Boycott the one percenters!!! One of the things that I learned from the Civil Rights movement is that boycotting works. You don’t have to beg the one percenters to do the right thing, or have the government to try to legislate that they do. Even if there are laws, most one percenters have high-priced accountants and lawyers who can get them around the laws. Just don’t buy what they are selling. Money talks!
Disrupting life in Oakland is not going to solve the problem. Oakland is not Wall Street! Oakland, like most cites, is next to being fiscally insolvent. Instead, occupy some of the mega corporations’ property, and the headquarters of the major banks. Pull your money out, or make a real threat to do so.
The Occupy Oakland Movement proposing a citywide strike on November 2, 2011 to liberate Oakland was not something that I was asked about as an Oaklander. I graduated from Oakland High School. Both of my children graduated from high schools in Oakland. I also operate a small business in Oakland. No, I’m not a one percenter. Asking workers not to go to work, and students not to go to school, and that people converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city hurts not only the students, and many of the small business, who were already hurt by the confrontation that Oakland Police had with the Occupy Oakland protesters on October 26, 2011, but is invariably counterproductive. You’re preaching to the choir in Oakland. The only top 500 company that Oakland has is Clorox.
Yes, the whole world is watching. I am just as angry as the any of the Occupy Oakland protesters or any of the Occupy-type movements in this country and around the world about the disparity in income between the rich and poor, e.g., the one percent in this country having 25% of the income and controlling 40% of it. I totally get it. If people are serious about effective change, boycott companies that ship jobs overseas, and those that don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Don’t displace your anger on poor cities like Oakland, a city who is represented by the most progressive Congressperson in the country. Her actions speak louder than words. Go to congressional districts where the congresspersons do not support what you are doing. Even the Mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, supports what you are doing, but not your tactics. In a true democracy, there is give and take, not everyone gets everything they want.
Boycott the one percenters! We, the people, will be responsible for forcing the one percenters to bring jobs back to America, and to stop exploiting people around the world with slave labor. We’ll be instrumental in creating jobs in this county and significantly decreasing unemployment. We can help to put America back to work.
Occupy Oakland can be the new vanguard in directing the other Occupy movements to start boycotting the one percenters. That would be a true revolution!
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