Forum Post: My Heritage Will be Taken by the Hands of Corruption

I grew up on a 100-acre Ranch in the Bay Area, CA. My great grandfather traveled here from the Azores off the coast Portugal as just a poor rancher, striking out for a new life in the new world, hoping to give his children a better opportunity. Here he bought the land (originally 500 acres) and settled down, keeping his trade as a rancher for he knew nothing better. My grandfather as well, was raised as a rancher; sure he went to public school and such, but in the end, he wound up tending to his father's legacy and eventually had 4 children, my two uncles, my aunt and my mother. My mother grew up in the old ranch house that my great-grandfather had built. She attended the same high school her father had and even went and took some college courses. It was while in college that she met my father, who was also a mathematics genius, but came from a poor family, and as such, hadn't had the chances in life that would have made him known to the world. He got various jobs around the bay area working in the hardware field of computers, a booming business in the Bay Area during his time. He has worked for companies like Sun Microsystems, Nvidia Graphics, Bayer and APL. My mother has spent the last 12 years of her life working as a secretary at the elementary school I and my siblings attended. She won an award in California for being one of the best classified workers (classified is basically a nice way of saying she doesn't have a college degree or credentials. This includes people like secretaries, janitors, etc) in the state two years ago. I have never seen my parents slack in their responsibilities a day in my life; they are the hardest, most honest working individuals I know. Combined, they make about $60k a year before taxes...you may think this is a decent amount, but in the Bay Area, this is a pittance. In fact, it is so little that my parents have continued to live in the same house my grandfather and his father lived in, even though it is now going on 100 years of age. Recently, it has been brought to our family, who has owned our 100 acres of land where I grew up, where I spent the first 18 years of my life, that we are no longer going to receive what is known as an "agricultural tax cut." You see, the only reason why we have been able to keep our land as our own until now is because it has been dedicated as agricultural land; this means our taxes have been kept low enough to be affordable for my parents. In 2014, our land will become commercial land, and we will be required to pay commercial taxes on it...it comes to about $12k a year, just for the land. So roughly 20% of my parents income. Now, why is my heritage becoming commercial land? Because some very rich realtors petitioned the city where it is in for it to become commercial land...these very same realtors have essentially been knocking on my family's door since we've lived there asking us to sell it to them. We respectfully decline every time. So now, the city has passed a law stating that our land, as well as some smaller ranches around it, are to be designated for commercial use, not agricultural. As such, our taxes are going to increase dramatically...my parents cannot afford to pay 20% of their income for our life...for our home. We will be forced to sell our land to the very realtors who started this whole thing, who paid off the city officials to pass an ordinance that we had no control over. My heart breaks every time I think of what is going to happen in two years...and that there is nothing I can do makes me lose faith in our entire political system. This is what OWS means to me...a chance to keep a part of what makes me, me.