Forum Post: Why now and not before?
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 25, 2011, 7:38 p.m. EST by jadee
(40)
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The banks getting bailed out was an awful idea, that few people actually supported. Why was there no occupation when it was happening? The lapse in time makes me question the motives. Can anyone explain this?
Took time for people to figure out what was really happening and more importantly for it to affect their lives. Simple lag time from cause to effect.
At least more people seem to be paying attention to things as they are happening now.
I believe people hoped it would help the economy, and that the now-sitting president would "Change" the nation for the good.
Who knows? Does it matter? It's here now. Thank heavens.
The banks getting bailed out, unfortunately, was necessary to avoid hurling us into the next Great Depression. Gross as it may be in principle, and it is. In reality, it was seen as necessary. The banks getting bailed out WITH NO CONDITIONS in terms of repayment, any requirement of new jobs created after to be HERE in America or legislation on capping executive bonuses and the like... or no rebalancing of the tax structure so that the middle class bore the brunt of the tax burden to pay for the banks' failures: that's what really sucks and is the core principle of what we're fighting. I suppose some people didn't quite get this at first, perhaps naively believing that letting the uber-rich off financially benefits anyone else but the rich. We've seen that doesn't happen.
critical mass tipping points can be hard to understand.
we should have been out protesting decades ago. why now? enough people woke up.
http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.followthemoney.org/?gclid=CMbY87bB-qsCFUPt7Qod9HE8mQ
http://maplight.org/us-congress/guide/data/money?9gtype=search&9gkw=list%20of%20campaign%20donations&9gad=6213192521.1&9gag=1786513361&gclid=CP61oYbB-qsCFQFZ7AodcTF0jw
http://www.opensecrets.org/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/non-violence-evolution-by-paradigm-shift/
For me, it takes time to figure out what's going on. I have to read, watch, google, wiki, laugh & cry and all of these steps take time, for me.
The Bank bailout of 2008 was done in the last days of the Bush admin when most citizens were thinking of the election and the next 4 years. Also, we had not yet been the victims of any Economic terrorists before and when Congress rolled over we trusted them to make the tough but correct choices.
Please recall, Larry Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, they all told Congress there would be Martial law if they did not pay off the banks. Congress was not allowed to speak about the Marshal law angle for some time.
Thus, how could we have protested the Economic terrorist plot when we had not been told. Needless to say Congress did negotiate with the terrorists and then Obama hired them. Peace
Fat, dumb, lazy Americans is why. It wasn't until they saw their purses getting shorted that they spoke up. Sad but true.
That's the problem few people supported this idea but they did it anyway.
Largely because the mostly middle-class white kids and left-leaning activists working on their second Masters at Columbia who make up this "movement" hadn't been affected until more recently. Not much of what's complained about here is anything new. As you note, people were screaming about the bail-outs, jobs, etc., for a long time now. They're a few years late to the party on most of that.
That's also likely why this "movement" is so blindingly white. Unemployment and income disparity aren't exactly news flashes for most minorities in this country. lol
A lot of folks (I was one of them) thought that Obama, who had just been voted in, would hold the banks accountable for the crash which necessitated the bailout.
Had I been paying more attention at the time, I would have known that this was never going to happen.