The-Ave.US

We perambulated the flag-wrapped Occupy Wall Street protest encampment Saturday at Seattle’s Westlake Plaza aglow with economic populism and sweet lefty righteousness.

Finally the left is speaking out to and from the middle class about the inequity of the system, and the heretofore unpunished criminal Wall Street actions that led to our present economic predicament.

‘The rich get richer’ hasn’t been heard as a rallying cry in recent decades in the rhetoric of the left. Turns out, the class warfare the right keeps squawking about has actually been waged against the middle and lower classes.

They slur participants of these demonstrations, (now gone global) accusing them of hippie-ism, naiveté, thuggery, and poor personal hygiene.

We’ve heard it before: They said the same about the civil rights crews in the South in the ’50’s and ’60’s; the 1960’s anti-war demonstrators, and those who shut down the WTO summit in 1999.

We found the folks down at West Lake to be a mix of students, (some a little grubby from camping out) well-dressed 50-60 somethings, hard hats, a contingent of university professors (one wearing a graduation gown), teachers, and union members of all stripes. They were mostly white, but with a sprinkling of others that, anecdotally, would reflect the population as a whole.

We’ve covered plenty of these things… from WTO to presidential conventions. And this one smelled good, felt good, and even tasted good. (Area food retailers, kept the Plaza well stocked of snacks and sandwiches).

We came away yesterday believing that the left is actually getting on its feet, and that middle America is listening. That maybe – just maybe – the Wall Street plutocrats who got this country into this mess might have to account for themselves.

This isn’t quite a movemnt yet, but it has made some pretty impressive strides. Demonstrations in Wisconsin and Ohio last winter show that direct action based on economic woes can get political results.

(The looniacal Rouchies were there with their pictures of Obama as Hitler, and their latest campaign to reinstate Glass-Stegal, a great cause but the wrong messengers. We loved the good-natured guy prancing next to the LaRouche table with an ‘I’m with stupid sign.’)

This movement needs to organize to move voters as the tea party did in 2010, and the union demonstrators in Wisconsin and Ohio. The mighty WTO protest did little to move politicians away from globalism, or to mitigate economic injustice in any discernable way. They got caught in a quagmire of reacting to police brutality, and their moment passed. They got a mayor and police chief fired… that was the extent of the real political fallout.

It was a good day Saturday, and it’s great to read this morning that they’re still down there in their tents. Mayor McGinn is being caught in a damned if you do – another favorable outcome of these protests could be Hizzoner’s further political decline.

We loved the dichotomy of two religious faiths at the Plaza: first, fundamentalist Christians holding giant Westboro-type banners with cranky Bible verses in shouting matches with the jeering apostates and heretics who surrounded them.

Then there were these kids in middle of the chaos: