To Hell With Global. Kill Wall And Bay Street. Buy Local!

A Commentary by Doug Draper

The movement that has come to be known as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ came to our doorstep in recent days.

As thousands continued to gather under that Occupy Wall Street banner in the streets and parks of Lower Manhattan in a call for justice for middle and working class people across this continent who’ve seen their livelihoods tattered, many others have joined them in cities around the world, including Toronto and right here in the greater Niagara area in Buffalo, New York.

Some three thousand people gathered in Toronto this past Saturday, October 15 and hundreds more rallied in Buffalo’s Niagara Square, outside of the grand city hall there for a fairer shake for all of the rest of us from a handful of corporate money lenders, hedge fund operators and their like who are doing little or nothing to contribute to fabric of your communities or the quality of our lives except to suck them dry for their own personal gain.What’s so sad to me are the number of ordinary people out there – never mind the Wall Street and Bay Street stockbrokers or the extreme right-wing powerbrokers of the Canadian Conservative and U.S. Republican parties – who see this growing ‘Occupy’ movement as a threat to them or as something that (even though it embraces a tradition of peaceful, democratic dissent in our countries) is somehow anti-American or anti-Canadian. Many of these same ordinary Americans and Canadians face the same challenges paying their bills as we do. Yet due to some knee-jerk loyalty to a powerful few, they still find some twisted way of seeing their fellow citizens gathering in the streets, not as Americans or Canadians, but as dirty hippies and bum. As if the upper one per cent has snatched their bodies and brains, they see this growing protest as some sort of neo-Marxist move to engage in “class warfare.”

There is a good one

On that score, one of the favourite signs I found online from the Buffalo rally this October 15 read; ‘They Only Say Class War If The 99% Fight Back’. And that’s true, if Wall Street or Bay Street

It has always intrigued me how many people who don’t fall in the upper one per cent support the activities of the upper one percent, even if those activities work against their interests in terms of their jobs and safety nets like pensions and Medicare. Either out of ignorance or some ideological blindness, they mistake the kind of capitalism – however imperfect it may have been – that helped grow a healthy middle class on this continent in the middle decades of the 20th century with the hedge funds and nefarious shuffling of paper currency that have done nothing to create real products and jobs in our communities. In fact, these activities have taken too many of our good-paying jobs, along with the manufacture of products off shore.

The Wall and Bay Street capitalists who some among the 99 per cent of us who are lower on the food chain continue to foolishly worship are the real traitors to the promise of a good life for the rest of us on this continent. As they trade off more and more of our decent-paying jobs, our homes and what’s left of the health care and other entitlements we have, few could be more anti-American or anti-Canadian than them.

One of the complaints the far-right types have against the Occupy Wall Street movement is that other than complaining about “corporate greed” and “income disparity,” it isn’t tabling any plans of its own. So let me suggest at least one.

We can march in the streets and set up tent villages in parks until doomsday, but nothing matters more than hitting the upper one per cent in the off-shore banks where they hide shelter their ill-gotten money from even paying taxes here. So one of the things we should do is stop buying the goods in their corporate chain stores. Give these places the worst Christmas season they have seen since they came in and destroyed our locally owned businesses and downtown economies in the first place.

That means boycotting the big box, corporate chain stores and buying whatever we really need to get by from independent, local and regionally owned businesses that have roots in our communities and keep their money here.

In Buffalo, New York, there is a great ‘Buy Local” movement that should be a model for the whole greater Niagara region. It is supported by a great logo that says; “Buffalo First! Think Local. Buy Local. Be Local.” Steered on by a beautifully produced discount book for purchasing from local, independently owned businesses in the Buffalo area, the group that put this drive together, the five-year-old ‘Buffalo First’ group that put all of this together emphasizes that when you shop at locally owned businesses in your community, up to three times more money stays in your community than it would if you shop at business with corporate ties outside of the community.

This is likely just as true in any community in this region. So if we want to start a real revolution against the corporate powers that are killing our jobs and quality of life, let’s begin by supporting only those businesses that are local and independent, and to hell with the corporate chains.

For some, that may seem like a tough thing to do because the big corporate chains lure us through their doors with a lot of cheaper junk produced in sweatshops in developing countries. The merchandise sold in more local, independently owned businesses may cost a little more in the short-run, but in the long-run it could pay off in rebuilding our local businesses and economies.

You may want to ask yourselves this. Is paying maybe a few extra bucks for, let’s say, a can opener made in North America rather than some cheaper facsimile made in a sweatshop in Singapore or Taiwan that is going to fall apart in a year or so worth it? Is it worth losing ever more decent-paying jobs on this continent and seeing local businesses closed to global chain operations that will never pay you more than a minimum wage that falls below the poverty level in most of the provinces and states we live in.

Why not give the finger to the global corporate pirates, along with the pigs that support them on Bay and Wall Streets, by doing at least two things. Cut back on the crap we buy, including all of the crap we are sucked in to buying for Christmas, and concentrate our purchases more strategically on local, independently owned stores.

It’s one thing to camp out in a park with picket signs. It may even have more of an impact to deprive the corporate chains the pigs on Wall and Bay Streets worship of our business.

By the way, I am just waiting for the first right-wing idiots to comment here. I am waiting for them to say that they would rather worship at the temple of the hedge fund crooks and other pigs on Wall Street and Bay Street than support locally owned businesses in our community. Go ahead. Show how little you give a fig about our local economies. Make my day.

(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views below, just so long as you also share your real first and last names with your comment.)