Some of the grad students in my department are having a discussion over email of the various Occupy Wall Street/Oakland/San Francisco/the Tundra/everywhere protests. One of the other students wrote:
One suggestion I’ll make (which of course is just a suggestion) is to focus on government corruption and the corrosive power of private money in politics, as opposed to corporate greed or growing economic inequalities. I’ve been debating the protests with some of my conservative friends over the last week (and reading a lot of related articles) and it seems that any perceived demonization of the rich is an immediate turn-off to conservatives. In contrast, government corruption is widely despised and is something that many conservative-leaning people will support. Personally, I think that if this movement is going to cause any real change, the primary message has to be something that will appeal to conservatives also.
I know that this person is coming from a position of genuine commitment to social change. And I respect their willingness to say unpopular things (e.g. let’s reach out to conservatives). But at the same time? I thought about it. Then I had rage. Then I had a response which involved a lot of swearing, and that reflected badly on my commitment to nonviolent communication. It’s important to note that this initial rage-spasm was not directed at this other student, but at the conservatives who are so “turned off” by the idea of raising taxes on the rich. Anyway. I thought some more. I mustered less rage and a more respectful communication style. This was my response:
Photo by newmexico51 on Flickr.
WHY are we supposed to be pandering to conservatives and their fetishization of the rich? They don’t pander to us.
I don’t assume that everyone on this list has the exact same opinions on economic inequality that I do (although wouldn’t that be nice?) but surely we can all agree that one of the major problems in the country right now is the way that decision-makers safeguard the interests of the massively wealthy against the interests of the massively un-wealthy? There is so much good literature on how economic inequality not only deepens and strengthens economic recessions, but also leaves entire generations of people at economic disadvantage.
Socioeconomic inequality is bad for everyone except for people who are extremely well-insulated from economic shock – and it will hurt them too, in the end. But I am far less concerned about the Warren Buffets of this world than about my students who are going out into a job market that is not willing to receive them, while at the same time their parents are being laid off. This university is asking its students – grad students but especially undergrads – for greater and greater financial sacrifices in the interests of an education, which is to say the opportunity of class mobility, a decent job, and a living wage. In many cases, their families have made sacrifices on a generational scale to ensure this opportunity. But the likelihood that those sacrifices will pay off – even with enormous amounts of hard work – is shrinking. Especially when we are talking about the people without the right connections and/or the class background necessary to make those connections.
So yes, we SHOULD be criticizing the rich who make profits for their rich stockholders instead of offering good jobs to people who not only desperately need them but are in a prime position to genuinely contribute to our society (let alone the rich people who are currently laying their workers off).
YES we should be indicting corporate power brokers who cling to an outmoded economic model (which is particularly obvious in the case of energy production but applies to other sectors of the economy as well) in the interests of their short-term profits instead of thinking of the long-term economic and environmental health of their communities and their nation. YES we should be railing against politicians who want to maintain the bank accounts of their wealthy constituents at the cost of the basic social services that the government of any industrialized country should provide (assuming respect for basic human dignity, that is).
There is a growing crevasse between the haves and the have-nots in this country and as it grows the ice wall is falling out from beneath anyone who is standing on the edge.
TL, DR: Don’t indict the corporatization and corruption of the American political system without indicting its consequence: the long-term sociopolitical costs of inequality.
Clearly, the length of my sentences is kind of a syntactical gnashing of teeth.
