Inside the Belly of the Beltway Beast

Today is Gandhi's birthday, and yesterday I think I witnessed a hopeful future for humanity. David, Laurel and I went to lower Manhattan to take part, if only for a day, in Occupy Wall Street centered in Zuccotti Park, about a block from the New York Stock Exchange. What I saw there was a few hundred young folks (and a few older folks) occupying a space, and creating a community of resistance to the burgeoning and oppressive plutocracy in the U.S. One of the most frequent, and powerful in my mind, themes touched on by this growing movement is the concept that we are the 99% and we are being sold out and exploited by the richest 1% and their enormous corporations (recently given First Amendment rights by the US Supreme Court). The ones who get generous tax breaks and simply want to feed their own greed with no concern for the overall health of the nation. The disparity between the billionaires and the rest of us has increased and is quickly beginning to resemble many third worl