Why should those of minority faiths and spiritualities care about the Occupy Wall Street movement? This is about government and corporations and banks and corrupt executives, right? Yes, it is, and it still affects us – maybe not directly, but it does.

The fundamental idea behind the Occupy movement is to remove Big Business influence from the government. The bigger corporations in this country have systematically been removing a lot of the restrictions (just one example of many) that were placed upon them to provide cleaner, safer work environments and produce less smog and emissions. That in and of itself should be enough to get anyone of a Nature-based spirituality to get up in arms. Respect and reverence for the Earth does NOT include poisoning the water and the air. However, a certain major religion in this country believes the Earth is here for them to use up without any consideration for future generations – or even the current one, for that matter. Which leads me to my next concern…..

The mindset of human dominance(as opposed to harmony) over the Earth is predominantly a Christian viewpoint. As this belief is filtered through the bigger corporations and into the government, a more conservative ideal is introduced and accepted. Time and again we’ve heard a number of politicians announce, “This is a Christian nation!” Pushing policy through based on a single religious view is incredibly dangerous for a country that was supposed to founded on a principle of religious equality.

Please understand!!! I know not all Christians believe we should just trash the planet. I’m not out to attack anyone or any religion. What I’m trying to point out it, these businesses are using some religious dogma as a reason to change environmental policies. Now that I think about it, if I were Christian, that would piss me off, too!

So here we are faced with politicians and extremely well-paid executives using their own beliefs to get policies pushed through that are ultimately damaging to the human race. And if we stand up to protest these policies, we are branded as tree-hugging hippie Pagans. Well, ok, some of us ARE tree-hugging hippie Pagans, but we make up just a small percentage of the people who would really, really like to see the corporations out of politics and government. Anyway, if you’ve been reading and keeping up with the news from New York and the bigger cities that have Occupy movements going on, then you’ve probably read some of the negative comments coming from these politicians and executives. They are of the mind-set that anyone involved with the Occupy movement is trying to destroy the government and destroy Wall Street and they obviously don’t love their country and they’re obviously just a mob of unwashed hippies and they’re obviously liberals/anarchists/communists. And yes, those awful, immoral Pagans are even involved.

Holy crap – the world is coming to an end.

There is a lot of misinformation being spread about the Occupy movement. Those that would like to see it fail are twisting the goals and picking up on the most extreme fringe individuals to say these are the people responsible for “trying to destroy our nation.” We don’t want to destroy it – we want to make it better. Corporations are not evil – they need to be changed. Government is not evil – it needs to be changed. We are not looking for handouts or ridiculous tax changes or a redistribution of wealth. At our most basic, we simply want corporate America out of our government, so that our politicians can go back to work doing what they were supposed to be doing in the first place – representing the people.

Occupy

I spend a lot of time being frustrated with all those things that seem to be too big to care, like the government, my state senators and representatives, even the city managers. Yes, we all know the economy is utter crap right now. I have several friends that are unemployed and have been that way for quite some time, despite their best efforts to find work. I feel very fortunate to have a job these days. But nothing pisses me off quite like stories like this, about corporate executives that damn near destroy a company but still end up with millions. How does that happen? WHY does that happen? If all these businesses are so poor they can’t even hire enough people to run it, where is all this money coming from? And how come nobody is doing anything about it?

We’ve been told repeatedly that taxes can’t be raised on corporations because they need that money to create jobs. So create them already! What’s the hold-up? If you’re looking for a specific skilled person, guess what? There are a whole lot of young people out there, fresh out of college, with no job prospects who would love an opportunity to change the disastrous condition of our country right now. How do I know that? Because of this – Occupywallst.org.

Admittedly, there is not a lot of coverage for this event (and many others that are taking place across the country), and the mainstream media has done a lot to make them look like a bunch of clueless kids with no idea what they’re doing there. That is unfortunate. On the plus side, the longer these movements are ignored, the bigger they grow. Being ignored is exactly the problem – because those with the money and power think that the average person can be marginalized and pushed aside. These people are tired of feeling their voices don’t matter. We elect officials into office to speak for us, not to line their own pockets and help out their buddies, and yet that’s what we see every day. They use hot-button topics to get into office (anti-abortion! morality! keep Jeeeezus in the schools!), then proceed to gut their entire platform and do what they can to “get theirs.” And it turns out, a lot of their buddies have these big businesses that manage to garner these huge tax breaks and skirt around the most basic of safety rules. Seriously – how did the cigarette companies manage to rock along for as long as they have?

People are pissed. Quite frankly, I think it’s about time. I honestly believe we have been systematically lied to for years in order for the rich and powerful to maintain their status quo. History points to many moments in the past when this has gone on: in the Middle Ages, the average person was uneducated and was not even allowed to learn to read or write. Much easier for a very wealthy church and/or king to control the masses if you tell them everything they should know and believe. Nazi Germany was a crown jewel in the last century for learning how to spread propaganda. Whether the Reichstag fire was set by Hitler’s people or not, he was quick to use it as a way to strip away civil liberties and establish control over all information received by the entire country.

And if we don’t think anything like that could happen in the United States, we’re fooling ourselves.

It’s long past time for a change. I don’t care how it happened, the fact is we are all in trouble. We need to fix it. If those we’ve elected into office won’t do anything about corruption, greed, lack of accountability and their own constituents starving to death, then WE need to make the changes for them.

OccupyWallSt.org
OccupyTogether.org
Occupytogether.org/events/midwest/missouri/