I should be writing at paper right now, but I’ve been reading and watching a lot of the media in the wake of the Occupy Oakland protests the other night. I’ve been following a lot of the Occupy media on Twitter and Facebook. Clergy and seminary students from my school have been going to the different area protests. I’ve seen pictures and read about war veterans going to protect protestors. It’s been rather amazing and scary all at once.

I’ve also been listening to a lot of music, and Linkin Park seems to top the list right now. Their lyrics seem to match what I’m watching and feeling:

Try to give you warning

But everyone ignores me

[Told you everything loud and clear]

But nobody’s listening

Call to you so clearly

But you don’t want to hear me

[Told you everything loud and clear]

But nobody’s listening

— “Nobody’s Listening” by Linkin Park

The reason that this song is stuck in my head is that no matter how much the Occupy movement grows, it seems that all we hear from Congressional leaders and pundits is: “What do they want? We don’t understand why they’re protesting! They don’t have any clear demands!”

Really? I don’t think it’s that hard to figure out: The economy has tanked. People are losing jobs left and right. Legislators on both sides of the isle have pretty much ignored job creation in favor of creating false crises. Job bills that should have gone right through are being halted in the House by legislators who bow to corporate interests and can’t deal with a black guy in the White House. We have soldiers doing multiple tours in a war that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

The list could go on, but I don’t think this is that difficult: People are angry. People are tired. People want fairness and equality in jobs and finances. People want legislators to listen to them and not the money in their bank account.

I suppose I could recount tales of my own job experiences, but, well, while it was a pain in the ass, I was very lucky. I got paid (more or less) decently for what I did, and I had a roof over my head. But, even with that privilege, I still lived paycheck to paycheck. The only savings I have is my 401k, and there are a lot of people who don’t even have that.

And like I said, I’ve been lucky, both by the fact that I was born white and by the fact that I went to college at all.

A couple of years ago I was doing some divination work, and part of the divination started talking about the elections of 2010. What came out of that is that they could go either way: the first path was that those who were elected would be good for the country and things would improve. The other path was that the election would be a disastrous turn for the country. In the second path, it would get ugly before it got better, and it would cause a great change. It was a knife’s edge, and seeing how things are going now, well…

How it all ends is still up in the air, since those in charge have money and power at their disposal. It also depends on how we, as the angry 99%, approach this: We can take the high road, stay peaceful, and allow them to make fools of themselves, or we fight and prove their pundits right.

Either way, change is happening…