http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wium/local-wium-989747.mp3
Macomb, IL – Last week, bystanders at a Peoria traffic accident worked together to save a biker trapped between two trucks, not unlike the September rescue of a Utah man pinned beneath a BMW that struck his motorcycle. Maybe you've seen the YouTube clip showing a flaming bike and a dozen or so regular people - construction workers and students, women and men, an African American and a cop - who lift the car high enough that the victim was pulled to safety.
But maybe you haven't considered that the month-long Occupy Wall Street protests are similar: a cross-section of Americans working together to try to save victims ensnared by forces as destructive as tons of metal.
Sure, protestors confronting giant corporations and corrupt Capitol Hill are expressing anger at injustice and demanding that Wall Street be held accountable for its "casino capitalism." But trying to free society from the corporate stranglehold is paramount.
The protests started with fewer than a dozen students at a park near Wall Street in New York. Using Facebook and other Internet tools, they organized, mobilized and strategized, so their effort grew to hundreds of events in places ranging from Chicago's Board of Trade to a Bank of America site in Los Angeles, from McAllen, Texas, to Missoula, Mont.
The first "official" statement issued by New York activists echoes Thomas Paine:
"As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments."
This didn't erupt without warning. The last couple of years have seen constant struggles in most state legislatures. Attacks on civil rights, collective bargaining and social programs followed a prolonged economic crisis caused by Wall Street greed and Washington paralysis.
Progressive groups, unions, community organizations, faith-based groups and others have resisted, defying the relentless assaults, and - like actions in Wisconsin (and especially the "turtles and Teamsters" demonstrations in Seattle in 1999) - most have been grassroots, not top-down, efforts. Maybe that's why the corporate media ignored, then criticized Occupy Wall Street as leaderless and unclear on goals.
(Here's a hint: Wall Street.)
Obviously, Occupy Wall Street is about big money picking which politicians run and which programs get funded, all while making more and more money off the misfortunes they create. For instance, the richest 1% has more net worth than the "bottom" 90% of us.
Protestors' media, medical clinic, cafeteria and even library were set up by mostly polite and peaceful folks in t-shirts and suits, Americans who are retirees and jobless college grads with thousands in student-loan debts (the modern indentured servants) and soldiers.
One uniformed Afghanistan veteran told journalist David DeGraw, "I swore an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign AND domestic. I've been on the battlefield: three tours. It took me a while, but now I know our enemy very well. The global banks are occupying this country, they are attacking us and we must fight back."
Organized labor is involved, too, from Auto Workers, Steelworkers and the Jewish Labor Committee, to AFSCME and Transport Workers.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, "Millions are out of work. Millions have been thrown out of their homes through foreclosures. Meanwhile, Wall Street grants more bonuses" and lobbies for "less regulation and less taxes, so they can do to us all over again what they did to us last time around. When are we going to say Enough is enough'?
"We support the protesters in their determination to hold Wall Street accountable and create good jobs," continued Trumka, who announced a mass march on Washington on November 17.
"We are proud that on Wall Street, bus drivers, painters, nurses and utility workers are joining students and homeowners, the unemployed and the underemployed to call for fundamental change. It is time for all of us -- the 99% -- to be heard."
The motorcyclists in Utah and Peoria were injured but survived. So can we.
In Peoria, an "Occupy Peoria" protest is scheduled for noon on Saturday (October 15).
Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio