What Do These Occupiers Want?

Read the articles in the newspapers and online.  Listen to the commentators on television and radio.  Finally, listen to the endless stream of comments from the left and the right.  They want to know one thing about the “occupiers.”  What is their reason for occupying?

Critics from the left insist that those involved in the occupy movement must have a unified message.  How can the demonstrators hope to achieve anything without a definite list of goals?

The right wing conservatives have concluded that the “mobs” have no goal.  The protesters are whiners.  They are anti-American.  They want to destroy capitalism.  They are spoiled kids who are used to getting anything they want.  They need to take baths and get jobs.

I have tried on many occasions to do what I can to answer the critics, but there is no reasoning with those who have already formed a judgment.  I have watched the media “spin.”  Corporate-owned media have been persistent purveyors of partisanship.  The attempts to marginalize the movement are evident even in their so-called straight journalism.  Lines are blurred between opinionating and reporting.

What many of the critics and the occupiers themselves don’t realize is that the movement had a spokesman nearly 70 years ago.  In 1944, the year before he died, Franklin Roosevelt spoke of a second Bill of Rights, essentially an economic Bill of Rights. The President who had given the country a New Deal and who was currently engaged in leading the nation through World War 2 looked from the present with hope for the future of America. 

"I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this Economic Bill of Rights, for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do, and the country knows it... In the event no adequate program os progress is evolved, I am certain that the nation will be conscious of the facts."

In the present struggle to define a message, Franklin Roosevelt’s voice must become part of the dialogue.  Listen to him tell it in his own words.  Then, if you agree, do what was impossible in his day.  Send his message to all who should hear it, both in the United States of America and around the world.

Mic check.

©2011 

The Massachusetts Observer