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Middle classes let out another shriek of pain, this time in DC

LARA MARLOWE

AMERICA:  THE OCCUPY movement that started in the US seven weeks ago has been described as a shriek of pain by the American middle- class.

That pain was obvious on Thursday, when 2,000 nurses, trade unionists and government employees gathered in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, for a demonstration called Occupy the Treasury.

“This is the tipping point,” Ruth Poulin (55), an administrator in a federal health agency told me. “If this [protest movement] doesn’t work, we will have lost the country as we knew it. Now is the time for people to act, if they really care.”

Poulin has a home in the Washington suburbs, but she sleeps in a tent in the Occupy encampment on Freedom Plaza most nights. The protesters’ ranks have been swollen by a contingent of homeless people, who would not otherwise be allowed to have tents.

“When you live in the midst of it, you understand how hard life is and how thin is the line between those who have and those who do not,” Poulin says.

Poulin weeps when she tells me that her 23-year-old daughter works three jobs but cannot meet the interest payments on her student loans, which will dog her well into middle age.

A group of nurses from the Massachusetts Nurses Association complain that all-powerful medical insurance companies force patients out of hospital too soon, insist on replacing nurses with tele-monitors and ration care.

Brian Billiter (50), a nurse, is shocked by the number of retired colleagues in their 60s and 70s who are returning to work because their retirement funds were wiped out by the financial crash.

Billiter’s wife lost her job as a teacher. The couple have difficulty paying their mortgage and live from pay cheque to pay cheque.

Middle class America is being destroyed for the benefit of the super-rich, the nurses tell me. A congressional budget office report released on October 25th showed that the top 1 per cent of earners in the US more than doubled their share of the nation’s wealth in the past three decades.

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