A little revolution is a good thing

Sometimes, the status quo doesn't work for most of us. In the 1700's, people like the Founding Fathers decided that being a colony run by the East India Trading Company, with no representation in Parliament wasn't acceptable. This led up to the events that included the Boston Tea Party, then the America Revolution.

People like today's "Tea Party" forget that little piece of history. It wasn't that we had representatives and were taxed unfairly, it was that we had no representation; America was little more than a plantation and policies were dictated to us by the company through Parliament.

That is pretty much where we are today. We have a representative government but it isn't representing us any more. Just like back then, it represents the interests of the rich and powerful. The East India Trading Company is still around but today's lobbyists come from other major companies like GE, Bank of America, Goldman Sach's, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others.

We've been taught that our vote doesn't matter, our voice cannot be heard and the little protests that we have from time to time won't change anything. Instead of acknowledging and negotiating with the disaffected, media tends to belittle and demonize those who challenge the status quo. It isn't just Occupy Wall Street, it was the hippies, the Civil Rights movement, the women's equality movement, the push to ban slavery, etc.

The status quo will react with spin and force to ensure it remains. It will seek to divide us against each other and try to exploit our differences even as we try to find our common ground. We can fall back on our old fault lines, point fingers at people being Commies, Hippies, Punks, Skins, Liberals, Conservatives, Racists, Yuppies, Rednecks, Coonasses, and whatever else. Or, we can put aside those differences, find that our shared interests all involve a representative government once again, and demand that.

The Founding Fathers didn't all see eye to eye. There were slave owners and Abolitionists. There wasn't one America, there were 13 colonies and it took some time to unite them against Britain. There were huge differences but they got together to form a "more perfect union". Note it was written "a more perfect union" meaning that the union wasn't perfect and there was always room for improvement.

That's what we are trying to do today. We are trying to unite people of all demographics behind a common belief, that we are a government for the people, not the corporations. We are trying to put our religions, racial beliefs, politics and everything else aside to take our government back.