Reply #33: The TRULY tricky part is trying to convince people that our elected officials

[Lyric]

even the "good" ones--are not really on our side. Not any of them. They CAN'T be. They are the part of the 1% power structure.

Some of them might be more sympathetic than others, but they simply do not have the deep personal stake in this that all of US do. Therefore their priorities will always be skewed toward the 1%.

It took me years to really GET that point, and in the end, it took someone pointing out that the same thing is true for racial struggle and gender struggle before I finally made the connection to the political power gap. People who are part of the power structure of this country are not CAPABLE of being "one of us", because they just AREN'T. No matter how much we love them, no matter how good we think they are (Kucinich, anyone?) the fact remains that these are people with direct access to (if not ownership of) wealth and power. Maybe some of them don't WANT that unfair privilege, but they have it nonetheless. Right wing, left wing, centrist--they ALL are part of the 1%.

We can't count on leaders or politicians to help us; in fact, their participation might make it worse. We have to get this done ourselves. I sincerely hope that our elected leaders stay OUT of OWS. Otherwise it's going to be usurped and made into yet another partisan political football, which in turn will suck the soul right out of it. Once the media can reduce it to just another spat between Democrats and Republicans, it's already over.