America in turmoil

After all these years of regarding the USA as the world’s leading advocate of unbridled capitalism, it’s all changing. The assumption that anyone can be rich and rise to the status of president has taken a nasty knock since the economic crisis. Finding themselves under the cosh for being involved in a bonanza of purchasing that is now seen as culpable, people feel duped and misled. The simple economic fact that 1% own most of the wealth of the US gave a shape and a name to the huge movement that now seems unstoppable. Click on the website, We Are the 99 Percent to see the hand-written letters posted there, each telling its own story. The simple message it bears has a punch. Here’s one sample:

‘We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.’

The police break-up of the Occupy movement has not stopped this immense coalition of indignant and near-desperate people. Footage of students sitting silently on the ground being doused with a rust-coloured aerosol pepper spray shows their extraordinary control. There is no movement of reaction, only a sustained chant by hundreds of people that eventually causes the cops in their riot gear to regroup in uncertainty then return to their vans.

For daily news about what’s going on in the States, look at www.truth-out.org , which comes up free on your screen every morning with reports and video footage, coupled with responsible writing from such respected figures as Noam Chomsky. You’ll see facts and opinions there from intelligent Americans whose words will never see light in the orthodox world press.

What started as Occupy Wallstreet has become international and hydra-headed. Police brutality may chop off one head, but a hundred others replace it. In London, people camped quietly outside St Cathedral while the Church of England struggled to sort out the relationship between God and Mammon. There is, alas, little doubt about which will win that little debate, but the larger movement goes on.

These are extraordinary times, for what is happening is not revolution. It’s a coming together of millions of people who have understood that the unbridled making of profit is no way for a world population to live with itself. Since the coming of the Internet, we are in communication as never before. This is a time of historic change, and children of later generations will ask what it was like to be there. The least we can do is know.

www.truth-out.org.  Don’t miss it.