by Corey DeVos
On September 17, 2011, protesters identifying themselves as “the 99%” descended upon Wall Street. The goal of the protest has been to use the nonviolent tactics of the so-called Arabian Spring to battle the greed and corruption of the top 1%—that is, the 1% of Americans who currently controls 40% of the wealth, 24% of US income, over 50% of US stocks, and just 5% of US personal debt. Until the last few days, this protest has not received very much media attention, but has fortunately exploded into mainstream awareness as cell phone footage of female protesters being pepper sprayed by police began to circulate virally through the web.
As Jeff points out, there is a definite historic context for what happens when wealth gets so concentrated into a very small part of the population. It has occurred two times in America’s past—at the end of the “roaring 20’s”, and at the end of the “Gilded Age” in the 1890’s as the industrial revolution began to shift into high gear. In both cases, the massive disparity of wealth distribution led to major social unrest, followed by severe economic depression.
In this episode of The Daily Evolver, Jeff and David explore the diverse agendas that are currently gathering beneath the mighty citadels of the U.S. financial district, ranging from post-modern liberals to red-meme anarchists to billionaires like Warren Buffet who insist that we are already deeply entrenched in class warfare—and that his class is “killing” the rest of us.
Listen as we wipe the tear gas from our eyes and try to find some clarity and context for a protest that could very will be planting the seeds for a genuine “American Spring”.
Excepts from the Daily Evolver Dialogs
… an on-going conversation on current events from an integral perspective, with Jeff Salzman and David Riordan, published by Integral Life.
Listen to short segment below. To listen to the full audio, please visit www.IntegralLife.com or click go to: http://integrallife.com/node/114879
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I see references to colors in a lot of integral blogs, like in this one referring to Red-meme. And i’ve heard reference to Green meme. Where is the catalog of semantic colors that I can refer to? thanks.