Unrest knows no boundaries

Unrest knows no boundaries

The revolution that began in Tunisia that resulted in the removal of longtime rulers has now spread to America. We in the West operate under the premise that the social and political unrest in that part of the world is a unique faraway geographical phenomenon. It can’t happen in the United States of America, we rationalize. After all, the uprisings in Egypt and other northern African Muslim countries had everything to do with those peoples’ desire to emulate American style democratic government.

Our legislators can now identify with how Gadhafi felt when the Libyan rebels took to the streets. In New York’s Zuccotti Park a man holding Boy Scout tent gear in his arms hollered out. “We are not going home until our voices are heard.” Irrespective of how the government and media choose to deal with the protest movement in Portland, Ore., and others around the country, it is apparent that this problem is not going to soon go away.

Before March 10, 2011, most of the protest rallies that we witnessed were staged by the Tea Party. Only after the passage of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio and similar legislation in Wisconsin and the introduction of Paul Ryan’s budget plan did we begin to see rallies and marches which are forerunners of the chaos we see in the nation’s city streets today. Republican policies were viewed even by many potential 2012 Republican voters as an attack on unions, workers and poor people, as well as the elderly.

The real damage, however, was done during the height of the July debt ceiling crisis. Tea Party Republicans especially, made it clear that corporations and the rich would be exempt from tax consideration in solving the nation’s financial crisis. A similar situation was recently repeated The protest movements we now see on the nation’s news media were borne of Wall Street corruption and bad Republican policies.

If young people in northern Africa are reacting to corrupt leadership and inequalities between the rich and the poor, what makes you think that our youths are so different? This movement will increase in number and intensity unless the Houses of Congress work together as one to solve a national crisis. The Congress during the Kennedy-Johnson eEra passed laws to address the concerns of the protest movements in their day. Are our leaders listening? How do they get these youths to leave their tents at home and return to normal daily life? The answer is simple. Get the corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share of the taxes.

Alfred Spencer, Warren