Manager’s Samizdat

Here’s an interesting paste from an article in today’s Los Angeles Times by Kim Murphy, about the ongoing port occupations:

… In Portland, meanwhile, where an Occupy demonstration shut down two major loading terminals Monday morning, demonstrators regrouped by late afternoon and headed toward another terminal.

“Now we are headed to Terminal 4, which is about a three-mile walk, and we’re going to shut it down,” said James Douglas Gless, president of a land development and environmental engineering consulting firm in Oregon City, who joined the protests.

Gless said he decided to participate because of growing frustration with the political process.

“I’m a 56-year-old corporate president. The last three years were good to me. But I’ve got two kids that have got to grow up in a country that has been stolen by these huge national and multinational corporations,” he told the Times. “What else can we do? We want our votes again.”

Amen, brother.  I’m a 51-year-old academic administrator with three kids, a mortgage, and all the other bric-a-brac of a crumbling educated middle-class existence, and I couldn’t agree more.  I bet he’s got an MBA.  What?  Shut up, vote, work hard, pay your taxes and everything will be OK?  Yeah, right.

All the same, all that said, we can’t give up on democracy, either.  Look at what Rep. Deutsch and (my) Sen. Bernie Sanders are doing to advance a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn unlimited corporate personhood.  This deserves our support as well.  To para-quote Ronald Reagan, “Legislate, but occupy!”

For more information:

• Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Saving American Democracy Amendment“
• Rep. Ted Deutch’s (D-FL) “OCCUPIED Amendment“