Occupy Protestors Are 'Fed Up and Not Going to take it Anymore'

There have been many inaccurate reports about the Occupy movement that has spread across the country. Contrary to reports from the right-wing media, the movement is not small, but growing.

Actually, that is one of the many fallacies spread by the right-wing media. I attended the Occupy LA movement on Saturday, which had surrounded the Los Angeles City Hall building. The movement is made up of street protestors, people in tents, sidewalk artists and people giving open-air lectures.

Yes, many of the protestors look like 21st centuries hippies, with braids and tattoos, and I did smell marijuana in the air, but many of the protestors are also older and well educated. Being that this was in LA, there was also a large representation of the black and brown community. Many of the protestors were college students frustrated with the unemployment situation. Others were workers who were laid off or underemployed.

The common thread is frustration with the economic and political system. Carina Clemente, an unemployed college graduate from Long Beach, said the movement represented, "the 99 percent who were affected by a problem we didn't cause." Sergio Ballesteros, a teacher from Los Angeles, was helping organize seminars on issues such as urban farming, political education and solar energy.

Ballesteros said he had been affected by the economic downturn because he is now a substitute teacher. He said the main issues the Occupy LA movement were concerned with were unemployment, corporate welfare and bonuses, and the housing market. He said taxpayers are feeling frustrated because they are not seeing the benefits of paying into the system.

Ballesteros doesn't think the Occupy movement has a political leaning, because protestors are frustrated with both parties. "A lot of what's happening is questioning the system," he said.

He suggested that protestors try to disengage themselves from the corporate system, which is the power behind the government, and that is why issues such as urban farming are important.

"They (the corporations) hold our checks, we are dependent on them," Ballesteros said.

Patricia McAllister, a teacher from the Los Angeles Unified School District, held a sign by the road as drivers honked in solidarity. She was concerned with some of the political issues she had seen on the school board. McAllister has noticed that many of the board members are elected, and as a result they receive campaign donations from charter schools and construction firms, who they steer business towards.

"This is a conflict of interest," McAllister said. "They (board members) need to be appointed, not elected."

McAllister said there is a move to defund and water down the education system and shift it toward private charter schools.

McAllister also works with at risk youths, and she sees how cutbacks in social programs in black and Latino neighborhoods are affecting children. She said she is seeing more children with behavioral problems, children being influenced by drug dealers and gangs and children experimenting with sex at an earlier age.

She also said that she was fed up with the political system and accused the two-party system of being an illusion. "It's one cabal of people who want to control everything," McAllister said.

Larry Mullin, a veteran history teacher, taught an impromptu political education class on the lawn in front of City Hall.

Mullin said he was unemployed after his job was cut to part-time and he was fired when he interviewed for a full-time job.

Mullin said there has been a lack of respect towards the teaching professions for years in the United States and it is only getting worse.

"I have taught in other countries and teachers there get more respect," Mullin said.

He said that although teaching is a much maligned and lowly-paid profession, he enjoyed doing it. "I loved being a teacher, and I'm good at it," Mullin said. "I wake up in the morning, and I know my job is important and I am contributing to society."

As a history teacher, Mullin realizes that in order to have a functioning republic, you need an informed public. And that was why he was so frustrated at the way the George W. Bush administration sold the American public on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Mullin compared it to the Gulf of Tonkin incident in the Vietnam War.

He taught the class at Occupy LA because he wanted protestors to be better educated about U.S. history and the political system. He said an example of how broken the political system is seen by the Republicans refusal to raise taxes on the wealthy, even though we are still fighting two wars and trying to restart the economy.

Mullin said the Occupy movement shows there is a tremendous amount of frustration in America about corporate power and wealth. Many Americans have reached their "Howard Beale" moment. And like the character from the movie "Network," they are fed up and not going take it anymore.

But he said the protests were important because it shows that Americans are finally waking up.

"People are starting to find their voice," Mullin said.