By Mark David Blum, Esq.

I am a 99%er.

I am one of the faces in the growing crowds taking to the streets. I have been there almost every day and given the group legal support and a phone number to call in case of emergency.

I am not a communist, a socialist, an anarchist, an unwashed hippy, nor a spoiled college kid. I am not a superannuated lefty liberal missing the civil rights protests. I am not a dopy homeless person and I am not an agenda driven fatuous journalist. I am not a friend of the GOP or the Democrats.

I am a professional for the past 20 years. I am college educated (and not at Harvard). I have built a business. I have raised and supported a family with a child presently in college. I pay my taxes, abide by the law, and contribute huge amounts of my time and resources back to the community. I even shower, wash my clothes, and shit in a toilet.

And I am a 99%er.

I consider Congress to have become the great enemy of the People. They cannot even vote on whether they should have Styrofoam coffee cups in their cafeteria without the vote going straight down party lines. I call for the peaceful overthrow of the current United States government in the next election; everybody out. I demand the reduction in the size and scope of the federal government. I don’t want the friendship or support of the President, the Vice President, or of legislators of either party. I want a complete and top-to-bottom re-evaluation of all systems. I want my State to have more involvement in my world than the Federal government. I do not want my nation’s military to be on missions in nearly every country on earth. I am satisfied with not being the #1 military and political power on the planet at the expense of my own people have to starve, be uneducated, or go without healthcare.

I will not support a government that assassinates its own citizens. I will not support torture or any human being. I believe health care is and should be a fundamental right. I want a different tax structure. I want my privacy back. I want the government out of my life. I want education available to everyone. And I want it to be a felony for any elected person to vote in accordance with their Party or contributor’s demands rather than what is in the best interest of the nation. I simply will not tolerate $16 trillion national debt; a debt we all know will never be repaid. I want the spending to stop.

Every American deserves the best chance we can give them. They deserve a free education, police and fire protection, roads, infrastructure, and health care so as to give every person a chance to maximize their potential which in the end, is in all our best interests.

I am a 99%er and I have a voice and I vote.

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as a student of sociology and of society i opine that the Tea Party phenomena and the Occupy movement are two sides of the same coin. the mass of the population of the nation feels disaffected, ignored, abused, and that government has lost its' mind. both are demanding systemic change. each body politic obviously has its own client base, but each is also broad ...in reach and appealing to a wide spectrum of citizens who have come together on serious issues.

what we are witnessing is that the People are mad. really really mad. that anger runs the spectrum from right wing whackjobs to left wing whackjobs and all the normal people in between.

what we are, collectively, Tea Partier or Occupier ... in essence, is the other 99%. Government had better notice. Candidates for office had better take notice. there is real social change coming. people really are mad as hell and arent going to take it anymore. as a student of sociology and of society i opine that the Tea Party phenomena and the Occupy movement are two sides of the same coin. the mass of the population of the nation feels disaffected, ignored, abused, and that government has lost its' mind. both are demanding systemic change. each body politic obviously has its own client base, but each is also broad ...in reach and appealing to a wide spectrum of citizens who have come together on serious issues. what we are witnessing is that the People are mad. really really mad. that anger runs the spectrum from right wing whackjobs to left wing whackjobs and all the normal people in between. what we are, collectively, Tea Partier or Occupier ... in essence, is the other 99%. Government had better notice. Candidates for office had better take notice. there is real social change coming. people really are mad as hell and arent going to take it anymore.