Recently I was involved in a conversation regarding some confusion over why one man’s story about cancer had anything to do with being part of the 99%.  Many of you have likely seen the photo with a shirtless gentleman sporting a surgical scar on his chest and the story of losing his job of 20 years due to the nation’s economic trouble, delivering pizza in order to make ends meet, being diagnosed with cancer, and unable to get insurance and treatment because minimum wage disqualified him from health insurance.  The fella I was responding to doubted the validity of the man’s reference to the 99% and criticized the “75% of the people standing for the 99%” as college kids wanting to be part of something “hip”.  I’ve paraphrased, perhaps poorly, but suffice to say the poster was obviously irritated at the Occupy movement, perhaps thinking it wasn’t honest, needed, or socially responsible/respectable.

I’m open to differing information, but here is my understanding:  The 99% is a term used to identify the population that does not have the top 1% of income. That is if your household made less than about $344,000, you’re in the 99% of this nation’s households. The main complaint of folks who publicly associate themselves with ‘the 99%’ is:  there is a  ‘disproportionate control’ that 1% of earners has over society because they can afford to exert control. This disproportionate control has a direct bearing on the problem that is being protested by the ‘Occupy’ movement.  If the 99% is the population of households earning less that $344K, then subset of citizens which protest is the ‘Occupy’ movement.  It is incorrect to say 75% of the 99% are in a movement just to be hip, because 75% of households earning less than $344K have never gone anywhere at the same time, not even to the voting booths.

With a bit of restatement, we get “75% of the ‘Occupy Seattle’” group were involved because they want to be part of something ‘hip’. Estimates of the number of protesters that showed up to the port vary from 400 to 700. So the implication is that 300 to 525 were just looking for something to do and should have been off finding or working a job. While I think the percentage of people desiring ‘hip-dom’ are questionable, I’ll explain why I would think it important to take one day out of my schedule to march with a sign in order to highlight the disproportionate control issue.

My household income makes me part of the 99%. I am better off than most but because I am not one of those ‘movers and shakers’ as the wealthy “job creators” are called, I can only exert a modest amount of control through voting, activism, and whatever donations I can spare after mortgage, food, and all those other expenses that ensure I won’t be destitute. That 1% though, exerts control not only on the market, but also on the means of production and a greater control in politics. This difference in power between the top earners in the country and the middle and lower classes was not always as large as it is now. We even had some rules in place that prevented abuse in power. Stuff like the prohibition of corporations to flood campaigns with money in the form of ‘free speech’.
The 1% earners that are relied upon for ‘trickle-down economics’ have been moving their economics [factories] off-shore, removing opportunities for those college kids who want to be hip to find a decent job at a decent wage. One breadwinner used to be enough for a family to subsist. Unfortunately, both parents often have to work just to make ends meet, sometimes working more than one job. Why should we as people accept this as the [new] ‘American dream’? That is why there is outrage, poster, over the current state of affairs. That is why the ‘people’, these Occupy protesters, need to exert control by capitalizing on the only real power they have, the exercise of their first amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances in an overwhelming fashion.  A fashion that “Scares the bejesus” out of those they elected because that elected realizes that their meal ticket is about to be ripped away from them.

That is what you see the cancer survivor doing — expressing his story and illustrating the absurdity that it took him becoming unemployed before he could get health care to cover his treatment. He did what society told him what was right and honorable to do — he worked. When things got tough for his employer of twenty years, we are led to believe he was laid off. Instead of staying unemployed he found something to keep his family housed, fed, and clothed. Then disaster struck and no number of years he had worked helped him at all — not even the past twenty years of health insurance premiums he had paid. It is another story of how someone in the 99% majority of this nation lives. Because he can’t buy the television time to tell you how great the current system is and how if you aren’t succeeding, it must be your own fault.

Everyone has their part of the story to tell.  Some have it better, some worse, some are apathetic, some are enraged, some see clearly, some only want to be ‘in’ on the latest thing.  Social protest is often characterized by the young.  Certainly they are usually the ones rebelling against the status quo, but it is important to realize that what has become the status quo is something we should all look at in dismay.  But what Occupy is doing is illustrating the first amendment right to “petition the government for redress of grievances”, which is often a forgotten first amendment right.  It’s not just free speech, it’s the use of it.