There it is in black and white and in the Washington Post: a certain relationship is growing between the new Occupy movement and the tea party movement, or at least among the foot soldiers of the Tea Party Movement BC — Before Corporate interests bought it out.
Although many organizers of the two populist efforts view their counterparts from the other end of the spectrum as misguided or even evil, attitudes among the rank and file of the tea party and Occupy Wall Street are often much more accepting and flexible. They start out with different views about the role of government, but in interviews and online discussions they repeatedly share many of the same frustrations, as well as a classically American passion for fixing the system.
No one expects the tea party and Occupy movements to merge forces, but their adherents are discovering that their stories are often strikingly similar: They searched for jobs and came up empty. They found work, but their pay barely covered food and rent, with nothing left over even to buy an old car. They saw their towns empty out as young people moved away in search of money and meaning.
The stories their parents and teachers told them about how to make it in America have come to seem like fairy tales from a magical but foreign place.
The two movements share a cynicism about the political process. But many people in both groups are also resiliently optimistic, almost irrationally so. They believe that if good people simply refuse to play the game as it has come to be played, the Founders’ vision can again inspire a land of the free, a nation that lives up to the promise of “e pluribus unum” — out of many, one.
I think the Washington Post, for all its accomodating language, misses an important point. The original tea party movement doesn’t really exist anymore. The question is whether it’s dead or just in hiding under the layers of money laid on it by Washington lobbyists.
Innocent bystanders are also finding out the truth about the Occupy movement, a truth that’s finally creeping into mainstream media like WaPo. It’s respectable!
Take one of the Post’s interviewees, a middle-aged American — Wayne Schissler who has a job in Allentown, PA. Schissler looks at the Occupiers.
“They didn’t stink, and they weren’t on drugs… I could see me being them, 30 years ago.”
A tea party supporter, he’s uneasy about the radicals in the tea party movement but still against “big government.”
His tea party friends had warned Schissler not to engage with demonstrators they considered dangerous. And Schissler did run into some odd folks, such as “a 9/11 truther who was going on about the Jews controlling everything,” he said. But he also found people on the same page when it comes to corporate bailouts and the idea that politicians are too easily swayed by those with big money.
“The truth is, we got some on our side who are pretty out there, too,” Schissler said. “When you talk to these Occupy people, there’s differences — your wonderful institution is my bogeyman and vice versa. But we agree government should be made unbribable. We agree that the Founders never envisioned the government bailing out GM or big banks. We have some common ground.”
Here in Texas, it keeps coming back to what people mean when they say “big government.” It always seems to turn out that they don’t mean “their” government. If the original tea partyers in this area had run away from minders like Dick Armey and the Koch brothers, they would have found the real problem: corporations and large interest groups have come to own our elected officials, an ownership now made law of the land by Citizens United. Trouble is, those very corporate interests have bought out the original tea partyers.
Another tea party supporter interviewed by the Post is fed up with the tea party movement “becoming the religious wing of the Republican Party, when the people who started the tea party didn’t want anything to do with parties or religion.” She’s in touch with Occupy.
“I don’t agree with everything your movement does, but I sympathize with your cause and agree on our common enemy,” she wrote. She warned Occupy that it would be co-opted by unions and Democrats, just as the tea party was “hijacked” by religious groups and Republicans. She warned that news coverage would “focus on the movement’s most repulsive elements.”
She egged the Occupiers on, wishing them success against an oligarchy of big institutions that manipulate government against the interests of the people.
As Occupy grows, we may yet see convergence of interests — of two “fed-up” groups into a huge rightless-leftless group with a mutual interest in separating government from fanaticism and waste.
They start out with different views about the role of government, but in interviews and online discussions they repeatedly share many of the same frustrations, as well as a classically American passion for fixing the system.No one expects the tea party and Occupy movements to merge forces, but their adherents are discovering that their stories are often strikingly similar…
The leadership of the tea party movement and its funders may want nothing to do with Occupy. But they must be waking up to the discovery that many tea partyers don’t feel the same way.
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Many of the original tea partyers in my part of the country (and probably elsewhere) were old-fashioned, “decent,” not-very-well-educated,low-key racists of the benign variety. Not Ku Kluxers but simply people who grew up surrounded by whites and convinced that violence and ignerntz resided entirely in the black communities of their towns. Didn’t want nothin’ to do with ’em.
Dana Milbank, writing in the Post today, finds them in a new political development within the Republican party.
The people who brought you the Barack Obama birth-certificate hullabaloo now have a new target: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a man often speculated to be the next Republican vice presidential nominee. While they’re at it, they also have Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana and perhaps a future presidential candidate, in their sights.
Each man, the birthers say, is ineligible to be president because he runs afoul of the constitutional requirement that a president must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States. Rubio’s parents were Cuban nationals at the time of his birth, and Jindal’s parents were citizens of India.
The good news for the birthers is that this suggests they were going after Obama, whose father was a Kenyan national, not because of the president’s political party. The bad news is that this supports the suspicion that they were going after Obama because of his race.
This is just as big a problem for Republicans as the tea party movement itself. (The left has the same problem, less prevalent, with some anti-semitic extremists within the Occupy movement.)
The higher prominence of loons of all stripes is a natural consequence of a political system that has lost every last vestige of a political center. But in the Obama age, this is particularly a problem for Republican lawmakers who are cowed into silence by the fear that any criticism of the crazies will invite a primary challenge. Now that the birthers have begun to eat their own brightest prospects, perhaps Republican lawmakers will finally feel compelled to say something.
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What Occupy protesters’ posters are saying … in Madrid
No job, no home, no $$, no fear
If you don’t let us dream, we won’t let you sleep!
…On Wall Street
We’re kind of a big deal!
We’d rather have the money bubble up!
…In Athens
Solidarity is the weapon of the people. Down with the IMF junta.
…In Frankfurt
Game over!
…In London
Share the lolly! I can’t fill my shopping trolley!
Wake up and occupy!
… In Rome
Welcome dignity!
Guardian reporters interviewed these protesters from around Europe. There were some interesting comments.
I was in the infantry for seven years, 10 years in total. I thought I’d get a job easy. You spend time in Afghanistan and Iraq, you serve Queen and country and then you have nothing. … I have thought about doing volunteer work, but where’s the money? I have kids …
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As a young woman, the situation is particularly hard for me. Youth unemployment is around 45%. Even if you find a job it will be extremely precarious. … There’s one thing we all want to achieve – addressing issues forgotten by political parties and the mainstream media.
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I was deputy director of an old people’s home and making €800 a month, then they cut back hours and salaries and I was earning €400, so I had to quit. After that, I moved to Madrid, where I’ve been working at this family meeting point run by the town hall. Several have been closed, which means that those of us who are still working have suffered cutbacks
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Have you seen anyone younger than you? Nora [six]: I don’t think so.
How much does Nora understand of the protest? Amy [mother]: Nora and I talk about it in very simple, fairytale stories. We’ve been talking about how maybe things aren’t fair in the country and maybe we’re not necessarily taking care of ourselves or the earth as well as we could. And maybe we can do better. She seems to know a lot already–
I got wind of it after a bunch of my friends were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. I was also in contact with some of my military friends who are overseas fighting for us right now – they asked me to come for them, since they’re there fighting for our freedom to do this. Watching it grow over the past few weeks has been gorgeous to me; a gorgeous thing to watch.
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There’s lots of criticism that we don’t know what we want when the fact of the matter is there’s so many things that we want. Personally, I would like to see the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act [which implemented banking reforms]. I think education needs to be revamped too – teachers should be the most respected people in this country.
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We don’t have a future. There’s not even a guarantee of a job, so what’s the point in even studying? The government wastes a lot of money. Instead of supporting workers, it gives to banks. At my school we don’t have books this year. We have to make do with photocopies. … Protesters should do whatever it takes to save Greece. I didn’t know so many people were bonded by difficulty in this country.
Cross posted from the blog Prairie Weather.