Fall victim to divide and conquer political control and lose, or unite behind a common goal and win!
They come from many different backgrounds. About one-third are skilled craftsmen, a much smaller number are professionals, doctors, educators, lawyers, merchants, and the like. Although we do not know the occupations of all the participants, the majority are students and from the working class. About two-thirds are under 20; few are over 40. Most are locals, but some came from great distances. They have one thing in common, they are committed in opposition to a government which ignores the needs of the people in favor of the rich and powerful. Regardless of their financial or social origins, they work as a team of self-sacrificing patriots against an oppressive and seemingly all-powerful enemy. Although the words were yet to be written, they stood for “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish any Form of Government that becomes destructive of inalienable rights of men such as Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness”.
This describes the majority of both the Occupy Wall Street movement and the modern Tea Party, it also paraphrases the words of the Boston Tea Party Association’s depiction of the participants in one of America’s proudest moments.
Like the rank and file members of both the original and modern day Tea Parties, the “Occupiers” have the same central agenda; fairness, equity, and opportunity. They don't have a Robin Hood complex and do not want to steal from the rich, they just want the crimes of the powerful punished and their plunder returned to those they stole it from; this is not theft, it is justice. They want the opportunities enjoyed by their parents and grandparents. Their common goal is the return to a world where there was a vibrant and growing middle class where anyone who was willing to do the hard yards could improve their lot in life, and that of their families and friends; they're not seeking a redistribution of wealth through confiscation or trickery. Neither ascribes to the mean spirited rhetoric of those at their extremes. Nor would they knowingly yield to what appears to be the divide and conquer tactics of those amorphous individuals at the highest levels of power. But unfortunately, they have often fallen prey to it.
Where they differ is in their leadership. The Sons of Liberty, the folks who brought you the Boston Tea Party was led by the likes of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere; some of the same great and highly principled leaders who led the American Revolution. The modern Tea Party is controlled from behind the scenes by "The Invisible Hand", a group of three of America's richest men; Rupert Murdoch, and the Koch brothers, David and Charles. Occupy was also highly principled and devoted to democracy, to a fault, its leadership was far too amorphous to create a sustainable movement.
The puppeteers who orchestrated the Sons of Liberty and Occupy were highly principled, whereas the strings of the Tea Party are pulled by power brokers with their own agendas, not those of their followers.
In the end, the memberships of the Tea Party and Occupy are both modern American patriots following in the footsteps of our forefathers; those which led to the creation of our democracy. To a great extent they are doing it in ways that would have made them beam with pride. If they can side step the voices of their most radical leaders to sharply focus on their commonalities and band together to bring their core values to reality, all Americans triumph. If they don't, they will simply cancel each other out while the bad guys on both sides win one more time.
Copyright Fred Schwacke 2011-2017
