Doctor Grandma

Today is Occupy Columbia. Just want to write a few words. This is a movement. No matter how you feel about it, the few who first gathered on Wall Street to voice their disatisfaction with the wage and wealth gap in the United States have had an impact. The fact that that impact is nothing concrete that we can see in some legislation does not diminish the reality of them having an impact. They have continued in force for weeks now, and the movement has spread across the nation and now, the world. It has “gone global”. It seems to speak to, give voice to, the regular folks suffering in America, the 99%. WE ARE the 99%. Meaning, 1 percent of America holds some nearly 40% of all the wealth in this country. The rest of the 99% has little wealth. More and more, we are just struggling to survive. 1 in 10 have lost their homes in the latest plunge of stocks, not because they OWNED ANYTHING, but because we are dependent on this fragile economy of greed to stay in place so that we are not kicked out of our homes. The rest of the world? One third of the world’s population is existing on what is comparable to $1.00 a day. They are all living, working, looking for decent housing, clean water, enough food, giving birth, burying their loved ones as they die, praying that at least some of their children make it to adulthood and are able to support them when they get old. If they get old.

What this movement does, is show the widespread anger, fear and discontent in a large part of the population, in the working people and the voting public. What does it matter who we vote for? WE NEED JOBS. We need people to receive their unemployment checks when they deserve it and not be CUT OFF from some LOOPHOLE B.S. law, like my husband was. The 99% want to voice their worries, their large-spread fear and discontent about their lives. They are not all young kids who don’t want to work, who have nothing better to do, who have been “coddled” like I’ve heard some say recently on facebook. They are America.

The era of US veterans returning from WWII and getting a home loan to build something for their children is gone. No one cares anymore if you can’t ever buy a home. No one cares if your credit is ruined. No one cares if you cannot afford health care, if you are released from the hospital too early and you die. No one cares. The more popular ideology now is to get “tough on crime” and “tough on lazy poachers and make them go to work”. Congress certainly doesn’t care. They are so out of touch with the reality of their constituents, they’d rather spend 100% of their time and energy into stopping anything our President puts forth, than work together for a solution. One of them gets on the news and tells how he needs $200,000 a year to feed his family and lives off of the “other $400,000” that is left? What planet do you live on, Sir?

It is this GAP that is being expressed in Occupy Columbia, Occupy Indianapolis, Occupy Wall Street the money center of America. People are releasing some of their long-term frustration, their realities, their pent up suffering. They also are creating BONDS, creating a sense of belonging, of coming together, which Durkheim would say has its purpose. He would see it as a disruption in the societal system, but in itself, perhaps a positive uniting effect among those involved. Perhaps it will better our society. Marx would see it as the movement of the proletariat calling for a revolution of change, but I think Marx underestimated the ability of society to stabilize itself and continue on. Weber would be watching for a charismatic leader within the group, I suppose. 🙂 

In any case, it is clear and evident that we need a more just society, one founded upon principles of liberty and justice for all, one with a system of checks and balances where power cannot rise too large, where monopolies cannot grow. Seems like I’ve heard this somewhere before….  ? Hmm…

How long will injustice continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men? How long will discord agitate the face of society?… The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appeareth to be lamentably defective. I beseech God, exalted be His glory, that He may graciously awaken the peoples of the earth, may grant that the end of their conduct may be profitable unto them, and aid them to accomplish that which beseemeth their station.

 Behold the disturbances which, for many a long year, have afflicted the earth, and the perturbation that hath seized its peoples. It hath either been ravaged by war, or tormented by sudden and unforeseen calamities. Though the world is encompassed with misery and distress, yet no man hath paused to reflect what the cause or source of that may be. . . How bewildering, how confusing is such behavior! No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union. The Great Being saith: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. We cherish the hope that the light of justice may shine upon the world and sanctify it from tyranny. If the rulers and kings of the earth, the symbols of the power of God, exalted be His glory, arise and resolve to dedicate themselves to whatever will promote the highest interests of the whole of humanity, the reign of justice will assuredly be established  amongst the children of men, and the effulgence of its light will envelop the whole earth. . .

There can be no doubt whatever that if the day star of justice, which the clouds of tyranny have obscured, were to shed its light upon men, the face of the earth would be completely transformed.

 (Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 216)

Really? Big news story in the Wall St journal today, fewer will get mortgages over the next year. Yes, this is something we know. Too many people got mortgages based on no finances. Those bad, irresponsible folks taking a nice house for their family offered to them by the mortgage lenders at the banks who were doing the offering, telling them they could afford it, that everything would be fine, selling them a house with a flexible rate. When the market fell, they lost their home. They should have known better. They should have worked hard, saved their pennies and offered a sizeable down payment at the time of purchase, with their solid credit rating, and not taken a deal unless it had a fixed rate and decent interest rate.

Well, news flash, most people live paycheck to paycheck, even at the higher middle class levels with 2 incomes in the family. Partly this is due to our credit culture where we all have to have our “things” to be happy. But let’s pass around the responsibility a bit.

Most Americans watch 4-7 hours of television per day, where commercials blast “things” at us every 10 minutes of programming. What are the constant messages blasted at us by the media circuit, on television, Internet, radio (if anyone still listens to that, perhaps in their car), on bill boards as we drive? — It’s all about “things” we need to be happy, to have a girlfriend/boyfriend. To go against this constant barrage of needed “things”, we have to go against the norms of society, which means we have to swim upstream. It gets tiring. Somewhere along the way, we cave in and just “go with the flow”. President Bush sends out a check to families, telling them to SPEND IT to help the economy! The economy was tanking, if they spent it, they paid an electic bill with it!

Those people getting loans based on nothing are now losing their homes. But the banks, the mortgage lenders? No sweat, they got bailed out. We all heard in the news how they took the bail out money and continued to pay their CEOs millions in BONUSES. So we all know who cares not a whit about the people losing their homes. We all know who suffers and who goes on as they have been since the end of the Great Depression.

So my actual focus of this blog is this: Where do we go from here? Where we are going is back to BEFORE WWII, when 30-year mortgages without needing a huge down payment were INVENTED, mostly for the GIs returning to get out of the shanty towns that were set up in quonset houses, barracks, and get them and their families into nice, individual homes. Of course, these home loans were denied to black GIs, but oh well. The public wasn’t ready for integration of suburbs.

Bankers and lenders have always done whatever they want, while the people working those jobs take the hand outs and imagine they are independently deciding these things.

People losing their homes, losing their jobs, are now unable to pay those home loans and credit cards at the high interest rates, and their CREDIT RATING is going DOWN THE TUBES. And it is not their fault. Companies offered these things to them and convinced them they could afford it, and their neighbors were getting them, so they also “needed” them. Now we know that was a sham. But the people of America, those hard working people now seeing the loss of those promised “things” are losing out. Their credit rating is going down and there is nothing they can do about it. They will not be able to get a home loan, they will be denied credit cards, and increasingly, employers are checking CREDIT RATINGS before they hire someone. It is a black hole, there is no escape. So the middle class is disappearing. Those at the higher ends can still afford their payments. Those in the middle are moving to the bottom, are losing their homes, now forced to rent a place, and see their wealth disappear. When they lose those jobs, they also lose their health care. So they will die sooner. But we know from watching the Republican debate on television, the Tea Partiers think that laughable. “Let him die! (erupted laughter)”.   We are fast returning to an era of haves and have nots. Was Marx more prophetic than we give him credit for? He did not foresee a middle class, minimum wage laws, easy credit. Are we returning to his predictions? Interesting thought. Time will tell. In the meantime, we all search for a way to survive present conditions. Students take to the streets to protest their thousands in student loans and lack of jobs and opportunity.

There is a certain amount of survival skills due to life experience that comes with 57 years of life. This too shall pass. What the next stage will be, no one knows. Change is certain. Each of us is responsible for what change occurs. Each of us has a brain. Study, learn and contribute. Always contribute. Prepare the best you can. For the immediate future, try to keep costs down, live simply, have any sort of “savings” if you are able. Find a way to survive. Build your skill levels, add things to your resume, promote yourself, network.

It is certain that some will survive, and some will not. Makes me want to gather my children and grandchildren close around me. Know who you can trust and depend upon each other. We are not in this world alone and none of us can survive alone. Human beings are social creatures. Trust and love.