Author: hankkalet

The media has finally taken notice of the protests on Wall Street and it just may be taking them seriously. As it should.

The reality is that the Wall Street protests are far larger and sustained than the early Tea Party rallies and, now that the protests are spreading into other communities, it is clear that we are looking at something much bigger than just a fringe effort.

But it has to be about more than just signs and chants. Direct action, as Chris Hedges wrote last week, is a must in this time of corporate domination, but it has to be accompanied by a detailed explanation of why capitalism has failed and where we must go from here.

Corporate capitalism is about profits — and doing everything and anything possible to maximize those profits, including leaving the sick to die and the economically disenfranchised to grasp for crumbs or pick vegetables in sweltering heat for almost nonexistent wages.

Government’s role should be to act as protector of the weak, as leveler of the playing field — to make sure that corporations provide the services they have promised or to prevent them from dumping their waste on the public (literally and figuratively). But corporations have taken over the government and gamed the system.

Farm subsidies once meant to keep small farmers afloat now result in corn so cheap we use it in place of sugar, while the cost of fresh produce puts it out of reach of most in the lower classes, especially those in America’s depressed cities. Oil companies suck at the public teat and then turn around and gouge drivers and lobby Washington to gut what’s left our regulatory apparatus. And we make the banks whole without any strings or anything to ensure that the banks would keep credit flowing.

The list is long and seemingly endless and it leaves us with just two choices — give up or fight back. Sitting back and leaving it to a corrupted political process is the same as giving up. The protesters on Wall Street know this.  It’s time the rest of us figured this out.

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• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.