Hundreds of protesters are occupying Wall Street, an outpouring of populist anger and resentment directed toward abusive corporations and corrupt special interests.
Heavily influenced by the Arab Spring on the other side of the globe, the Occupy Wall Street movement is an organic people’s uprising, not backed by special interests or partisans like those that jump-started the Tea Party movement.
The peaceful protesters have been sprayed with mace, publicly beaten and blatantly abused by overzealous NYPD officers. Many of the most egregious encounters can even be found online on the group’s Livestream page, or on YouTube. Yet, the general public is mostly unaware of the extraordinary movement taking place: Not a single mainstream news outlet has afforded this any coverage.
Why, when the unemployment rate holds at a disheartening 9 percent, when you have this remarkable event occurring in the middle of New York City, where so many of said news organizations have headquarters and bureaus, is there no coverage? This is a true expression of the democratic right to free assembly at work in America; why isn’t there media exposure?
The answer is a depressing one, a real downer for any ethical journalist or concerned citizen in this country: Even though the mainstream media is perfectly aware of what’s happening, they’re turning a blind eye because the anti-corporate message is damaging to the mainstream media — which has become completely corporatized over the last few decades, dependent upon financial interest over public interest. The corporations that own these news organizations have an entrenched lobbying presence in Congress; they’re part of the problem. This gross dereliction of duty, this deficit in journalistic ethic, this abandonment of the very notion of the press as watchdog is vile and unconscionable.
With the GOP bleating terms like “job creators,” “class warfare” and “socialism!” to a credulous American audience, these conglomerates are free to duck market regulations and reign in their economic power over every sector of American life, including the news media.
They report only on what sells. They go for shock and outrage rather than content or depth. They seek to entertain, rather than inform. This media relies on endless clips, sound bites and insipid panel commentary over actual reporting. For Occupy Wall Street, we get no coverage at all.
Without essential public exposure, Occupy Wall Street runs the risk of being stifled completely. Police will continue to reach over the sidewalk barrier to rip out a woman’s hair on video; young people will continue to be pepper-sprayed in the face, thrown to the ground and beaten in the middle of a busy NYC street. And no one will ever know, because they’ll never see it. If a cable news pundit doesn’t blather about it, did it even happen?
As Americans, as people of good conscience, as people who believe in the democracy we purport to live in, this cannot stand. We must speak truth to power. We must say that this is a disgrace to America, a disgrace to democracy.
They seek to silence the cries of our fellow citizens, who are guilty of believing in that essential Americanism: “My country, right or wrong. If right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right.”
We cannot remain deaf to this struggle. The citizen’s duty is to remain vigilant in matters of abuse of power and encroachment upon our rights and freedoms. While I’m not asking you to board a plane for New York, I am asking you to fulfill your patriotic duty, to get educated.
