Occupy activists heirs to the Boston Tea Party

The wounding of a Marine war veteran during an anti-Wall Street rally in Oakland, Calif., presents a public relations problem for the corporate-dominated, conservative-biased media whose goal is misrepresenting protesters as dirty, lazy hippies.

I drove to Iowa City after work for an “Occupy” demonstration and was impressed with the variety including students, veterans and working people. The only disorderly thing was some Fox News type who kept screaming “get a job.”

Voicing the opinions of this country's founders, Thomas Jefferson stated, “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations.” In 1773, the British passed the Tea Act to bail out a giant corporation, the East India Co. Fed up with corporate monopolies and unfair policies that taxed working people, but not corporations and rich aristocrats, colonialists threw the tea overboard.

The Occupy protesters are true heirs to the Boston Tea Party and American Revolution. Unfortunately, the Koch brothers, who having inherited a fortune made by shorting (cheating) on oil prices, funded the misnamed Tea Party, a corporate front aimed at heisting the revolutionary label.

The Kochs' Tea Party actually represents views expressed by conservatives in the early colonies, called Tories, who supported corporate power, the monarchy and sided with the British.

The Occupy movement is pro-democracy and pro-individual freedom. Its leaderless composition perplexes the corporate oligarchy and right-wing, fascist manipulators who like to secretly install false, corrupt reform leaders as a means to sidetrack anti-corporate movements.

Jay Miller

Hills