By Jen Lassen
Writer
Approximately 300 Lewisburg community members and 100 University students joined 143 other colleges and universities by sponsoring the University’s
Originally beginning as a protest in New York City, the Occupy Wall Street
The event included community support and initiative. Co-sponsors were the Joseph Priestly Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, C.A.R.E., the Spilling Ink Writers Collective, the Central Susquehanna Citizens Coalition, the Local Action Network, the Mondragón Bookstore, the Center for Non-Violent Living, Organizations United for the Environment and the Norman Thomas Society. David Kristjanson-Gural,
“There’s a need to create a democratic space for people to voice their concerns about economic justice; in general, this is missing at a local and national level. A foremost concern is expressing individual views on these issues,”
The rally was structured to include an open-microphone speak-out against economic injustice and excessive corporate domination. Individuals had the opportunity to speak
“Human beings should be worth more than dollar bills,”
According to Kristjanson-Gural, students benefited from the rally in multiple ways.
“The rally gave students experience speaking out in public and helped them ‘find their voice’ on these issues, and they commented on how the rally helped them to further understand the course material they’re currently learning at Bucknell. It was certainly successful in helping fulfill the educational goal of students,” he said.
As for the community, “[the rally] allowed groups and people for social justice to recognize their significance and encourage them to keep doing the work they’re doing in this field,”
The rally
Professor of English Saundra Morris described the larger implications of the rally that united the
“These rallies are important to demonstrate to Wall Street and banks and financial institutions that people are going to start standing up for themselves. People want the government to tax the rich. They want CEOs to stop making wildly more money than workers. They want jobs. They want healthcare and not corporate welfare. These rallies across the nation and the world demonstrate those desires,”
“Hopefully, this rally marked the beginning of an ongoing process where people will continue to participate in democracy and let their own voices be heard,”
2 replies on “Occupy Wall Street rally spreads to Lewisburg”
“Foreclosure of American Dream By Wall Street”
– Nalliah Thayabharan
Wall Street is a confidence trick, a dazzling edifice built on paper promises, gambling, bets and rampant speculation. Wall Street doesn’t manufacture or produce anything. The Wall Street however attractive it may appear is built on paper.
Modern day bank robbers are at Wall Street but they wear grey suits and not masks. Rampant speculators, propagandists and financiers of Wall Street are given some unfair advantage over the average consumers and taxpayers and the cumulative effect of the people watching selfishness prevail over the public interest has been an undermining of the public’s trust in the present US government. There’s no question the Wall Street is rigged against the average consumers and taxpayers. The Wall Street has a lot more information. Wall Street jerry-rig the system so that Wall Street always win. If the Wall Street loses trillions, the US Treasury will bail the Wall Street out so it can go back and do it again.
50 trillion dollars in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including 7 trillion dollars in the US stock market, 6 trillion dollars in the US housing market, 8 trillion dollars in the US retirement and household wealth, 2 trillion dollars in the US individual retirement accounts, 2 trillion dollars in the US traditional defined benefit plans and 3 trillion dollars in the US nonpension assets. Greed, arrogance and incompetence created a massive meltdown, cost trillions, and still Wall Street comes out richer and more powerful.
There are trillions dollars of new money taken again from Americans to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out Wall Street will come back for more until the dollar becomes junk. The value of the US dollar declined very significantly during the last 70 years. The value of the US dollar in 1940 was worth 2,000% more than the value of the US dollar now.
Many big US manufacturers are outsourcing to Mexico and China to increase their profits, adding more unemployment in the USA. Manufacturing jobs in the USA declined 37% between 1998 and 2010. Since manufacturing industries declined in the USA, the US competitiveness in the global marketplace is also declined.
The demise of Glass Steagall act helped spawn the credit crisis by allowing the US Banks to reinvest money that was not theirs; they gambled; they failed; they passed down the burden to the people.
The top 6 US banks had assets of less than one fifth of US GDP in 1995. Now they have two third of US GDP. The financial crisis was created by the biggest US banks to consolidate power. The big banks became stronger as a result of the bailout by the US Treasury. The big banks are turning that increased economic clout into more political power.
Oligarchy is the political power based on economic power. And it’s the rise of the Wall Street in economic terms, that it’d turn into political power. And Wall Street then feed that back into more deregulation, more opportunities to go out and take reckless risks and capture trillions of dollars.
Wall Street only has the lobbyists. Today more than 42,000 Wall Street lobbyists manipulate USA’s 537 elected officials with huge campaign contributions that fund candidates who support their agenda. It no longer matters who’s the President of USA.
Since the heads of Wall Street and their representatives are afraid because they don’t have the substance or the arguments, they will not come out and debate with the people who occupy the Wall Street.
The political and economical leadership of the US has chosed to cartel profits and transformed the US economy to serve the colluding and unlawful oligarchy. The political and economical leadership of the US is bailing out failed paradigms with trillions of dollars while committing social injustice to its people. The political and economical leadership of the US including the US Congress have now become Wall Street’s “Trojan Horses”. The US banks are borrowing money at near zero interest from the US government, then lending it back to the US government at even mere fractions higher interest than they are paying. The net interest margin made by the US banks by lending the money back to the US federal government in the first 6 months of 2011 is 210 billion dollars.
Due to the oligarchs’ rapacious looting and their purchase of a politically protected luxurious lifestyle, the people of the US are on the road to permanent serfdom under a police state. The democracy was not given to the people of the US on a platter. It is not theirs for all time, irrespective of their efforts. Either people of the US organize and they find political leadership to take this on or they are going to be in deep trouble.
The failure of governance to address the current critical issues have already produced catastrophic consequences. Now we are experiencing a major global paradigm shift and it is still unfolding.
It’s amazing to me the nerve that so many so-called American citizens (and Bucknell students here) have to partake in this “Occupy” campaign. It’s funny to me that so many of these naive individuals admit to not really having a purpose, and yet they lazily sit and march around Wall Street and Lewisburg. What’s even more infuriating is that those who do have a “problem” talk a lot about how they didn’t approve of the bail out and how they think there is a lack of oversight on Wall Street. Guess what… Wall Street isn’t going to turn down the bail out money, nor is it going to ask for oversight. It sounds to me like most of these people have a problem with the government. The problem is, the majority of those “occupying Wall Street” are liberals, and they don’t want to go stand in front of the White House where we have a liberal president. The guys on Wall Street are the best and the brightest. They are willing to put their nose to the grindstone and work harder than anybody. They create wealth, the bum “occupying” Wall Street does not.
Read this great quote below on the Wall Street perspective.
“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years.
Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”
Case in point.
Andrew Coe