- Rhiannon Fionn
- Matthew, a CPCC student
As promised in an earlier post, CL continues to bring you voices from the occupation of Charlotte — individual participants, in their own words, talking about why they joined the local Occupy movement.
On Mon., Oct. 10, we caught up with Matthew, a CPCC student, who wants to encourage all of the other Occupy groups to keep up the momentum.
We asked him the same three questions we’ve asked others in our “in their own words” series: Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here?
“I’d like to see us, as a people, to get back what we are due, and I feel that corporate American has really gone to shits,” he said.
Listen to Matthew in his own words:
Further reading:
24 Hours with Occupy Charlotte
Occupy Charlotte: Working Out the Glitches
CMPD holds Occupy Charlotte press conference
Listen to voices from Wednesday’s #OccupyUNCC
Who are the 99 percent?
Oct. 1: The birth of Occupy Charlotte
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2011.
“I’d like to see us, as a people, to get back what we are due, and I feel that corporate American has really gone to shits,” he said.
***********
And there you have it. What exactly are you “due”? If you want to stop being treated like a second-class citizen, stop acting like one.
Corp. greed is outrageous. Owning a slave and not paying them is illegal, but working at walmart and making minimum wage is perfectly ok. Working for a big corporation is a form of “legal” slavery.
Some pretty overt racism there Jim.
According to Jim, classism (and racism) is easily justified when one’s grammar is less than perfect.
Ryan,
What’s your point? Are saying that working at Walmart at minimum wage is the same as slavery? Does Walmart have shacks out back these people live in? Do they chain them up at night? Sell them to K Mart if they feel like it? Someday you poorly educated Marxists will actually learn to think something out before you comment. Lenin had a name for you folks. He called you “Useful Idiots”.
The point being missed is that Wal-Mart workers rely on public assistance to subsidize their substandard wages and benefits. UC Berkeley found (way back in 2004) that our tax dollars are directly supporting Wal-Mart’s business with as much as $2 billion dollars per year worth of food stamps and medical care. Back then, PBS reported that Wal-Mart provided all new employees with a 1-800 number to determine benefit eligibility. Our tax dollars are supporting Wal-Mart’s business model and profitability.
Government support is the ultimate slavery. Only when you are dependent upon yourself for what you need, do you truly experience freedom and democracy. Working and getting paid is not slavery.
I hope he said corporate America and not corporate American.