Click on We Are the 99 Percent for more stories of Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Here’s how Mike Konczal sums up these stories.
The people … aren’t demanding to bring democracy into the workplace via large-scale unionization, much less shorter work days and more pay. They aren’t talking the language of mid-twentieth century liberalism, where everyone puts on blindfolds and cuts slices of pie to share. The 99% looks too beaten down to demand anything as grand as “fairness” in their distribution of the economy. There’s no calls for some sort of post-industrial personal fulfillment in their labor – very few even invoke the idea that a job should “mean something.” It’s straight out of antiquity – free us from the bondage of our debts and give us a basic ability to survive.
Click on Parsing the Data and Ideology of the We Are the 99% Tumblr for Mike Konczal’s complete analysis on his Rortybomb web log.
Picture added 10/11/11
Tags: "We Are the 99 Percent", Economy and Business, The 1% and the 99%, Unemployment, Wall Street
November 17, 2011 at 10:37 pm |
I have a bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League university. I have a law degree. I graduated from law school in 2001. I still have over $150,000 in student loan debt. Although I have a strong resume, I have not been able to find a job with benefits and a decent salary since passing the bar. I have looked for jobs in three different states. I am now self-employed and enjoying the work, but I work 50-60 hours/week just to make ends meet. My clients aren’t always able to pay me because they are stuck in the same economy as I am. I owe taxes, two mortgages, car payments, etc. Some months I make no money at all. My wife also has a degree from an Ivy League university and she is unemployed. We can’t afford the payments on our state-sponsored health insurance plan. We have a 6 month old baby boy, and it kills me to think that as a well-educated attorney I might not be able to make enough money to feed and clothe him. I am the 99%.