From Occupy Wall Street To Baltimore

When Occupy Wall Street sprang up, seemingly out of no where, critics pointed out the irony of a protest against inequality coming from a relatively privileged group. No one can say that about the uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson Missouri. The people on the receiving end of gentrification, wage compression, Broken Windows Policing and the drug war and whose bodies are fuel for the prison industrial complex have finally spoken. Many are not comfortable with the way they express their anger. But when people rise up against conditions which they find intolerable, it is rarely done by following the rules of the political system which has insured their marginality. Those who are upset by the violence need consider the grinding, daily violence and stress experienced by those rising up, conditions that most middle class Americans have never experienced, at least not until they are pushed out of the middle class. These uprisings have been a long time coming. Occupy Wall Street was a warning, a warning not heeded. Now we have face the consequences of 30 years of inequality and neglect in a form that is far more challenging