Letters: Wall Street protests touch a nerve

Wall Street protesters

are touching a nerve

People in this country do have a right to protest ["Anger on the street," News, Nov. 18]. However, this Occupy Wall Street movement has gone far beyond what this right suggests. It does not mean that protesters have the right to sleep in the streets with questionable hygienic conduct, to disrupt the peace of neighboring people and businesses, to cause major problems for the police department or to cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

They are like a mob that has nothing to do but hang around and take pot shots at this country.

The only reason the protests have lasted so long is because of the massive publicity they get from the liberal mainstream media, the cooperation of local officials and others who fund their existence.

Irene Harshbarger, Holbrook
 

It is being said that the protesters do not have a defined objective, but when you sift through all the rhetoric, what emerges is simply that the American dream that we always promised if only you applied yourself is now becoming unreachable. They have not defined it so pointedly, but that is what it is all about.

My son graduated college two years ago with degrees in elementary education and music education. He applied to almost every state in the country and could not get a teaching job. So he finally signed on to a program to teach English in South Korea. He has been there for almost three months and loves it. We asked him in our last Skype conversation when he thinks he will be coming home. His answer was, "What do I have to come home to? What can America offer me? I heard they just laid off more teachers on Long Island." We have lost our son.

I am a product of the antiwar movement in the '60s. We started as a ragtag group of so-called hippies. In the end, we were proven right, and we did force an end to the war and saved countless American and Vietnamese lives.

I think what we are seeing now is the beginning of a new awakening to the destructive polarization of our society. The haves versus the have-nots, the privileged few versus the masses, the corporate giants versus the worker bees. When we look back through history, all the great revolutions -- the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc. -- were rooted in class warfare. It has been said many a time, if we don't learn from history, we deserve to suffer the consequences of our stupidity.

Bob Kass, Commack
 

Occupy Wall Street has spelled out what most of the middle class deems credible: that big business and the banks have played "gotcha" with us for too long, and we're just plain fed up with being nickel-and-dimed to death via fees, taxes and surcharges that are steadily rising.

The government bails them out, yet they find huge sums of money to pay bonuses, as we try to play by the rules, while financiers and big businesses continue to rake it all in on the backs of middle-class workers.

OWS has indeed made its point, and now it's time to pack up, go home and remember to vote out those legislators who clearly don't give a Fig Newton about their constituents' well-being.

Be sure and register to vote. Getting mad at the state of our nation is OK, but do something about it via our right to vote the scoundrels out.

Herbert W. Stark, Massapequa