First things first – if you’ve not signed this petition, you might just want to. It’s the finest sort of slacktivism in action!

The World vs Wall Street
http://www.avaaz.org/en/the_world_vs_wall_st/?fjfRgcb&pv=27

Signing a petition isn’t much, but it’s a fair sight better than posting a bra color on Facebook, methinks. You’re putting your name out there in the world to say that you won’t stand for this sort of crap anymore, and that is a fine thing to do!

I was rather silly yesterday, insomuch that I forgot what day it was. I went through my day desiring to talk to my best friend back home, only to remember some hours later that it was the start of Occupy Dallas. While deity is punishing me for not remembering to bookmark anything I saw yesterday, the general consensus is that there was anywhere from 300-1,000 people over the course of the day (my eye witness said it started with about 500 in the morning and winnowed to 200-300 by mid-afternoon as people went to find food), and with police permission, 100 set up camp at the JFK Memorial Plaza for the night. Dallas has rather stringent vagrancy laws against sleeping in public spaces, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear of permission being granted, if only for the night. I look forward to seeing what else will happen, but from everything I’ve heard, the level of cooperation and love between the police present and the protesters was nothing short of inspiring. To that I say: Dallas Police Department – nicer and less corrupt than many!

As for the entire movement, don’t let people scare you into thinking it’s a bunch of rich white anarchist children with nothing better to do. It is not a partisan movement (no, it’s not a party, THC or otherwise… not that the Tea Party fellows process they’re being zinged). It is all ages, all creeds, all colors, and all they want is to quit being dicked around (yes, downtown Dallas has a large penis-shaped building. It is, fantastically enough, Chase Tower). I know that change is scary, but you know what? It sort of needs to happen. Badly. Dallas knows, and has known for much longer than many parts of the US of A, so I expect that it will pick up in a big way this weekend.

I should add that I personally have no issues with people having money. I do, however, have issue with anyone who insists class matters. Whatever country one is from, it only seems to matter for the haves; the have-nots only fret about it because they are daily bombarded with how pathetic they are for not having the flashiest this or that. I’d love to see a renegotiation of society as a whole so the haves get the hell over themselves and their relative ‘status’, and that everyone learn to live within their means. That, mes amis, is why you see the well-off in America screeching about class warfare when those who have been duped and shafted suddenly realize that, oh hey, Mr. Murdoch gets PAID to spread scary bullshit around – why is it unreasonable for me to feel it improper to be excluded from the job market because I am unemployed?

Lastly for today, I will say that I consider myself to be a realistic person. I accept that there will ALWAYS be haves and have nots; we cannot all have equally. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even the best-intentioned can turn to the dark side. I emphatically don’t think the bankers and mega-conglom owners of the US and the world fall into the category of best-intentioned, else this would be an even harder movement to get rolling. I’m not sure we can fix everything, but we sort of need to try lest we become the third world to replace the powers on the rise (after all, nearly half of US debt is owned by… oh… not the US). Now is emphatically NOT the time to have our heads in the sand!

Long and short – I don’t know what the end result of all this will be, but it’s exciting to see something happen. 🙂