Occupy Thanksgiving

What is Occupy Wall Street about?  While people continue to camp out in the streets in cities all over the country, many of us are discussing them. The Occupy movement is about basic values and principles of social justice.  Many of us feel that the government is not adhering to our principles of fair play and mutual loyalty and support.  Perhaps if we stand in the street someone will notice – notice that our work, our lives, our families, our homes, our country, matter to us. 

Photo: Tom Giebel

Our government seems to have forgotten that we are the country, and that our wellbeing is the wellbeing of our country.  The GDP doesn’t measure us.  Vast -- almost unimaginable -- sums of money are being poured into the banking system.  Wars are being fought for we know not what.  Laws are passed to benefit the oil industry and agribusiness at the expense of the rest of us. That money needs to come home to America – to the people in the opening words of the Constitution, “We the People”. We need jobs, we need health care, and we need homes and a decent education for our children.  We need to pay off our debts and let go of a lot of our stuff.  We don’t care about having more; we care about having enough. We care about each other.  We care about our neighbors, our land, our towns and our cities. 

As we give thanks this week, we think about the simple things that we are actually thankful for, the people we love, the earth beneath our feet, the beauty of love and life.