Political Irony

2 Comments

1. starluna wrote:

   There is a young woman who lives in my neighborhood who has started coming to the meetings of a neighborhood based organization that focuses primarily on Latino and immigrant political empowerment. She participates in Occupy Boston and last night she said something that I thought says a lot about this movement. She said that she views the goal of the Occupy movement as trying to scale up the work that grassroots groups like ours have already been doing.

   That says two things to me. First, some proportion of the folks participating in the Occupy movement are not connected to existing grassroots groups that have been working on these issues for a long time. But it also shows that the grassroots groups, who are primarily organized by and focused on the groups who have been materially marginalized for a long time, need to make these connections to the middle class who are finally awakening to their marginalization.

   Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:33 am | Permalink
2. Iron Knee wrote:

   That’s a really good point, analogous to pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous quote “they came for the ___ but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a ___, …, then they came for me but there was nobody left to speak out for me.”

   Wall Street has managed to marginalize 99% of the population, but by controlling the media and national discourse, they have succeeded in pitting these marginalized groups against each other. If all these groups — including the middle class who are just now figuring out that they have been marginalized and it isn’t the fault of illegal immigrants or gays — are able to find common ground, then amazing things will happen.

   Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:55 am | Permalink