38 Years Later: Is Wounded Knee coming to Wall Street?

By
Guy Fawkes
– September 28, 2011Posted in: "The OC", Corporatism, Fresh Juice, police brutality, Wall Street, Wall Street Protests 2011

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Maybe it already has if you count the NYPD using pepper spray on unarmed protestors wondering why their hard earned money (and ours) has been stolen from the likes of J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup thanks to our own elected officials that voted for TARP in 2008 (for the record, it was signed into law by President George W. Bush).   But who really gives a rat’s ass when Chaz Bono is shaking his ass on “Dancing With the Stars.”    To which begs the question, where’s the real outrage? It’s all about the children, right?

Is Anonymous going about this protest and occupation in the wrong way? One could argue that Anonymous and the Wall Street protestors should do a 180 degree turn in their approach and emulate the dissent tactics of Russell Means, Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement for the purpose of sending a more effective and powerful message to the rest of the country and world. The message being that we, the American taxpayer, will no longer lay silent while our goverment is playing the role of the anti-Robin Hood with our tax dollars. In other words, stealing from us and giving our money to the likes of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase so that their CEOs can get paid their exorbiant executive bonuses.

Would an armed siege by ordinary citizens on Wall Street be the real watershed event of the 21st century that would capture the attention of the power elites in the corporate, political and media circles? One could argue that the probability of such an event happening on Wall Street in the next 20 years is inevitable.

Two real radicals: Russell Means and Dennis Banks

How so, you ask? Let’s take a look at the similarities between the Lakota Sioux and the American taxpayer. Both the Lakota Sioux and American taxpayer have had their civil liberties and freedoms stripped away from them in piecemeal over a period of time via enactment of various forms of government legislation. Whether the legislation is called the PATRIOT ACT or the Indian Removal Act, people will eventually reach their boiling point once they pushed into a corner and feel that their freedoms are being trampled on. And just like a rattlesnake, they will coil and strike at their aggressor in order to defend themselves and their loved ones from harm.

For the last several years, we have been duped by slick talking politicians from the political duopoly who claim to our best interests in mind. People who claim that they know what to do with our money and give it to feed the poor and rebuild the infrastructure of other nations. People who use our money to line the pockets of bank executives while our infrastructure crumbles and our people become unemployed and are left to die. We’ve been told to be that shining city on a hill, to read someone’s lips, to believe in a place called hope, to be a uniter not a divider and to know that this time around if you vote for me, I will bring you “change we can believe in.” And lest I forget, we are told that corporations are people too.

Yet, these same empty suits say one thing and do something that is contrary to their rhetoric. The Internet bloggers and television talking heads write up their faux outrage while sheepishly apologizing for their favored people that enable this crap to fester one vote at a time. They do this so that they don’t give the appearance that they are disloyal to the whims and wishes of the power elites that control the state. Or perhaps they do this to hide the guilt that they have for actions that they continue to enable because someone has a D or R next to their name. When will they realize that we are all mere pawns being played in the same game? In other words, there is no Left or Right paradigm.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “(a)mong the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” We have already gone down that slippery slope one piece of legislation at a time as we have traded liberty and freedom for so called “security and safety.” Because our government really cares about us or “the children,” right? Or maybe we need to fit that square peg in a round hole once again because we thought it worked in the 1960s or whatever year it was that the geriatrics who want to relive their glory days and abilities to maintain erections or orgasms. And with these protests, what real change is going to occur? As Einstein once said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The last 30 years of US foreign, domestic and economic policy has shown us that nothing has really changed no matter how much we “peacefully protest.”

Vern Nelson had a recent blog post titled “Fuck 9/11.” Needless to say, I share the same sentiments and am sick of being played as a pawn in the corporate duopoly’s game of maintaining an unsustainable military empire here and abroad. An unsustainable energy policy that pollutes and ravages our environment. An unsustainable monetary and economic policy that favors granting taxpayer dollars to failing multi-billion dollar corporations. An unsustainable political duopoly that says that they are for the people but goes to the highest bidder. A draconian and unsustainable drug policy that has created an oppressive police and surveillance state and a 21st century version of slave labor working in a prison industrial complex run by corporatist interests. We’ve become so unsustainable that we’re beyond “too big to fail.”

Maybe it is time to advocate the unspeakable and unthinkable on Wall Street to send a clear and authoritative message. Because the old way sure as hell isn’t waking anyone up at this juncture. Russell Means and Dennis Banks had the Federal government at their mercy in 1973 in a small town in South Dakota. Can the Wall Street protestors finish the job that they started 38 years ago?

Grab your popcorn. This could be very exciting.

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