Eighty years ago Gandhi and a small group of followers unknowingly began a nationwide boycott of a salt tax. The group grew larger as their march progressed to the sea, ultimately numbering in the thousands. They remained through the night. In the morning Gandhi broke the law by picking up a piece of sea salt from the beach.

A nationwide endeavor followed with thousands of people trekking to the shore to gather salt which was then sold throughout India. The energy emerging from this protest, in today’s vernacular, went viral. Peaceful picketing sprung up across the country. The police responded with mass arrests.

Protests grew with Gandhi’s arrest. Ultimately, an agreement was reached. Gandhi was freed, protesters were released, and salt production was permitted.

Peaceful protest had changed the world without a shot being fired. Today many Indians wear tee-shirts bearing the words, Be the change you want to see in the world’.

At Zuccotti Park and countless places around the world, local and global Occupy Wall Street civic actions dominate the news. While protesters are growing in number they are being challenged by those who feel most threatened. But peaceful protest knows no bounds. Let’s be part of history in the making. Be the change you want to see in the world.

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Join me. I’ll be going to Zuccotti Park this Wednesday morning. I will be delivering a check from YWC!LI–your donations. It will be a small contribution, relative to the near quarter-million dollar reserve the OWS movement at Liberty Square has amassed. That is how real, lasting change can be made. Small steps lead to great strides whether they lead to a beach or to a skyscraper.

Let me know that you want to come along (mkyankee@gmail.com). Great fun. Good people. I will be taking the LIRR train from Merrick to Penn Station at 10:02 a.m. We’ll meet up at (or in) the second car from the front of the train on the Merrick platform. If you board at a previous (more easterly) station, remain on the train and we’ll meet up with you.

Those opposed to the protest say the movement remains vague. That’s a ludicrous statement at best. Here’s how I see thiongs at the moment:

The working middle class has been (too) quietly expressing its frustration with the economy since the recession began–actually for decades now. So quietly, though, that it seemed more a malaise than an effort to bring about change.

Until a few weeks ago there seemed no vehicle for expressing itself. That vehicle has become the local and global Occupy Wall Street movement.

For anyone to suggest that, in less than a month, the coming together of so many threads of America’s working middle class to have been knitted into fabric is certainly unreasonable.

Three weeks and counting. Still no specific set of goals and demands. How much has Congress accomplished in thirty months?

The most prominent Republican in the Obama administration is accusing GOP House members of blocking efforts to resolve the nation’s problems, partly because they don’t want the president to be successful.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was asked at a transportation conference Friday why it was so difficult to get big infrastructure projects built right now. He responded that “some people don’t want Obama to be successful.”

He said “a big percentage of the Republicans that were elected this time came here to do zero, and that’s what they’ve done.” LaHood says those lawmakers have obstructed other people who want to get things done.

Read the story.

It is happening more and more. A few among the many who have done so well financially in America have necessarily begun to speak out in favor of the growing OWS protest. It is critically important that the most wealthy among us, those who have been disproportionately advantaged by the system for decades, add their voices to the ninety-nine percent. Here’s one man’s welcome opinion.

I’m in the 1%. But I support the 99%. Last year I earned a million dollars on Wall Street, but I’m sick of this society that skews the rewards for work so grotesquely.

Last year, I earned the best part of a million dollars working in an allied sector to the financial services industry. I’m still only mid-career. Based on my previous earning history, I guess I could find myself earning substantially more than that over the years ahead. I don’t know where precisely that puts me on the income distribution curve, but it must be in or very near the 1% . . .

Read on

Other than Romney (for whom I have no fondness), the ‘contestants’ are a bunch of buffoons. Despite their well-earned caricatures, this is hardly a joking matter. I cannot get my mind around the notion that any one of the group could become the leader of the free world . . . of the planet.

The Daily Beast sums it up: Maybe President Obama has an election strategy after all: Let the other guys keep talking.

Three questions I’d like to have answered by each of the ‘debaters’:

1. How do you justify that virtually every Republican member of Congress has taken an oath that supercedes the one sworn to when they took their oath of office?

2. How could you not challenge other candidates and/or the audience when they jeer an active duty member of American armed forces when he asks a question? when they applaud an American dying for lack of health insurance? Could you possibly imagine President Obama not intervening at such times?

Romney, raised an eyebrow acknowledging that the offensive responses had registerd with his conscious being. He was unable or unwilling to summon the courage, the decency, the common sense to respond in any of these outrageous instances.

Herman Cain has been gaining momentum. A WSJ/MSNBC poll has him leading Romney. How could this be happening? For one thing, Cain is a capable speaker and his aggressive nature is attractive to Teapublicans. For another, his plan has been barely vetted and people are taking him at his word.

Therein lies the rub. A Washington Post article highlights misconceptions that exist today. But not for long. As the plan is reviewed and publicized it will prove unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans–not even to rational conservatives. To start, Cain’s economic advisor is an accountant–not an economist. But Cain persists that the professional economists who refute his arguments ‘don’t get it’.

Quoting,The “9-9-9″ label is actually a bit of misnomer. Cain would toss out much of the current federal tax code and replace it, eventually and only temporarily, with three taxes – a 9 percent income tax, a 9 percent business transactions tax and a 9 percent federal sales tax. On paper, the first two look like cuts, because payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare (now nearly 15 percent, including corporate contributions) would be repealed. The sales tax would be new, on top of existing state sales taxes.

But note that we said the “9-9-9″ would happen eventually – and then only temporarily. That’s because it is only the second step of a planned three-step process. The first step would cut individual and corporate tax rates to a top 25 percent rate (down from a current high of 35 percent). Then the final step would replace all of the taxes – even the 9s – with a national sales tax, known by proponents as a “Fair Tax.”

Herman Cain’s 999 plan: a misleading pitch

Cold Pizza–NY Times

This is an easy piece to share. Written by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, it is personal. It is ringing. It gets directly to the heart of the matter. Taibbi identifies five key demands for OWS. Bernie Sanders has listed six demands to make of Wall Street.

Do you think that, ultimately, OWS demands will mirror those of Taibbi and Sanders? What demands would you like to see emerge as the movement matures?

Taibbi:

1. Break up the monopolies.

2. Pay for your own bailouts.

3. No public money for private lobbying.

4.Tax hedge-fund gamblers.

5. Change the way bankers get paid.

For the full article

Sanders:

1. If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

2. Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury.

3. The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks.

4. Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices.

5. Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives. Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures.

For the complete article:

On the other hand, Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan:

1. Cut taxes for the wealthy.

2. Increase taxes for the poor and middle class.

3. Increase the deficit.

4. Promote no job growth.

NY Times: No Jobs Bill, No Ideas

Here are replies from YWC!LI members the past couple of days. Members are always encouraged to submit their thoughts for sharing.

Howard Schultz may qualify… I’m sure you are aware of the 150 CEOs who have ceased political donations.You may be able to nudge him in the right direction.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/10/starbucks-howard-schultz-campaign-donations-/1

Congratulations for your intelligent and objective comments.

John
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My family and I went down to Zucotti Park yesterday to take part in the Occupy Wall Street protests. They are so smart and organized and it is inspiring much hope in me. My hope for positive change in our country, and the world, has been dwindling terribly. This is a big shot in the arm and I plan to support them as much as I can.

To get a feel for what is developing and the people involved, take a look at www.OccupyWallSt.org. There are other sites, www.nycga.net and www.wearethe99percent.tumblr.com

Star

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I never voted for (Peter) King. I never liked his environmental record for one. Yes he does approve funding for Breast Cancer – duh do you think the environment might be the cause!!
However it appears the #3 are republicans and vote by party line not brains. Now I hear he might run for President!!!!

Joanne

(n.b.–I prompted Joanne not to fret over her last point)

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Now that all the Republicans have voted against the President’s job’s package, it is becoming increasingly clear to the public who these people are. Maybe they have become pathological liars, actually buying into their own garbage for so long that they have become true believers in garbage. Congress has become the dump.

If the OWS movement continues to grow, there will be another tipping point–the public’s big aha that they had bought the big lie. No one is angrier than a person who finds out he or she was manipulated and the anger gets directed to the puppet masters.

As far as OWS is concerned, I see no reason to charter buses. This is a 40 minute LIRR ride and a subway. I am planning to go down there anyway on my own to see the energy and the dynamics. People can simply set a time to be there and show up at a designated place.
Blindy (abridged)

Participants in the service, organized by supporters of the protest, included many of those involved in the demonstration, local Jewish residents who had come simply for the service itself, and non-Jewish onlookers.
Yom Kippur Service at Liberty Square

Republican attack dogs, elected and paid alike, have chosen to characterize the people at the sites of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as ‘mobs’ (thank you Eric Cantor) and to describe them as slovenly, boozing, drug-taking, . . . Herman Cain offers the simplest solution for clearing the varmints from Zuccotti Square-they should get jobs. He says his parents raised him right. I beg to differ.

The question should not be why are these people taking over squares throughout the country to protest their plight? The media (including corporate media) ought to be asking:

Who are Lawrence Ellison, Ray Elliot, Ray Irani, Mark Hurd, James Hackett, A. G. Lafley, William Weldon, Miles White, Bob Iger, Samuel Palmisano, Robert Stevens, Randall Stevenson, Jay Fishman, Jeffrey Bewkes, John Stumpf, James Cracchiolo, and Rupert Murdoch?

And, Why aren’t they marching in protest?

I listed LE first and RM last as hints. Odds are you’ve never heard of the others. They are the highest compensated CEOs of American corporations. Jamie Dimon would barely make this list although he is the highest paid bank CEO. Before I go further, let it be understood that I have no problem with corporate CEOs making the big bucks (from Ellison’s $85 million down to Murdoch’s $18 million). I would not want their jobs. Nor would I want their salaries. I have enough issues to deal with.

We need to know their names because they are not marching-nor will they be–the streets of America’s cities. They are too few to be considered a mob whether assembled in a board room or at Zuccotti Square. They would not be deemed derelict given their attire. And they would not have to protest about unavailable job opportunities.

What these men have in common is the need not to protest (although I am sure each thinks he has plenty to bitch and moan about within his milieu). In this increasingly corporatist society CEOs are the center of gravity in the corporate community and in the circles of the power elite. They make hay and throw their weight around as kings of the mountain. That, despite all the protests we could possibly muster, will remain the way it is. And I don’t believe, other than certainly in terms of scale, that it should change in a capitalist economy.

I am not writing about the redistribution of wealth. I am thinking how great it would be for just one of these people to stand up and tell the people what must happen to save our economy, our society. Break ranks. Show leadership. Demonstrate compassion. Talk about how Americans need jobs and what corporate CEOs could do to improve the situation. Talk aloud how the middle class needs to be, once again, the engine of the American economy.

Set aside, for the moment, the expectations of shareholders to grow profit and to increase price per share. Don’t divide up the pie differently. Grow the pie. We know the main ingredient-jobs.

Wouldn’t that be something? Let’s not hold our collective breath.

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