Uranus square Pluto

Someone just said to me, “There might be a protest in my town, but I wonder what we’d be protesting.”

You’re always protesting the same thing, and it starts with war. If you protest against GMO foods, that’s an anti-war, pro-peace movement. If you’re supporting Internet freedom, that’s a peace movement. If you’re angry about Wall Street, well all those guys rake in profits on the war machine. What made the Sixties the Sixties was when the movements all started to figure out they were doing the same thing. The Diggers, the Black Panthers, SDS, SNCC, Youth International Party, Redstockings and finally Woodstock — it was in truth all one movement. That is an inner recognition, that we’re all part of one family of humanity. And it’s happening now.

6 thoughts on “Uranus square Pluto”

  1. I agree about the underlying theme but…just to play devil’s advocate…There is a quote attributed to Mother Theresa to the effect that an anti-war movement is not the same as peace movement. If we are going to have a spontaneous uprising should its focus be against or for something? At what point do ‘we the people’ present our vision and state categorically what we are for and at what point does anger about something / everything stop being inspirational to those we are speaking to? If as protesters and uprisers we are only succeeding in spreading our own largely inarticulate fear are we really contributing something positive? We have to find our voices but we also have to have something to say when we do or the moment will pass us by.

    BTW I took my teenage son to see Hair in London earlier in the year. I had never seen it – too young the first time around – but of course know all the songs. At the end of the performance they invited as many of the audience as would fit up onto the stage to dance and sing with the cast. It was fabulous, liberating, uplifting to hold onto my flower (handed out to all the audience) – such a simple symbol of beauty and potential – face the rest of the people in the auditorium and sing Let the Sunshine In – and really mean it.

  4. The purpose of the movement is to give (restore to) We the People, the 99%, a voice! Our voice is diverse and shall not be corralled to meet any movement or parties agenda! We are the People! We are the 99%! It is time to occupy OUR country, OUR USA!

  5. Also from the front page at Daily Kos:

    AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests this morning at an event at the Brookings Institution, John Nichols reports, and said:

    “I think it’s a tactic and a valid tactic to call attention to a problem. Wall Street is out of control. We have three imbalances in this country — the imbalance between imports and exports, the imbalance between employer power and working power, and the imbalance between the real economy and the financial economy. We need to bring back balance to the financial economy, and calling attention to it and peacefully protesting is a very legitimate way of doing it.”

    Hailing the power of street protests to shift the dialogue, Trumka said, “I think being in the streets and calling attention to issues is sometimes the only recourse you have because, God only knows, you can go to the Hill, and you can talk to a lot of people and see nothing ever happen…”

    Trumka responded to a questioner who asked, “I was wondering if you have an opinion on some of the AFL-CIO national member organizations, kind of beginning to take a role in that because I sort of think that that street demonstration activity is sort of forcing dialogue on the issues that you’re talking about,” by saying “I happen to agree with you […] God only knows, I’ve done it thousands of times myself, and may do it again.”

    Trumka is not by himself able to offer the formal endorsement of the AFL-CIO, which is a federation of unions, each of which has a voice in decisions like that; accordingly, he doesn’t offer that in these comments. However, he is the most prominent labor leader in the country, and with a number of unions planning to join in with some Occupy Wall Street activities, Trumka’s public affirmation of both the target of Wall Street and the tactic of street protest is another step in the connections growing between the protesters and the union movement.

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