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2010-12-10-monsanto-ceo-pay_N.htm
I don't know where Hedges gets the 71% approval for raising the min wage. I live in one of the most "liberal" districts in the country and all I hear from all sides, is "we just can't do that now, it'll break the budget", "there's no money", "Obama can't do anything without a majority in Congress", "the election is too close. We can't afford to blow it. What about the Supreme Court?". When I hear all this, I often wonder if a brain switch has been turned off, and the mouths are still flapping. The thing is, these people vote and they have convinced themselvers that despite the recession, there should be no more stimulus or assistance on the demand side, because somehow, this would personally cost them more and make things worse and besides "govt doesn't know how to do anything anymore). We live in a time when a pro-capitalist, center-right economist like JM Keynes is considered a "far-left radical" by the Democratic Party, whose members would rather set their clothes on fire than mention his name publicly. How do you cut through this?
You can't 'cut through' decades of systematic cultural brainwashing that's resulted in an astonishing block of the US populace adhering to a mass media imposed Consensus Reality (a TV un-reality, if you will) ...it's impossible. When such a person is confronted by data that ill fits their corporate culture programming, and the false background assumptions it creates collectively, chances are they'll simply dismiss it as "unrealistic," or the ever popular "conspiracy theory."
The point of brainwashing people is that those subjected to the process are unable and/or unwilling to comprehend their affliction.
Once again we rightfully hear the call to Raise the Minimum Wage! The problem is that the minum wage has become detached from the principle of A MINIMUM WAGE THAT IS A LIVABLE WAGE.
The longer we refuse to put the principle of livable wages at the center of the fight for economic justice, the longer we will be quibbling about a few cents here and there (that we often don't win anyway).
It is good that Hedges points out that the AFL-CIO union federation and its consituent unions have sat on this for years. As have the unions of Change to Win.
There are a number of reasons for this:
1) The vast majority of union leaders don't understand that establsihing a livable wage as a floor would automatically renegotiate contracts upward;
2) Many union contracts have wages a few pennies higher than the legal minimum and less than a livable wage;
3) The vast majority of union leaders and too many union members don't give a damn about poor and nonunion workers. They are preoccupied with being "middle class;"
4) Though the US public polls in favor of increasing minimum wages, when push comes to shove they do nothing or are hostile to the concept.
Finally, it is disingenuous for either Nader or Hedges to lay this issue off on the Occupiers. While they are both great progressive individuals, neither is an Occupy activist involved in the nitty-gritty of building Occupy movements. They should know better.
Don't forget tomorrow! If we let cops define who we are and what we do, we won't have enough power to fight for livable wages or anything else.
So, that is the only problem?
People too old, too sick, too injured to work.... just forget us?
Its no problem at all?
Kanary,
We live in a slave society and you have become a victim of its evil structure, as have millions of other people and as will happen to millions more. Bertrand Russell in his essay "In Praise of Idleness," wrote that only in a slave society do we exalt work. Only with leisure and laziness can humans advance, Russell argues. He argues for the 4 hour work week and argues we have the technology that no one should have to work more than that.
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
The short term problem is a lack of jobs, but the long term solution means changing the social structure. We don't need "jobs," we need decent lives in harmony with the Earth.
Once again....maybe it will stick...
We NEED to recognize that there are people who *can't* work.
We have two choices.
1. Treat people who can't work as valued members of society, and assure them decent living conditions.
2. Be honest and admit we simply have no use and no concern for those who can't work, and provide them with a safe and painless way to exit.
"Be honest and admit we simply have no use and no concern for those who can't work."
Like the social parasites known as bankers? WIll they go for a 'painless way to exit' that won't involve taking the rest of us with them?
Kanary,
You make excellent points. Your second point I think of as the surplus people problem. The wealthy always wanted the poor to have many children because it produces more slaves. The "be fruitful and multiply" Biblical command. In the middle ages, a wave of plagues and war decimated the population. Workers became scarce. Wages sky rocketed. So the rich in almost every country passed MAXIMUM WAGE LAWS (really -- read Punishment and Social Structure by Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer). They also passed laws banning emigration.
We do have more people than the Earth can bear, but we don't have so many people that every single human being could have a good life. But the very rich among us don't want people to have good lives. They want people to live in fear and dread of tomorrow, so those of us who have jobs will work for the minimum and will not have the courage to help people like you who don't have a job.
Economic insecurity makes people fearful and scared people rarely have it in them to help others. We need to find jobs for everyone. I believe we need a major national public works program.
If I held the scepter I would (1) end war; (2) create millions of jobs cleaning up pollution (in conjunction with throwing the polluters in prison); (3) create millions of jobs fixing the infrastructure; (4) create hundreds of thousands of law related jobs for the many new courts needed to prosecute all the Wall Street criminals and all the corporate criminals like Monsanto and Dow.
tj, good point about livable wage. We should retire the whole concept of "minimum wage" and replace it with LIVABLE wage. But I don't see Nader & Hedges "laying it off" on the Occupy movement. This issue needs a spark to get it going anywhere, and the mass movement of Occupy is the only political force right that has the power to get it going.
If we could galvanize around a LIVABLE wage of $10 or $15 an hour, and get that enacted into law through Congress, we could move on to FDR's Four Freedoms. I we divide ourselves through endless bickering from he get go, as seems the intention of at least one in this thread, we'll get nowhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
Since you have pointed me out as the thorn in your side, then it is time for you to HEAR WHY people like me are speaking out.
What you said is exactly what was said to and about blacks during Civil Rights. It was said about women fighting for equality. On and on... your mantra is the same used against EVER group struggling to be heard and included.
I get that you want us to sit down and shut up. I get that. Nothing different from any other struggle for liberation. NOTHING.
What really cracks me up is that you then go on to want us to subsume ourselves into YOUR struggle.
You gave me the denigrating "Why don't you grasp this?" Yet, it seems obvious to us that by INCLUDING us, you would make the movement stronger. JFK was wrong about one thing.... a rising tide does NOT lift all boats.... unless there is a specific effort to lift the poor boats, they stay behind. A cursory glance at history would show you that much.
Obviously, you are threatened by the idea of including poor people and people who can't work into the movement You seem to think that it is too much trouble to REMEMBER us in your planning and strategery.
Whatever. Just don't expect us to drop OUR needs and run to support YOU.
Nader, as so often, brings together vision and practicality. Occupy has so far had lots of vision(s), but little practicality. To draw real mass support it must address the real concerns of ordinary working people, and put forward practical ways to deal with those concerns.
A raise in the minimum wage would immediately help millions of Americans. If it becomes a trademark issue for Occupy, it will solidify the support of even more millions.
if Occupy can't get moving on this or another issue that is of pressing concern to the 99% -- such as the crushing burden of debt that oppresses so many people -- then it will lose the sympathy it has generated for its message, and become isolated from the very Americans it aims to mobilize.
The concerns raised in previous comments by people prevented from working by illness, injury, or other condition, are important and urgent. There's no reason why they couldn't be included in a campaign to raise the living standards of all working people -- by which I mean working class people, even those who are not able to work.
YEs, it is only "working people".
That is what "sellls", so that is what is said, regardless of how it affects the rest of us.
I truly do wish you could walk in our shoes for a while, and see what it feels like from this vantage.
What will it take to be included?
Wages don't "help" people. They are not charity, but compensation for the work and time of wage-earners -- rightful compensation.
AH, yes.... so people who are too old, too sick, or too injured to work, deserve only CHARITY, and that charity is to be bereft of dignity and worth.
Gotcha.
The Socialist Party does not believe this to be true. Vote Stewart Alexander for president in 2012.
The value of campaigns is that they provide an opportunity to start discussions about issues. When "who ya gonna vote for?" becomes the topic of discussion - as it always does, driven by the mass media - then that opportunity is squandered. Elections reflect the national discussion, they are an effect and not a cause of social and political change. When the national political discussion becomes about elections, then the process is short-circuited and will always produce the same results.
That said, if people are going to obsess over elections and campaigns then I think the Alexander campaign represents the best opportunity. I do not think, however, that it makes any sense to offer it up as an answer to anything, as you just did. Voting Alexander is not a solution to homelessness. Telling homeless people to "join my team" is an expression of the problem. There is absolutely no point in promoting the Alexander campaign under those circumstances. It is an opportunity for YOU to get on the side of poor people, homeless people, and all of those suffering, It is not an opportunity for you to badger them to get on your team.
I was not aware that I was "badgering" anyone. My understanding is that advocating for socialism would help both the working class and the poor as compared to the capitalist system. For you to imply, if not outright claim, that I am somehow against poor people is not only erroneous but downright bizarre. When you do this you come across as being arrogant and way too self-righteous.
Read my post again.
Instead of imagining an accusatory and judgmental tone, imagine a thoughtful and peaceful tone.
Until your post, I think I was the only one here who had even mentioned the Alexander campaign, and I have done so a few dozen times.
Two Americas
You made my point as you again imply as in your original post that I supposedly was "badgering" someone when as I attempted to point out, apparently to no avail, how socialism, at least to me, is a far better system that capitalism. I, also, despite your bizarre inference, do not hate poor people. It would seem that the last thing that you would do would be to apologize for engaging in your ill-founded assumptions.
You would really do well to take your own advice by re-reading what I had written as well as your own original comments instead of, to borrow from your words, engaging in accusatory and judgmental rhetoric while, as you say, it would be far better to engage, if you are capable, in a more thoughtful and peaceful tone rather than rushing to judgment which, despite what you may believe, is what, to me, you appear to have done.
OK, we can fight if you like.