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It’s time to retire the 99 percent.
Not the people, but the slogan that identifies the Occupy Movement.
“We’re the 99 percent” slogan focused upon two completely different groups of people. The 99 percent are the masses, the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the middle class; the 1 percent refers to the concentration of wealth in the top one percent of the population and in the dominance of large corporate and global financial systems.
The Movement, following the Arab Spring, began in the late summer of 2011 with the Occupy Wall Street protest. Central to the Movement, which quickly expanded into more than 500 American cities and 82 countries, was a call for social and economic justice.
During the 2007 Great Recession, the accumulated wealth of the 1 percent decreased significantly less than the wealth of the 99 percent, large numbers of whom first became unemployed and then homeless because of the tactics of greed led by the financial empires.
Within the 1 percent are CEOs and executives of the banking industry that willingly took government bailout funds, and then used some of that money to give six and seven figure bonuses.
The 1 percent includes Ina R. Drew, chief investment officer for JPMorgan Chase, which lost $2 billion in funds through misguided investment policies. Drew, one of Wall Street’s power players—and widely recognized as one of the more brilliant financial managers—earned about $14 million in salary. Jamie Dimon, in a stockholder meeting this past week, humbled by the huge loss, told stockholders, “This should never have happened. I can’t justify it. Unfortunately, these mistakes were self-inflicted.” But, Dimon, both the chief executive officer and the chairman of the board, kept his job and its $23 million salary.
The 1 percent also includes Mitt Romney, who earned about $21 million in 2010, and has a net worth of about $230 million, according to Forbes, but hasn’t filed his 2011 taxes. Somehow, he wants the people to believe he will bring the nation out of the depths of the Great Recession, but needs an extension to file his own taxes.
The 1 percent also includes right-wing celebrity mouth Rush Limbaugh, who is in the middle of an eight year $400 million contract that allows him to spew lies, hate, and venom at anyone who doesn’t agree with his ultra-conservative philosophy, which includes Occupiers and just about anyone with a social, environmental, and economic conscience.
The 1 percent includes Sarah Palin, once an obscure politician who now has a net worth of about $14 million, most of it the result of her participation in the mainstream media, which she claims she despises.
The 1 percent includes the Kardashian Sisters whose souls are wrapped in self-adulation, and who are worshipped by millions who have enhanced their importance by watching reality shows and reading vapid celebrity “tell-all” newspapers and magazines.
But the 1 percent also includes billionaire Warren Buffet, who is leading a movement to reduce tax loopholes and increase taxes on the rich, while improving the tax structure for the 99 percent.
The 1 percent includes Bill and Melissa Gates who are spending most of their fortune to improve the education and health of people throughout the world.
The 1 percent includes George Clooney, who has been at the forefront of the fight for justice in Darfur, whose citizens have been the victims of genocide by the Sudanese government.
The 1 percent includes Angelina Jolie who is Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and who has put her money and time into helping the world’s children.
The 1 percent includes Ed Asner, Bono, Mike Farrell, Bette Midler, Sean Penn, Rob Reiner, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, and thousands of other millionaire celebrities who have willingly put their reputations and money on the line to fight for the important social, economic, and political causes that should be the ones that define America as a land of freedom and opportunity, and which would be supported by most of the nation’s Founding Fathers.
In contrast, the 99 percent isn’t composed solely of the victims of the 1 percent. Millions are as uncaring, as greedy, as self-centered as some of those in the 1 percent. Millions are racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. Millions follow Tea Party philosophies that selfishly place the health and welfare of the people secondary to a belief that cutting spending, except for the military, will solve all problems. It is a philosophy that, if left unchallenged, would force even greater misery to the American Middle Class and underclass, and lead to destroying the balance of nature and the environment.
“We are the 99 percent” slogan, coupled with non-violent protest in the face of several violent police incidents, had served the Movement well, but its time is over. The Movement can no longer be an “us versus them” philosophy that has become divisive. It must now migrate to one that includes all people who are willing to fight for social, political, and economic justice in the Army of Conscience.
[Walter Brasch—as writer and activist—has been a part of the movement for social, political, and economic justice for more than four decades. His current book is the critically-acclaimed novel, Before the First Snow, the story of an activist and her relationship with a journalist over a 25 year period from 1964 to 1991, the eve of the Persian Gulf War.]
11 Comments
I really strongly disagree with this, and I believe you entirely miss the point of the 99%.
What we’re seeing in the US today is the development of a plutocratic oligarchy. There are certainly members of that oligarchy who are generous and caring in what they do. In fact, one might even be able to make the case that a greater percentage of the 1% than of the 99% are charitable and do good works. but that doesn’t matter at all.
That’s not what the division between the 1% and the 99% is about. What is it is about is the emergence of a group of people who are above the law and who manipulate and often control the political system for their advantage and against the interests of the 99%.
None of the people you mentioned above are doing anything about the emergence of the plutocracy in fact Bill Gates and Warren Buffett actively manipulate the political to maintain provisions of the law that advantage them. Most of the celebrities you mention have and continue to provide unconditional support to Barack Obama in spite of his undermining of American political freedoms, his toleration of high unemployment, his sell-out of health care reform efforts, his ineffectual efforts and sometimes damaging efforts on the environment, his partial undermining of Dodd-Frank, his failure to take down the big banks or prosecute a single one of their leaders for their role in the mortgage frauds and the crash of 2008.
Most of them cheerfully accept the tax loopholes they have and oppose closing those loopholes. Even their charitable work is suspect, since every charitable donation they make results in losses of tax revenue to the Treasury.
That is, they are tax expenditures. And who makes the decisions about which charities are most deserving and which most deserve the benefits of such tax expenditures? Why the 1% celebrities do. The 99% have no say in this. If they had a say perhaps they’d prefer that there were no charitable deductions for the 1%, but rather full payment of their liabilities, and charitable giving over and above that?
After all, partly because the effective actual tax rates of the wealthy are so low, the Congress is now talking about cutting SS, Medicare, and other elements of the social safety net, because “we can’t afford it.” Even though we can somehow afford tax expenditures so our celebrities can do the good works of their choice, including people like Peter G. Peterson who use their charitable deductions to create foundations that work to lobby for tax reductions for the rich and the corporations and for spending cuts for the rest of us.
Finally, there isn’t one of the celebrities you mentioned, who is doing anything t save our democracy from the plutocratic oligarchy now establishing its dominance. Where is the billion dollar political effort supported by Buffett and Gates to overturn Citizens United? Where is the effort supported by these celebrities to support other new layers of political organization that would overturn the iron law of oligarchy and save our rapidly disappearing democracy?
In the end this is not about members of the 1% who do good and members of the 99% who don’t. It’s about economic and political inequality and about the death grip the 1% or perhaps the .001% have on our political system and their ability to see that their interests are always represented and ours are almost never served.
The reason why the 99% vs. the 1% is still of surpassing importance is democracy. The Occupy movement of the 99% is about who will govern? Your celebrities and obscenely rich and powerful billionaires, like Buffett, Gates, the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg, and the other billionaires, or we, the people?
To add to what letsgetitdone said (and there isn’t much to add — pretty comprehensive!), I would only add that the idea that we outnumber them and have comrades everywhere is greatly enheartening and empowering.
But maybe we should change it to we are the 99.99%.
Plus, some of us resent that you seem to be here to sell books as well as bad ideas.
AS was said by letsgetitdone – no
I disagree because it is the 1% – or rather the 0.01% that I was allowed a peak at in the 1980′s working for a boss (General Olmstead) whose family provided secret funds for Ike and everyone thereafter, as he had his “secret” Thursday dinners with Reagan – allowing me a peak at the others that have the money and clout to run things in secret – and to indeed plan what we have now.
Sorry but it is a war of the 1% on the rest of us – and the fact that half of the 99% are gullible enough to fight on the side of the 1% in hope of a few crumbs changes nothing. Indeed there are reasons to fear big government and I respect those that have that fear – except there are more reasons to fear the rich and corporate – and still more reason for fear when the rich and corporate control big government.
I’m happy that the millionaire celebrities you name are doing the good work you mention. I want to live in a country with a progressive tax code that levels the playing field and supports and strengthens the commonweal. Until everyone in this country has access to quality healthcare, education, housing and other necessities I find it obscene that we even have “millionaires”.
Oh, and yes, we are keeping the 99% and the 1%. I want them to remember that there are hell of a lot more of us than there are of them.
For the record, I don’t mind the reference to your book, Walter. It seems a legitimate credential to me, and I’m an author myself. Wendy, it’s not as though he took out an ad, exactly, is it? -:) -:) -:)
eaxactly my sentiments, papau.
Click the link, lets; you can buy it there. Nice to know you’re an author, but do you sell your book on every post you write? Brasch and his wife do.
Has he ever once come on these posts to answer questions or concerns? Never, as far as I’ve ever seen, and I have commented on his posts several times. Even Michelle Chen did ONCE that I know of, as did ‘Undisciplined PhD’: ONCE. ;o)
There is an old saying – “Charity begins at home.”
Where was their charitable souls when their workers need raises?
That is what I feel about philanthropy. The 1% rips off millions of workers to become wealthy, then do a charity to make them look good in the eyes of themselves and others. Oh, you are such a wonderful person – you sorry MF!
Enough commenters have made good points – letsgetitdone, papau etc. Let me get to the more specific cases of the liberal 1& you mentioned.
Bill Gates is out to destroy our public schools and deskill/degrade teaching. Warren Buffet donated money to the already monstrous Gates foundation.
George Clooney is providing a charismatic, cool face for humanitarian intervention in Darfur.
And of course, Buffet/Gates duo are busy promoting dirty energy.
Beware of handsome,”cool”, “intelligent” looking liberals among the 1%. They are actually more dangerous to spot, compared to the openly sleazy right wing billionaires (at least they don;t come with the mask).