Okay... I Did It!

This afternoon I headed down to Lower Manhattan. After my noontime appointment to see the 9/11 Memorial (very well done; the scale of it is what got me -- it's easy to forget how mammoth those buildings were) I headed over to neighboring Zuccotti Park to check out what was going on.

I'd printed up fifty copies of my manifesto, which I'd titled "Twenty & One" -- my idea for what the super-rich of this country ought to be doing with some (but not all) of their hoard, in the spirit of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Buffett and Gates. If we're going to see real change in this world, we need for more than two people alive today to spearhead it. Here's my manifesto on the page and at some protestor's table; for the most part, people liked the idea (I even tried handing it to a CNN reporter, but no dice there). If you like this notion, spread the word around... and maybe we'll see things start to change:

Manifesto

 

Out there in the world

Last Week San Francisco... Tomorrow Wall Street!

I've been following the Occupy Wall Street (and related protests) for some time now, and even, last week, with the encouragement of a friend, took the plunge and marched in the inaugural last week in my hometown. It was the first such event I'd been to since... oh, since my once-activist parents took me to a demonstration at the Soviet Consulate in my native Montreal; you can tell how long ago that was. Normally, like most white-collar working folk, I tend to hold neutral-to-middling opinions about protestors; in San Francisco particularly, spurious self-righteousness is practically de rigueur -- from hysteria at the accidental killing of a single endangered snake (this shut down a major construction project a decade or so back) to shooting down plans for a new branch of popular discount grocer Trader Joe's in a bustling neighborhood because it would add... a bit more bustle.

But this time it was different: I've been watching the income inequality and general economic mismanagement of my adopted homeland with increasing alarm and dismay, and worry that our activism is horribly misdirected: the ill-conceived Tea Party, with its deranged calls for 18th-century free-market fundamentalism, seems to me a surefire path to turning the world's most powerful nation into another has-been banana republic. So I was heartened that the real "grass roots" types have begun to stand up -- and I think the contagion of the Occupy movement is a sign that Americans, in Winston Churchill's words, do the right thing after all other options have been exhausted.

I'm in New York on a quick stopover these next couple of days, and I'm positively itching not only to visit the Occupy Wall Street mothership, but also to dole out some admittedly unsolicited advice on more concrete demands they should be making; specifically, asking the One Percent to pay up, to make better use of their hedge-funded booty than for houses in the Hamptons and private jets. I'm still not sure if I'm going to do it, but if I do, I'll be sure to post more about it here.