Ranters without a cause

I love a good sit-in.

Or protest.

I’m a child of the 60s, after all. Sandwiched by age between the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War demonstrations, I was far too young and incapable of driving myself to Selma or Woodstock. So I’ve always retained a bit of marching envy for those who did that sort of thing.

After having written a bit of an expose on the Wall Street greed and how it infiltrates our daily lives, I have to tell you I’m more than tickled to see regular everyday people rise up and take to Wall Street with their neener-neener signs, and their pouty faces.

Seeing a rightly-intended demonstration carried out without violence makes me proud to be an American. This is what being an American means -this ability to speak truth to power. To stand on public streets and tell the world that you will not be bedfellows with corruption.

And let’s face it, Wall Street has been the dark heart of corruption as of late. They have taken our jobs and sent them overseas. They have taken our churches and turned them into brothels, where thousands of unsuspecting souls are being screwed daily by pimps for Jesus. They have cheated our school systems so that they could send their children to private schools. They have decimated our law enforcement budgets so they can live in gated communities, or high-rises with private security.

Need I go on?

So it thrills me to see people take to the streets from Spokane, Washington to St. Petersburg, Florida in protest. I want to give them a big ole Gretchen Wilson “Hell Yeah!!” redneck shout-out.

The only reason I don’t is because frankly such tactics against Wall Street is a bit like watching a toddler pitch a fit. Once the fit is over, the kid wipes her nose and goes back to whatever thing she was doing before she got all hissified.

Nothing changes.

The protests against Wall Street will fail primarily because they don’t know what they really want.

When people took to the streets over the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights they didn’t just have a message against something, they had a vision for something — an end to the war and equal rights for all, regardless of skin color.

Occupy Wall Street, the haphazardly-organized group egging on the Wall Street protests, has not found its voice, yet. These folks know what they stand against, but they have no idea what they are taking a stand for.

It’s hardly headline news that greed is the primary motivator behind all things Wall Street.

If Occupy Wall Street wants their sit in to do something more productive than make the headlines, they have to come up with a constructive message, offer a plan to counteract the greed that has sickened our culture like bad water.

Otherwise, the folks occupying Wall Street across America are just a bunch of whiners on a rant.