ABOUT MORE THAN LOOKING FOR A JOB
(In response to Will Munsil's Oct. 5 column, "'Occupy Wall Street' is a childish game.")
No progress was ever made by looking elsewhere and saying, “Well, they’ve got it worse, so I guess I won’t complain.”
It’s not about people’s unwillingness to work. It’s about working, and working, and working, (or looking, and looking, and looking for work) and still not being able to afford the medication one needs to survive.
It is about living in desperation from one moment to the next, and looking up to see people profiting off of it — that there are people who could spend $1,000 a day for the rest of their lives and not go broke.
Nobody is saying, “There is nothing worse on this planet — nobody’s pain is worse than mine.”
They are saying, “This is supposed to be one of the greatest countries in the world, above this blatant mistreatment of people, above this system of grossly over-rewarding the few while many suffer.
Ninety-nine percent of us aren’t benefiting from this system — so it’s time we change it.”
Whenever things like this happen, it’s easy to compare the U.S. to the worst — to mass starvations in other countries, terrifying religious persecution.
Why don’t we compare ourselves to relatively thriving countries? The countries with the highest test scores, the greatest national average for happiness, the longest lives, the best standard of living?
We cannot call ourselves the greatest country on Earth and accept the way that things currently are. We can be thankful to be relatively well off in comparison to some other countries and still be angry that our needs are so underrepresented in our political system.
We are fully capable of both.
Colleen Stinchcombe
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