Another must-read can be found at Huffington Post courtesy of Henry Schoenberger:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-schoenberger/occupy-wall-street-american-movement_b_1014824.html

The most salient points are these:

“The civil Rights Movement was fundamentally about human rights, and Occupy Wall Street is also about human rights. It is about how most Americans really do not have a voice in our democracy because government has not protected the public, but favored the 1 percent who bankroll our elected officials.”

"Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such attention that a community which has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored."

“Rev. Martin Luther King wrote this from the confines of a cell in the Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963.”

“There is a quote from the Declaration of Independence that is important to revisit: "He (the King of Great Britain) has refused to assert to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."

“Therefore, this country was founded on the franchise that Americans have the right to expect laws to be enacted for the Public Good; and an expectation under the surface of things, to have the government protect the public.”

So true, Mr. Schoenberg, and thanks for pointing out that the Occupation Movement has not advocated replacing the capitalism with socialism. The anger that provided the impetus for mass demonstrations around the world was already there. It has been simmering since September 2008 when the middle class was devastated by the irresponsible, and in some cases illegal, internal policies that resulted in huge losses in virtually every segment of society.

No one was spared, (except for the financial institutions that caused it), and the legacy of that disaster is foreclosures, unemployment, underfunded pensions, trillions in bailout funds added to the national debt, and a real estate market that has left millions upside-down on their mortgages.

If Congress doesn’t understand that this is a wake-up call, that people are tired of being powerless to control their own destiny because of the financial clout of the Big Banks and their lobbyists, then it is likely they will be replaced next year. But how will that change anything within the existing framework that makes policy?

It won’t. What Congress needs to realize is that this movement is a reflection of the most-recent “right track” polling numbers, which is down to 18% according to Time Magazine. How can anyone in Congress look at these numbers, watch mass demonstrations of public dissatisfaction, and conclude that the status quo is acceptable to anyone outside of the Beltway and Wall Street inner circles?

Dr. King was exactly right. What we are watching is the public telling Congress that these issues cannot be ignored any longer. Mr. Schoenberger is right when he says that this is a “moment of truth” for the country. And if the polls are to believed, there is a lot of support out there in middle America.

What we are seeing, especially from our vantage point here, is a battle between special interests and the general population. The interests of a few versus the interests of many. Our mission statement, our principles, must include a provision that states that we do not support the interests of a few of our members over the others. To do otherwise is to validate the fundamental inequality that brought us together in the first place.