Occupy CPAC
Last Friday at lunchtime, Occupy DC protested outside the Marriot Wardman hotel hosting CPAC, raising their concerns about the way the conservative agenda puts inside represented the desires of the 1% before the needs of the 99%.
Unfortunately, many of the CPAC participants around me who came out to gawk at the demonstration focused on the perceived differences between the constituencies inside and outside the hotel, dismissing the protesters as lawless, misguided rabble-rousers motivated by personal envy and animosity.
But given the Tea Party-influenced cries against bailouts and crony capitalism taking place at the conference, I think they’d have found key areas of agreement with the Occupiers about if they had stopped to listen.
Here’s an Occupy speaker from Our DC explaining his frustration with the way that corporations like PEPCO, the DC electric utility company, make hundreds of millions in profits while paying little to nothing in taxes (PEPCO actually has a negative tax rate thanks to all of their tax rebates).