What about Occupy?

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York...
says Gloucester of King Richard.

It is seemingly everywhere, but Occupy Wall Street is the shining example, the poster child (if you will) of our discontent, isn't it? It's not hard to figure out who the sun of York is in this time of ours.

Is NYCGA the real Occupy? Almost 8500 members, 108 groups, proposals, meeting minutes, a place to request housing, principles of solidarity, and much more.

There is also Occupy Wall Street.org. They're on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, too. The home page says: Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. But then in "About Us," they say they are not the real Occupy, not connected with NYCGA nor any other group, but they are an affinity group.

A friend of mine said that it is not so different from the civil rights movement. That when people sat down at the lunch counter, they didn't necessarily have a plan or an organization--they just did it. Like Occupy. He thinks that in 20 years we will be looking on Occupy in the same way we think about the Civil Rights movement.

I balked at the 20 years! Too, too long.   "What do we want?... When do we want it? NOW," so we chanted to end the Vietnam War.

Am I a typical unable-to-delay-gratification person of my generation OR is 20 years really too long?

The Vietnam War did end; the ERA may not have passed, but we did get equal rights laws and things like Title IX, and men lost the right to rape their wives--in a relatively short time.

If 20 years is too long to see some substantial change in distribution of wealth, respect for labor, economic recovery, then what do we need to do to speed it up?

Seems a little ironic that on the NYCGA web site, it asks if you want to help, then send, what else? money.