Connecting the Dots

One of my pieces was published on the Occupy Detroit blog. Click here to read it in its entirety. Here’s an excerpt:

It is not a fault of ours when the media says that the Occupy Movement lacks focus, or when naysayers are unsure of what this movement is all about. Rather, such superficial criticisms are a product of the media’s failure to connect the dots. One powerful element of the occupy movement is its composition – a diverse coalition of everyday people unified in the understanding that we cannot fight for economic justice without fighting for racial equality, for peace, or for ecological justice.

The media fails to grasp what we at Occupy Detroit understand, that Wall Street is but one player (albeit an important one) in a global system in which finance, governments, and multinationals work for the benefit of the 1%. We understand that rise of foreclosures in Detroit is not simply an isolated phenomenon but is enmeshed within a global system that privileges the rich at the expense of the rest of us. We understand that the problems of this world cannot be tackled by a single-issue approach. We understand that so much of what is wrong in this world is interconnected. We understand that if we are to make a better world, we have to tackle things globally, as well as locally.

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