While Occupy protests were going on in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Washington, D.C., and New York City, Monzell Stowers was waiting for the movement to come to him.
“I said if it ever got close enough, then I’d go,” he said. So when it came to Jackson’s Smith Park, the Scott County resident became involved.
He and others in the movement will tell you that each occupier has his or her own beef—with the government, with corporations, with how wealth is distributed, with the direction they think the nation is headed—and that the views of individuals aren’t necessarily those of the group’s general assembly. In fact, some observers have remarked that this nebulous nature of the various protests, the lack of stated objectives, is the very reason that they’ve been successful.
For Stowers, a retired Vietnam War Marine Corps sergeant, his No. 1 issue is with the U.S. Senate, which since the departure of Roland Burris, an Illinois Democrat, has no African American members. To remedy this, he wants to restructure Congress’ upper house to have 218 seats instead of the current 100 or make every two House districts a Senate district. In doing so, blacks have a better shot at becoming senators, he says. (There have been just six black senators since 1870; Mississippi’s Hiram Revels was the first.) Stowers also thinks that will decrease the significance of money in Senate campaigns as well.
His idea is modeled after the effort in the 1980s to replace Jackson’s old commission style of government with the council-mayor system that it operates under today. As a result, Stowers, who says he was active in that campaign, notes that the racial composition of the Jackson City Council closely mirrors that of the capital city.
“It’s more important to be represented in government than anything else,” he said.
Previous Comments
“with how wealth is distributed” Hilarious. I don’t know about y’all, but every penny that goes into my bank account is EARNED.
#165299 | Author: RobbieR | Date: Nov 1 2011
I don’t know about y’all, but every penny that goes into my bank account is EARNED. Then that’s not wealth. That’s earnings. Wealth is collected, abundant resources or possessions. Like they say — Peyton Manning is rich; the guy who signs Peyton’s check is wealthy. In some cases, what’s being protested by Occupy protestors is unequal access to that wealth, and the increasingly unfavorable climate in this country for moving from wage-earner to the middle class or beyond. A great deal of wealth has been generated in manufactured markets — the military-industrial complex, the highly subsidized energy sector, the offshoring of manufacturing — via policy, corporate “welfare” and Wall Street dictum at the expense of taxpayers, workers and the dwindling middle class.
#165303 | Author: Todd Stauffer | Date: Nov 2 2011
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.