Tami Lange Column
As soon as we graduated from high school, my best friend and I went to New York City.It wasn’t your average “reward” trip. Our parents didn’t have that kind of money, so they made due: we traveled by bus with an organization called The Canton Coalition to Freeze the Bomb.
There we were, all fresh faced and ready to join a million or so people in a huge anti-nuke march through Manhattan, ending with a concert and sit-in in Central Park. Not exactly four star, but when you grow up in rural Ohio, New York is New York.
We bused in from Yankee Stadium (where I had my first bagel with lox) and marched past Bonwit Teller, sandwiched between the Gay & Lesbian Youth of NYC and the Hare Krishnas. It was a huge, though peaceful crowd that ended up in the park to listen to Coretta Scott King and Bruce Springsteen.
We bought shirts that said, “No nukes are good nukes” and tried not to look too small town.
Although I was pretty sure nuclear war was in no one’s best interest, I could have protested just about anything for a cheap trip to the big city. After that, I was pretty nuked out.
I think of those days when I see the Occupy Wall Street group. Let’s go and sit and chant and hold signs and get on television. I’m not a fan of corporate greed, but I am a fan of indoor plumbing and the occasional shower. So, look all you want, you won’t see my face in that crowd – New York or no New York.
I also happen to think “Occupy Whatever” is incredible waste of time.
Corporate greed has to feed off something. Meet the enemy: it is us. And all the sitting around freezing your brand-new jeans off isn’t going to change a thing. Do you think the 1 percent looks out on that protest and decides to do anything differently?
It’s not a matter of the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. It’s us against us.
I remember having lunch one day at a franchise restaurant with a perfect view of Wal-Mart. The friend with whom I was lunching looked out the window, sighed, and said, “I hate Wal-Mart.”
I nodded in agreement. Then she added, “But their stuff is so cheap, sometimes I just HAVE to go there.”
And therein is the sum total of our love-hate relationship with corporate America and with the greed on its uppermost levels. We hate the greed, yet we feed the greed. Somewhere, the 1 percent is getting fatter because it knows we can’t help ourselves.
You really wanna fight it? Shop local businesses – the ones that recycle your dollars back into the community, the ones that donate to your kid’s school fundraiser, the ones who stretch their budgets to employ your neighbors.
And while you’re at it, get rid of your credit card. Sure, we love our credit cards like fat folks love fast food. We know it’s bad for us … but we just can’t stop ourselves. Use your cash and avoid the post-holiday handover.
We don’t need a sit in. We need discipline. We don’t need to rail at the 1 percent. We need to stop feeding the beast.
Think of that the next time you think “falling prices” are really a bargain.
Wooster Weekly News columnist Tami Lange can be reached via e-mail at tam108@hotmail.com.