It's Not Your Fault.

.
Being unemployed is a unique condition because our society teaches us that anyone who is out of work, or who does not earn money, is getting what they deserve. They didn't try hard enough, they didn't work enough hours and keep their mouth shut about illegal working conditions. So what if wages in the field were cut in half -- they should have gotten a second job. They should have gotten more education, gone to one of those schools that advertise on TV where you can get "specialty training" so you can become a receptionist in a doctor's office and earn $18,000/year, which will not be sufficient to ever pay off the tuition of $25,000 charged by the TV school. You should have, could have, might have, must have, done something to end up like this. It's your fault. Get a job, bum.

It's a lot like the social reaction to women who are beaten or raped. Lots of questions have to be answered before anyone will express even an ounce of sympathy. Why did she stay with him? Why did she move in with him? Why did she have kids with him? Why didn't she leave? She should have known better, her mother did not raise her like that. She had options, she didn't have to stay. She must have liked it. Or, for the rape victim, what was she doing out at 10:00 at night? Why did she go to THAT ATM machine in THAT part of town? Why didn't she go get money on her lunch break if she needed money? Why was she dressed like that? Why did she ALWAYS wear tight sweaters or short skirts or high heels or eyeshadow or dangly earrings or perfume.

We need a radical re-education. "We" are not the enemy, contrary to the cartoon, contrary to what the ruling class and politicians try to tell us. "We" didn't cause the looting of this country -- that was Wall Street. Wall Street told the local banks to loan money to anyone regardless of whether the borrower could repay, because Wall Street would buy those loans, slap a coat of cheap paint on them and re-sell to the world and claim they were the best loans ever. That's why the country's economy collapsed and that's why we had gross overbuilding of homes and now massive foreclosures across the land. It wasn't "us" who did it -- it was Wall Street. And they paid off the cops, too. The cops would be the government, which is supposed to monitor and control these predators on Wall Street but instead the politicians decided they'd rather take bribes and look the other way. "We" didn't cause this -- our politicians are corrupt, and they not only allowed it to happen, but they actually profitted from it.

"We" are not the enemy. "We" are part of the same team. We need to get T-shirts printed up that show which team we're on -- our team. Unemployed, broke, homeless, hungry, crime victims, sick, uninsured, denied healthcare, sent to illegal wars, had our family members murdered by the corporate effort to steal everything in the middle east, denied jobs, denied opportunity, denied fair wages, denied job security, replaced by slave labor, sold inedible garbage labeled as food, children denied education, parents denied retirement. That's us. That's our team. And if our team ever gets organized, we will be unstoppable.