Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has a message for the corporations and Republicans who are spreading income inequality. Grayson warned that the greed of corporations could spawn a new political movement that could take them down.
Grayson told Salon,
If one person falls out of the middle class, that’s sad. But if millions of people fall out of the middle class, that creates a backlash which is being seen all over the country, and will potentially create a new political movement of the disenfranchised.
….
Even people who are employed now, many of them are not making enough money to survive. And the outlet more and more for people that they see is this kind of civil disobedience, because the political system has become completely unresponsive to their genuine concerns and their physical needs.
….
Wal-Mart is a machine that exists solely for the purpose of enriching its owners and…the top managers of Wal-Mart, and in so doing wreaks havoc on the lives of both workers and suppliers.
Rep. Grayson was correct. History has shown that once people get pushed too far, they push back. There is a reason yesterday’s Walmart Black Friday protests were the biggest ever. The same income inequality fostering dynamic that means workers starve while the wealthy and corporations profit also plays a large role in creation of the environment that leads to people brawling in stores to get those “doorbuster” deals on Black Friday.
As The Washington Post’s Luke O’Neil wrote, “The exact demography of shoppers on Thanksgiving and Black Friday isn’t clear, with the former being too new a trend to track, and it seems to have been changing over recent years, with a higher percentage of millennials taking part of late, but studies have shown the shoppers are more likely to be non-white, or single mothers.”
The same people who are being underpaid for their work by their corporate employers are also the ones who feel so desperate that they resort to physical violence to save a few dollars while shopping.
The undercurrent of frustration, anger, and desperation is the mixture that fuels the creation of new populist movements. What Rep. Grayson was discussing were the forces that cause people to stand up and fight back. The rage of the new class of “have nots” has been growing since the economy collapsed. Republicans along with their wealthy and corporate backers don’t see the danger coming.
When the people who have been held down do stand up, it is going to be Republicans and the Koch pro-corporate agenda that will feel their wrath.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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