Opinion: Occupy Wall Street

Occupied Wall Street (OWS) is long overdue. The young people leading it should resist its being co-opted by the Democratic Party. They need to realize that Wall Street cannot be separated from the capitalist system.

The capitalist system works only for the super-rich and those who are well paid to serve them. Nowhere is this more clear than in the USA.

The richest country on earth is a site of massive social injustice. Hundreds of millions have no health care; no pensions; are unemployed or under-employed; live in slums; suffer from miserable prison-like schools; pay huge amounts for “public” education.

The foulest racist ideas and practices are promoted by major networks, news media, and schools, to keep incomes of non-white workers a fraction of that of white workers, and their lives shorter and more impoverished in every way.

US rulers send soldiers to murder tens of thousands of people around the world every year to steal the natural resources (like petroleum) and secure cheap labor which drives down wages for American workers.

The capitalists run the country and both Republican and Democratic parties. Finance capitalists, symbolized by Wall Street, created the current Depression, then got their flunkies in both parties to bail them out with public money – yours and mine.

Now “conservatives” -- politicians like Gov. Christie, and those paid off or brainwashed by the rich – are blaming everybody but those really responsible. Public workers. The unemployed. Undocumented workers, whom they call “illegal aliens.”

The Republican Party is openly the enemy of US employees, far worse than Al Qaida. Its policies kill more Americans than a dozen 9/11’s every year.

(Sign seen at OWS last week: “Keep Undocumented Workers – Deport Republicans!”)

But the Democratic Party is, in a way, worse. They promise reform only to stab reformers in the back. The Dems will try to coopt the OWS movement. Don’t let them do it!

So OWS is good because it is the beginning of a fight against exploitation. This consciousness needs to be clarified and sharpened. Evil as Wall Street is, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

The youth of today need to make the 21st century the era when capitalism – the exploitation of the overwhelming majority by the evil few – is buried for once and for all.

Let’s make OWS the beginning of that powerful movement we so desperately need.

Thoughts of the above post are the sole view of Mr. Furr.