Occupy Social Injustice

Last month Occupiers stormed the Oakland City Hall and made a tent out of a monument in Washington D.C.. As the movement enters the first winter, the crowds may be smaller, but the action is just as sharp.

The editorial below is from a man who ran with some of Ken Kesey's original Merry Pranksters in San Francisco for a summer.

His heart, if not his body, is with the Occupiers as they try to regain what has been lost.

Occupy Social Injustice

By Donovan H. Akemilno

People are starting to realize that we, the Occupiers, don't go away when they turn off their plasma HD flat screen TVs. Like social injustice, we are always here, you just have to tune in and open your eyes.

You look at the ''grungy hippies" that seem to make up the majority of the Occupy movement with disdain, but as you focus your set you see yourself - the unemployed, foreclosed, debt swamped former middle class just trying to claw your way out of the hole.

Though, what you might fail to see, is that this Occupation is much bigger than "you're rich, I'm poor. I bust my ass, you sit on yours” class struggle. This Occupation is ultimately about social injustice of every kind and the growing gap that divides us.

I have been witness to this injustice all my life. As a young boy taken from my home by the ''authorities'' charged to protect, serve, and keep families together; I saw the social serviced industry destroy the struggling families they were founded to restore. Angry, I would demand, "Authorities - who gave them the right?" I sat before the judge in a court system founded on justice and equality that is now more interested in how quickly it can recover from backlog than the life hanging in the balance on the scales of justice that are not only blind, but mute and shackled by greed. Elections breed corruption in the U.S. judges are politicians only interested in keeping their job another term, protecting the state...those with money.

One of the many innocent children who slip through the gaps of the foster system, growing into criminals because that's their environment; a young man making a bad decision and having a label put on him for life - struck with horror when a fellow Occupier is beaten by the authorities while laying face-down and handcuffed on the cement. "Stop resisting," they said as the clubs flew...stop resisting the 1 percent.

Soon you realize your minimum wage job won’t allow you to make it paycheck to paycheck, the ever rising climb to prosperity is only a myth for the now one-time offender. The 1 percent will tell you, after 23 years, "You must suffer more." The 99 percent ask, "When is enough, enough?" Take a child from everything they know and love, separate them from their connection with any emotions but anger, hate, revenge and ''correction.'' Is it not crazy to expect positive outcomes? The Occupiers protest for the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Odd that these fundamental human rights, inalienable rights, should threaten the 1 percent so much, odd that they have been removed from so many.

So who protects the many from the few? Who protects the powerless from the powerful? Who protects the one subjected to Stalin like punishment from professional care staff the   police and correctional officers? With over six million under ''correctional control'' in the U.S. when is enough, ENOUGH? A broken man sits and waits for something better, for people wake up and tune in, for the Occupation to push Further.

The audacious hope is mine.