On Mayday, I was in the parks and streets of Manhattan for #M1GS, the May 1st General Strike, a daylong gathering called by a coalition of dozens of labor organizations. Like many, I was there under many motivations: as a participant in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Faith NYC, as a member of the labor union and advocacy organization the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and as a theologian. I joined tens of thousands in New York City and around the country and around the world, workers of all kinds, labor union members, Occupiers, community organizers, seasoned activists, first-time participants, and all manner of allies who cheered us on from the sidewalks, fire escapes, and opened windows in the tall buildings along the march route.
There were apparently a few dozen arrests, though I did not personally see any over the course of seven hours. (Nor could I afford to get too close if things got too hot, because I needed to be free to teach the next day.) I arrived in the early afternoon at Bryant Park to find a thousand or so people getting warmed up with teach-ins, leafletting, conversations, sign-making, and picture-taking. There were also dozens of people carrying guitars (and a few basses and banjos), rehearsing for the Occupy Guitarmy, an all-volunteer guitar ensemble led by renowned rock guitarist Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine and now The Nightwatchman. I was concerned because I thought that a thousand or so people would be a poor turnout for such a hyped-up event as this General Strike. But things changed quickly.
By the way, in the 60's, I was studying physics and didn't have the excess time to participate in demonstrations. But looking back on it, they were mostly right as Occupy is mostly right now..
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Pay-Compares/129981/
Of course tuition was much lower then. Maybe the Occupy movement should move from Wall Street to the university campuses
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/chart-of-the-day-college-tuition-is-out-of-control/2011/10/27/gIQABi4sMM_blog.html
But it's not due to faculty pay (abcnews.go.com/Business/us-professors-stagnant-pay-leading-higher-tuition).
p.s. Please be charitable when talking about we old folk from the 60s - not all of us were anarchists and the 60s and early 70s were most definitely not 'utopia.''
;)
Stanley - why do you think that credit unions are safer than banks? I am asking because there's a credit union bank in my neighborhood which I was going to look at but I don’t really know if it’s any safer than my current bank.