Central Connecticut State University did a ranking of the most literate cities in America, for 2009. Of the top ten most conservative states, not one city in any of these states made the list of the most literate in America. Of the top ten most liberal states, five cities in five separate states ranked amongst the top ten most literate in the country.
Last week, a woman in Scottsdale decided to organize a rally in Phoenix. She had been watching the news about the young man, Trayvon Martin, who had been killed in Florida.
The fight for equality began in North Carolina, in 1961, at a Woolworth. That day, four young black men demanded to be served lunch at a whites-only counter.
Is it the man or woman who lives in a tent, day after day, to fight for your rights? Is it that man or woman who lives on lands that are foreign to them? Is it that man and woman who, each and every day, does not know if someone carrying a weapon will attack them without any provocation, but merely because they were ordered to do so?
To tell them their ‘bad choices’ of losing their jobs and being old during a recession was their fault, and they needed to stop whining about it. It angers me when I talk to the ‘I’ve got mine, who cares about yours’ type of people in this country. Is that how your momma raised you?
The talking heads on T.V. cannot seem to embrace the fact that this protest, the Occupying going on all around America, has no specific agenda. It appears that, somehow, they have missed the point.
That is what this protest is all about. It’s about the big banks taking taxpayer bailouts then refusing to give loans to individuals and small businesses. It’s about major corporations taking taxpayer bailouts then giving themselves big bonuses. It’s about the mortgage and foreclosure crises, companies who are laying off thousands of employees to keep their profit-margins up, gas prices, oil industry profits, income inequality, climate change and corporate outsourcing, tax-avoidance, loopholes and greed.
It’s been a pretty rough few days. Not only did we all have to sit through the sad memories of 9/11, but we also had to sit through two Republican debates, one sponsored by the Tea Party.
The most amazing thing about those few weeks after 9/11, was how much Manhattan changed. Not just because we were all living in fear, but there was something else that was happening around us. The honking stopped. The shouting quieted down and the city became, well, polite.
