People Before Prophets

While I was in NY I had the privilege of witnessing the Occupy Wall Street folks first hand. They're nothing like the conservative media paints them to be. They're all clean-cut, highly educated, well mannered folks with a clear message of what they want to accomplish. A photographer for Time Magazine was arrested for photographing them on the day I left. What a country...

Back home, Occupy Dallas marches on and Jim Shutze with the Dallas Observer covers the story here:

I walked for a while yesterday with those Occupy Dallas people. I don't care what anybody says. They're cool. You know why? Because they're awake.

 I asked Zach Kazarinoff, a 25-year-old musician, why he was marching.

"I am supporting solidarity with people in New York and Boston and elsewhere in the world," he told me. "I am against huge economic disparity between the top and the bottom. I am here because I want to end the wars. I want to have more of our government money toward education, toward helping people in need, toward health care. I am here because I want to see some change in our government and our world and our economic system."

Susan Nichols, 46, and a man with her who gave his name as "John Doe" drove in from Marshall to march. I asked why.

"To stop corporate greed," she said.

"We can't afford to remain silent any more," he said. "None of us can."

"We're getting fed up," she said. "People get apathetic and think they can't do anything."

The first thing I noticed was that all of their protest signs were spelled correctly.

 

Marching changes that. Marching is ferocious magic. Marching turned fear into power in the Civil Rights Movement. It brought the corporate/university war machine to heel in the Vietnam anti-war movement. Marching liberated South Africa. And, of course, it ripped Northern Ireland's guts out.

Marching is a mighty force that commands respect. None of us knows exactly how or why. It is beyond rational explanation.

The corporate conservative media (rich white men) has mislead the people with regards to these protests, but thanks to social networking, the truth is being spread around the globe. 

Ever wonder why the Tea Party never went global?